|
|
|
Wednesday, December 9, 2009, posted by @ 10:21 AM
How Much Information?
As reported in Slashdot, here's a fascinating report on how much information Americans consume.
Quote of the day:
Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not understanding. Understanding is not wisdom.
Anonymous
Tuesday, November 10, 2009, posted by @ 1:21 PM
Survey From Carnegie Mellon
A colleague from CMU has asked me to pass on this invitation to participate in a survey for software architects:
We have designed a tool to help software architects evaluate their architecture designs for specific usability issues. We are inviting software architects to look at our design and take a brief online survey about their opinions.
Completing the survey will entitle you to be entered in a drawing for a $100US Amazon gift card. You must complete the survey to enter the drawing. When we have received 40 entries, a winner will be selected at random and notified via email.
In user tests of a prototype of our tool, software architects at a major European development organization estimated they received a 17:1 ROI on time they spent using the tool to evaluate a design for a product line architecture. An open-source version of the tool should become available for distribution in the near future.
Participation in the survey should take less than 30 minutes. Your responses will be kept confidential. To participate, please go here.
If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact egolden@cmu.edu. Thanks!
Quote of the day:
When television came roaring in after the war (World War II) they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why - television or radio. And there was this 7-year-old boy who said he preferred radio "because the pictures were better."
Anonymous
Monday, November 2, 2009, posted by @ 2:53 PM
Imagination And Process
David Worthington of SD Times has a piece on failures in software projects wherein I'm quoted.
Quote of the day:
In my dream, the angel shrugged & said, If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination & then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.
Brian Andreas
Monday, November 2, 2009, posted by @ 1:09 PM
SOA Manifesto
Last week, I participated in the creation of this SOA manifesto.
Quote of the day:
There are no manifestos like cannon and musketry.
Arthur Wellesley
Monday, November 2, 2009, posted by @ 12:35 AM
Design Patterns, OOP, And Coffee
Larry O'Brien interviewed me here, and we covered a lot of ground, from design patterns to object-oriented gorp to the merits of Kona coffee.
Quote of the day:
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
Sheik Adb-al-Kadir
Thursday, October 29, 2009, posted by @ 1:52 PM
EA Is Not TA
I'm back from New York where I keynoted an invigorating conference sponsored by the IASA, in which they brought together a number of enterprise architecture folks (such as John Zachman) and technical architecture folks (such as Len Bass). The collision of those worlds is something that's been popping up in a number of conversations I've had recently, and it so moves me to make my position clear.
EA (enterprise architecture) is not TA (technical architecture).
Although the two share the noun "architecture" they are different things. EA attends to the architecture of a business that uses technology; TA attends to the architecture of the software-intensive systems that support the business. Each domain - that of the business and that of the system - have fundamentally different stakeholders with different perspectives and different viewpoints. The fact that the both share some aspects of terminology and concerns and even notation is good, but can be confusing in the dialog between those two worlds..
Indeed, speaking of two worlds, in the dialog between science and religion, there's also this notion of two worlds: science has some things of which it may speak with authority and faith has some things of which it may speak with authority, but when science tries to answer questions of faith (why is the world the way it is) or vice versa (is there or is there not a randomness in the laws of the universe) then conflict arises. Not to diminish the complex texture of the dance between science and religion - if you want to go there, then the Templeton Foundation is one place to start, although Richard Dawkings has some things to say about that too - but IMHO EA and TA are similarly of two worlds. Most contemporary economically-meaningful enterprises use software-intensive systems to carry out their mission, and so there is and should be this jiggling between the architecture of the business (as it uses technology) and the architecture of the software-intensive system (as it serves and leads the business).
If you accept my premise that this collision of worlds exists between EA and TA, then I want to be clear that both worlds must co-exist and both must interoperate. SOA actually has some interesting traction here, because on the one hand, architecting a business around the services it provides and architecting a software-intensive system that makes manifest those services are shared goals of the enterprise and the technology.
And yet - and here's where I'm likely to inflame some folks - IMHO it's a mistake to try and extend EA frameworks and notations and processes to attend to the architecture of the software-intensive systems it uses, just as it is a mistake to try and extend SA frameworks and notations and processes to attend to the architecture of the business. There might be some overlap in view and basic modeling elements and processes at a high enough level of abstraction, but when you get to the details, it becomes too much, and you lose the perspective of what each is trying to do. EA is not a desert topping and a floor wax and neither is TA.
I'm currently working with Tilak Mitra, a colleague at IBM, on surveying the 20 or so EA frameworks that appear to have some traction in the world. There are far fewer TA frameworks - most are some variation of Kruchten's 4+1 model view - and the fact that there are so many EA frameworks out there speaks to the vibrancy of that market, but my experience tells me that there are too many chasing the same problem, and eventually the market will make its choice; I view this as a healthy sign, but a sign that EA is still in its adolescence. In contrast, the fact that there are fewer TA frameworks is a sign to me of the greater maturity of that domain, not to say that it's any less vibrant (look for the next edition of Documenting Software Architectures, but the market appears to have made its choices.
Quote of the day:
There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.
Leigh Hunt
Saturday, October 24, 2009, posted by @ 10:20 PM
Christmas Presents for the Practicing Architect
I'm in a playful mood today, and was reminded of a discussion I had with Paul Priess, CEO of the International Association of Software Architects who suggested the following t-shirt slogan
Architects do IT with models.
Not to be outdone, my colleagues in the UK, Ian Charters and crew, also suggested
Architects do IT with heroically.
Architects do IT with automagically.
Architects do IT with with pictures.
plus the rather lonely sounding
Architects do IT alone.
My contribution to the mix is
Carpe architecture.
Quote of the day:
I failed the Turing test.
Teenormous
Tuesday, October 13, 2009, posted by @ 7:04 PM
Why Engineering?
On behalf of the IBM Academy of Technology, I produced this video on Why Engineering?
Quote of the day:
Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.
James Michener
Saturday, October 10, 2009, posted by @ 1:20 PM
The Elements of Architecture
I just returned from keynoting Models 2009 in Denver, where I spoke on the topics of "The Other Side of MDD." I've often quoted Sam Guckenheim who once noted that "the code is the truth" but then I always append the caveat "but not the whole truth." In my keynote, I went on to observe
- Architecture as a collection of significant design decisions
- Patterns as themes
- Cross-cutting concerns as traces
- Rationale as the backstory
- Tribal memory as the human story
Quote of the day:
So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. Still, he was waiting.
Neil Gaiman in Neverwhere
Tuesday, September 29, 2009, posted by @ 1:48 PM
IASA Enterprise Architecture Event
I'll be shelpping my way to New York City shortly, to keynote the IASA Architecture Regional Conference. John Zachman opens the event on Monday the 12th of October and I give the keynote on Wednesday, after which we'll be putting all the various enterprise architecture framework folks in a room, shake it about, and see what falls out. There's still space (and you can register here).
Quote of the day:
I can't wait to get back to New York City where at least when I walk down the street, no one ever hesitates to tell me exactly what they think of me.
Ani Difranco
Monday, August 31, 2009, posted by @ 5:52 AM
The Radical Future of Research and Development
This week's cover story in Business Week is on the radical future of research and development and includes remarks from several of IBM's researchers, including John Kelly, Mark Dean, and Charles Lickel.
Quote of the day:
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
Zora Neale Hustron
Monday, August 24, 2009, posted by @ 5:27 AM
The Preservation of Classic Software
There's been a vigorous discussion going on the past few days with staff and volunteers at the Computer History Museum regarding software preservation. I'm an advocate for the fierce collection of artifacts before they turn to dust; time is not on our side. As an example, there was news a few weeks ago of Microsoft bringing their Flight Simulator to end of life. IMHO, it would be a loss to future generations for that code to simply disappear. I wrote off to Ray Ozzie making an appeal for its preservation, but thus far radio silence. There are dozens upon dozens of similar stories every day (did you know neither IBM nor Fred can find the original source code to OS/360? We can find much later versions, but not the earliest ones).
There are a number of fascinating things to tackle as we collect: how does one present, how does one classify, how does on tell the story, how does one reveal the inner beauty of these objects that spring from human cognition and have no material manifestation other than their operation and some source lines of code?
Quote of the day:
Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
Indiana Jones
Tuesday, August 18, 2009, posted by @ 7:44 PM
Systems Biology Graphical Notation
From a paper in the most recent issue of Nature Biotechnology comes this paper on the Systems Biology Graphical Notation by researchers from places as far ranging as the European Bioinformatics Institute to CalTech and beyond. As the abstract notes, "Circuit diagrams and Unified Modeling Language diagrams are just two examples of standard visual languages that help accelerate work by promoting regularity, removing ambiguity and enabling software tool support for communication of complex information. Ironically, despite having one of the highest ratios of graphical to textual information, biology still lacks standard graphical notations. The recent deluge of biological knowledge makes addressing this deficit a pressing concern. Toward this goal, we present the Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN), a visual language developed by a community of biochemists, modelers and computer scientists.
Quote of the day:
If it's green or wriggles, it's biology. If it stinks, it's chemistry. If it doesn't work, it's physics.
Anonymous
If it can't be proven, it's mathematics. If it loops forever, it's computer software.
Joe Marasco
If it won't be finished for another month, it's computer science.
Brent Hailpern
Thursday, August 6, 2009, posted by @ 12:58 AM
One More Thing Web
Following up from my previous post, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention interesting developments with regard to HTML 5's canvas mechanisms.
Quote of the day:
A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.
Charles Dudley
Tuesday, August 4, 2009, posted by @ 1:14 PM
All Things Web
Here's an interesting report from the folks at Adaptive Path, offering new concepts for the Web/human interface.
In a related vein, Adobe's Zoetrope suggests new ways for for manipulating web history, Calis presents an approach for leveraging the semantic web, and IPSO promotes the use of IP for smart objects.
Speaking of new, by now you surely are familiar with Microsoft's Bing, but don't neglect Cuil.
Follow the money is an important mantra for politics, but the same can be said for tech: specifically, see where DARPA is putting some of its research dollars (although, there are skeptics who question the need for new underpinnings for the web).
Still, the web has come a long way, beginning with the rise of the web and on to the first dot com, realizing that it's still highly fraught with peril to predict the future, as seen in this ad from 1997 ("use the internet for sports scores, chatting with women, taxes, football scores, chatting with men about footfall, Egyptian literature, and sending electronic M!"), this news report from 1981, and this highly accurate prediction from 1934.
But oh! the brain droppings we have left along the way, from the most memorable Internet memes to the most influential web videos of all time.
Still, here be dragons, for much of the content on the web remains unmapped. Tim Berners-Lee observes that we've only just begun, which is particularly understandable if one considers the deep digital divide.
Although a few places will repair your buggy whips (and no, I'm not referring to dysfunctional bondage accoutrements), the web is littered with the detritus of old business models, including those for newspapers, movies, music, and books. Even email, by some, is considered evil.
Still, change happens, and the intertubes of the web are shifting as are the economic models for those series of tubes.
My theory is that this is due to three latent and systemic design flaws in the web, flaws that we could not have known a priori: changing assumptions about the nature of communication (from stateless post and get to streaming video), changing assumptions about the number of addressable devices (who could have imagined cars would be mobile IP nodes?), and a poor separation of concerns between presentation and semantics (which is partly attended to by the protocols of the semantic web). Speaking of those flaws, if you'd like to be sleep soundly tonight, then don't consider this DNS vulnerability or this much needed TCP/IP fix or these issues of identity theft.
Still, innovation marches on, and we now have the the first ethernet switch in space and the beginnings of the Galactic Wide Web. Happily, researchers with lots of time on their hands have also developed, for urban areas, the avian RFC 1149, which supports high delay, low throughput, and low altitude packet transfer. Now, if you think P2P (pigeon to pigeon) protocols are slow, you might consider the capacity and the speed of the web (or you can just test your connection here).
But, if you want to have bragging rights for the absolutely coolest, sexiest data center on the web, you'll have to top this one.
Quote of the day:
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got...an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
Senator Ted Stevens
Wednesday, July 29, 2009, posted by @ 7:00 PM
Linux Institutional Memory
A post today in Slashdot reports on the maintainer of the TTY subsystem of the Linux kernel stepping away from his role.
While there's certainly some human drama behind this story, what interest me is the loss of intellectual capital. As I've often said, the code is the truth, but it's not the whole truth, and there's considerable architectural knowledge retained in tribal memory. I've seen this happen again and again: just a couple of weeks ago, I was in NYC and DC, and the same issue - IP literally walking out the door - came up in discussions with a major bank, the DoD, and the IRS. This is yet another reason why, from my experience, having a reasonably well-understood, syndicated, and accessible statement of a system's significant design decisions - in short, it's architecture - is important.
I don't know for certain, but the TTY subsystem is not small, and so for someone new to really get that code base under their skin, then continue to evolve it in a fashion that holds fidelity to the existing architecture will be challenging.
Quote of the day:
It is surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
Barbara Kingsolver
Tuesday, July 28, 2009, posted by @ 7:03 PM
All Things Medical
A collection of sites associated with medical advances.
Tired of hacking software? How about hacking your DNA? If you need some help equipping your lab, I'd suggest you start with ginkobioworks.
Of course, you can't hack what you can't measure, so check out these approaches to real time monitoring of the body. ActiGraph is another resource, if you are more interested in monitoring physical activity. Of course, if you want to go deep inside the human body, earlier this year IBM reported the ability to generate a 3D MRI at extremely high resolutions.
While I won't comment either way on this article from the MIT Technology Review, clearly economics is an amplifying or dampening force in the application of technology.
Finally, there's the work done by Bill Green, who created a workstation for an unassisted quadriplegic user, namely, his wife. What an incredibly loving application of technology. Allison, if you are reading this, I wish you well.
Quote of the day:
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
Carl Sagan
Wednesday, July 8, 2009, posted by @ 1:26 PM
A Meeting of Minds
Later this year, I'll be keynoting a conference in New York City, sponsored by IASA. The conference organizers have managed to bring together an incredible collection of people: John Zachman, , Eric Evans, Bill Inmon, Angela Yochmen, Roger Sessions, and many more.
Quote of the day:
It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.
Marshall McLuhan
Tuesday, June 23, 2009, posted by @ 1:31 PM
The Revenge of the Nerds
John Hodgman, speaking at this year's Radio and TV Correspondence's Dinner, addresses the revenge of the nerds, and in fact, makes a case that President Barack Obama is himself a nerd. Actually, Wired made a similar projection a year ago, but if you want more proof, check out what the good folks a JibJab have to say.
And, to defend the bona fides of my own geekness, I actually found the making of the JibJab video a fascinating study of the creative process as it dances with technology.
Quote of the day:
What's your geek score?
Inner Geek
Friday, June 19, 2009, posted by @ 7:45 AM
Watts Humphrey
Day three of an extended oral history I'm conducting with Watts Humphrey. What a fascinating man, someone whose career and contributions to the industry have paralleled the growth of what's become contemporary software development, from the pre-mainframe days at IBM (where among other things he helped to introduce the first software license) to his later work at the Software Engineering Institute (with his work on software quality and process maturity). Watts is considered the "father of software quality" but in this interview I've discovered so much more about him: how he learned to ride a bike from Eddie Rickenbacker's son, his studies under Enrico Fermi, his relationship with Tom Watson, and so many more stories. I'm graced with being able to listen to this first hand. The transcripts, by the way, will eventually be made available through the Computer History Museum.
Quote of the day:
The problem of software process change are often complicated by the fact that no one is responsible to make it happen. If software process improvement isn't anybody's job, it is not surprising that is doesn't get done! If it is important enough to do, however, someone must be assigned the responsibility and given the necessary resources. Until this is done, software process development will remain a nice thing to do someday, but never today.
Watts Humphrey
Monday, June 8, 2009, posted by @ 6:28 AM
Software Abundance in the Face of Economic Scarcity
i've just returned from Orlando, where I attended the IBM Rational Software Conference. Happily - but surprisingly, given these economic times - attendance was almost dead on to last year's figures.
Among other things, I gave a presentation at one of the plenaries. One of the key messages of this conference was IBM's Smarter Planet initiative, and so I made the point that a very dangerous combination is that of a smarter planet combined with stupid people. In other words, it's not just about wiring the planet, it's also about having a responsible and accountable populace able to reason about complex issues and to make well informed decisions. Another theme I developed in a presentation to the executive track was that of software abundance in the face of economic scarcity. In the face of scarcity, the tradition reaction is to retreat, shrink, slash, and/or panic. Understandably so, innovation in times of abundance is relatively easy, but even just existing in lean times is hard. As Brad Perkins noted, "a recession exacerbates competition for limited resources." The thing about software, however, is that it is perhaps the most fungible and liquid of resources. The supply of software is limited only by human imagination and labor. Therefor, I argue, software-intensive systems are an inescapable and necessary element in helping us operate, innovate, and even thrive in the face of lean economic times. As Clay Williams, a fellow researcher at Watson, noted, software development is too often viewed as a cost center to be cut, rather than as an asset of strategic importance to be nourished.
Some random links for your reading pleasure. I celebrate the many ways that the populace can collaborate, from BarCamps to CafeScienfique to Pecha Kucha Nights. I spoke at a local Cafe a few years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Remember my earlier postings mentioning Joe Marasco aka Barbecue Joe? He appears here with Mr. William Shatner. And, speaking of all things Trek, did you catch the appearance of Randy Pausch in the latest Star Trek?
Oh, and one final plug for a friend of a dear friend. If you are in the market for CISSP training, check out this.
Quote of the day:
[Interviewer, at the end of a session about the future of software] So, what's next?
[Me] I'm going to have lunch with a friend.
[Interviewer] No, I mean much further out.
[Me] Oh, that's easy. I'm going to die, everything I've possessed will turn to dust, and all that I've done will be forgotten by countless generations. But in the meantime, I expect to live a long life, full of grace and love and joy.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009, posted by @ 1:22 AM
Quote
I have several dozen blog topics in the winds, waiting to be blogged as I am so moved, but this post serves as a vehicle to quote a dialog that moved me, from a recent work of fiction by Bernard Beckett.
Quote of the day:
[Adam:] You mock me for the shortness of my life span, but it is this very fear of dying that breathes life into me. I am the thinker who thinks of thought. I am curiosity, I am reason, I am love, and I am hatred. I am indifference. I am the son of a father, who in turn was a father's son. I am the reason my mother laughed and the reason my mother cried. I am wonder and I am wondrous. Yes, the world may push your buttons as it passes through your circuitry. But the world does not pass through me. It lingers. I am in it and it is in me. I am the means by which the universe has come to know itself. I am the thing no machine can ever make. I am meaning. [Art:] The soul is your most ancient idea. Any mind that knows itself also knows the body, which houses it, is decaying. It knows the end will come. And a mind forced to contemplate such emptiness is a force of rare creativity.
Genesis
Tuesday, April 28, 2009, posted by @ 1:50 PM
Obama and Science
President Barack Obama recently gave a speech to the National Academy of Sciences, calling for renewed national commitments to the advance of science and basic research.
Quote of the day:
Science is the topography of ignorance..
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Monday, April 27, 2009, posted by @ 11:26 AM
And The Question Is
Been sitting on this one for a while, but now it's public: first IBM had Deep Blue for playing chess, and now there's a system for playing Jeopardy. Slashdot has more on the subject here, and you'll find a video here.
Quote of the day:
Sometimes questions are more important than answers.
Nancy Willard
Monday, April 20, 2009, posted by @ 9:19 PM
Software Architecture Masterclass
I've recently been collaborating with one of my IBM colleagues, Peter Eeles, to create a half-day Software Architecture Masterclass that will be delivered during the Rational Software Conference in late May/early June. If you've not yet booked your place, then you can sign up here. The masterclass incorporates various aspects of the Handbook, together with Peter's own experiences from The Process of Software Architecting which is due for publication later this year.
Quote of the day:
No man is free, who is not a master of himself.
Epictetus
Thursday, April 9, 2009, posted by @ 2:55 PM
Second Life Behind A Firewall
I've been waiting to blog about this for a long time and now finally can, since it's been made public: Linden Labs has developed a packaging for Second Life that permits one to put a shard of a virtual world, isolate it from the public grid, and place it safely behind a firewall. You can add your own fences, razor wire, guards with weapons, and pit bulls if you want a really really secure world. The net result is that IMHO this is a wonderful step forward in advancing collaborative environments, for it's now possible to leverage all the wonders of Second Life yet in a secure manner. Engineering in air gaps is the only real meaningful security measure in this interconnected world, and that's what this offer. Kudos to Linden on this one.
Quote of the day:
Fifteen, 20 years from now, relationships online are going to be increasingly realistic.
James Hughes
Wednesday, April 1, 2009, posted by @ 10:12 PM
Research
Over the past month, I've been pouring over the published literature on software architecture, and just today finished re-reading some 50+ books on the subject. Along the way, I've added references here.
This current month is dedicated to pouring over a corresponding set of about a thousand papers and articles I've printed, and you'll see the citations here (among the papers, people, and sites).
Quote of the day:
If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein
Friday, March 27, 2009, posted by @ 12:46 AM
The Complexity of Flight Software
NASA has just released its report on the complexity of flight software. Dan Dvorak, the editor of the report, noted in a message that "The report presents 16 recommendations, four of which are about architecture and architecting, reflecting the fact that good architecture is the best defense against unnecessary complexity in software-intensive systems."
Well said, Dan - I agree wholeheartedly :-)
Quote of the day:
The world you perceive is drastically simplified model of the real world.
Herbert Simon
Thursday, March 12, 2009, posted by @ 2:10 PM
Theology And Virtual Worlds
I'm on the board of the Iliff School of Theology. This morning, I had a conversation with Jeffrey Mahan, their Dean of Faculty, discussing the confluence of technology and theology. Among other things, I pointed Dr. Mahan to the work by Rita King and Joshua Fouts on Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds.
Quote of the day:
Technology is not a collection of neutral instruments but is accompanied by a set of values, practices, and purposes that create a particular destiny which simultaneously limits or prevents the contruction of alternative futures.
Waters
Tuesday, March 10, 2009, posted by @ 4:25 PM
Barbara Liskov
Congratulations to Barbara Liskov, who has been named this year's ACM Turing Award winner.
Quote of the day:
Let q(x) be a property provable about objects x of type T. Then q(y) should be true for objects y of type S where S is a subtype of T.
Barbara Liskov
Monday, March 9, 2009, posted by @ 4:27 PM
The Future Of Things
Another interesting site here regarding the future of things. Speaking of the future Vint Cerf is interviewed here and offers some thoughts regarding the web and robotics. While I'm still waiting for my personal jet pack, I am happy that I don't have to clean the inside of my home with a water hose as once predicted.
Still, I hope Santa brings me a personal fabber this year. I'll try to be really really good.
Not all is happy squirrels and dancing rabbits, however. Due to limited global supplies of indium, zinc, gallium, and havnium we may be back to paper and pencils, and even then, we might not be able to read the digital artifacts created in this generation.
If you are not totally bummed by now, there are lots of predications about how humanity will end.
And now back to your regularly scheduled program...
Quote of the day:
Forget the past- the future will give you plenty to worry about.
George Allen
Monday, March 9, 2009, posted by @ 4:08 PM
Catching Up on developerWorks
If you've been following my blog feed on developerWorks you will have been profoundly bored, for there's nothing that's been posted since September of last year.
Let me gently remark that this is why sound configuration management mechanisms are important: the script I'd used to cross post from my primary blog was broken during some innocent maintenance on the dW site. The good news is that the mechanism is now working, and so you'll see fresh posts on the dW blog regularly. If you want to read the posts I'd created since September, go here or snag the RSS feed here.
Quote of the day:
Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.
Peter Drucker
Thursday, March 5, 2009, posted by @ 12:07 AM
And Now For Something Completely Different
Enough of the serious geeky topics; time for some fun geeky topics. If I want serious, I'll plot the steady decline of my investments, watching as their value approaches zero.
There's the widely distributed Dilbert of course, but I also track User Friendly and The Joy Of Tech. I get a daily fix of all three. From time to time I'll stop by Wired and ValleyWag; here's a bit from Wired on doomsday machines and another from ValleyWag on goofy computer ads.
Then there's Oxford's list of the top ten irritating phrases as well as a collection of sounds from failing hard drives.
Apparently there is a proven correlation between success and facial hair as demonstrated here.
The web is a wonderful repository of old commercials, such as EDS's airplane commercial, a futuristic set from AT&T, and also IBM's Magic Box (I love the music therein). Lots and lots of old IBM ads may be found if you poke around a bit.
And, finally one that is unlike all the others, Amy Walker offering 21 different accents.
Quote of the day:
Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
Christopher Morley
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, posted by @ 2:48 PM
Agile And Architecture In Second Life
Scott Ambler and I have an ongoing series on agile and architecture posted on YouTube.
Quote of the day:
As you start building the product, don't assume that you know all the answers. Listen to the community and adapt. We had a lot of our own ideas about how the service would evolve. Coming from PayPal and eBay, we saw YouTube as a powerful way to add video to auctions, but we didn't see anyone using our product that way, so we didn't add features to support it.
Chad Hurley
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, posted by @ 2:08 PM
Creativity
Gapingvoid offers one of the most engaging discussions on how to be creative. Speaking of creative, check out this sung explanation of nanotechnology and this dance interpretation of a PhD thesis on transcription factors involved in development and growth control.
Wonder where the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X, and Red Hat Linux got their names?
Quote of the day:
The name of the song is called 'Haddock's Eyes'." "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested. "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man'." "Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called?'" Alice corrected herself. "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it's called, you know!" "Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered. "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting on a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."
Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland
Tuesday, March 3, 2009, posted by @ 8:26 AM
Programming Topics
i'd stumbled across a forum for low-level programming questions (and answers), and so that brought to mind a number of other sites I'd found on just pure programming topics. Thus, for your reading pleasure, I present eleven best practices for URLs, idioms for naming things, commenting/documentation styles, and approaches to a non-blocking coding style. There's also this post on DNS names for internal hosts and another offering a SLOC counting tool.
Though programming at a different level of abstraction, there's also the IBM mashup center.
Quote of the day:
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.
Robert Firth
Friday, February 27, 2009, posted by @ 5:57 PM
The Future Of Traditional Media
Just 55 days short of its 150th anniversary, one of my two home town newspapers - the Rocky Mountain News - is closing down.
Traditional media is besieged, and there are a number of theories why. I for one, as I mentioned in an earlier post, no longer subscribe to a paper, for I get most of my news on the web. Will other forms of media follow a similar path as the Rocky? I don't dare touch the problems that face the music industry - their issues are legion, as these traditional companies come to grips with the web - and there's a similar story being played out in the world of books.
Because my work on the Handbook has led me to the movie production chain involving software-intensive systems such as Photoshop, Maya, Renderman, and Massive, this is personally an interesting question. Actually, it's an old question, for my first professional work as a software developer involved building graphics-intensive systems on an early Evans and Sutherland device. I have fond memories of the SIGGRAPH conferences of that era.
We are tantalizing close to being able to produce photorealistic human images. Emily is one such example, but I'm particularly taken by the work of Liam Kemp. His short This Wondeful Life is compelling in its execution and in its ability to set an emotional scene.
These advances will certainly impact the movie industry in some unforeseen ways, just as the presence of synthesized music impacted Broadway (regarding a collision of union rules for live music) and just as what unfolded in the train industry some years ago (when automation eliminated the need for certain jobs but rules kept such people in the cabs).
Still, good technology is no replacement for a well-crafted story.
Quote of the day:
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath.
Oscar Levant
Thursday, February 26, 2009, posted by @ 10:18 AM
Books
Just received a presentation containing some interesting statistics from Nielsen Bookscan. They report that 3,000 books are published every day in the US. Of the 1.2 million books they tracked in 2006, 2.1% sold more than 5,000 copies. 16.6% sold fewer than 1,000 copies, and 79.6% sold fewer than 99 copies.
Printed media is under extreme pressure in the current economic climate; One of my vices is books - I buy (and read!) on average a couple of hundred books per year - but at the same time, I've cancelled my newspaper subscriptions, for I've found that I get most of my news online (and furthermore, the content of our local papers is primarily ads, some rehashed national and international news, and some shallow local news. Oh, and the comics. But increasingly, I've found that to be a waste of dead trees.
Quote of the day:
They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.
James Watt
Wednesday, February 25, 2009, posted by @ 5:44 PM
Algorithms
In my riff on the limits of software, I've noted that there are some fundamental things that limit our ability to bridge the gap between vision and raw, running naked code: the laws of physics and the laws of software, for example. The next element that limits us is our ability to discover a suitable algorithm. Even though a problem might have a computable solution, that doesn't mean that we know how to find the most efficient solution (or even find a solution at all).
The field of computer graphics has perhaps the most visible manifestation - no big surprise there! - of how we have overcome algorithmic obstacles. In the earliest days, just rendering a three dimensional tea pot was a big thing. Once that was mastered, then attention was turned (in this approximate order) to properly render textures, then landscapes, followed by natural motion, characters, fluids, hair, clothing, and now near photorealistic faces. You'll find a more detailed history here, here and here.
And while I'm on this theme, congratulations to Dr. Ed Catmull, one of the pioneers in computer graphics, who was just awarded an Oscar. I may know of a computer scientist named Oscar who has a cat on his desk, but I know of only one Catmull who has an Oscar.
Other examples of essential algorithmic breakthroughs abound: the Viterbi algorithm, algorithms for native command queuing, PCA, ICA, LDA, EP, EBGM, and many more algorithms for facial recognition, and networking algorithm come to mind. And let's not forget PageRank, which is a floor wax and a desert topping.
In continuous need for better cryptographic hashing algorithms, NIST even sponsored a competition.
Quote of the day:
The Google algorithm was a significant development. I've had thank-you emails from people whose lives have been saved by information on a medical website or who have found the love of their life on a dating website.
Tim Berners-Lee
Wednesday, February 25, 2009, posted by @ 11:06 AM
Outsourcing And Deglobalization
In these curious economic times, some commentators have observed a trend toward deglobalization; in past times, one might have called this simply social and political isolationism, but given that this present movement is largely triggered by economic factors, it's also being called economic nationalism. No matter the label, it represents "reversing the process of global integration among nations."
While this may be so in the world of atoms, my personal observation is that our software-intensive systems are presently so entangled and appear to be increasingly so, such that deglobalization of these artifacts in the world of bits is unlikely. We've reached a point of no return, a place of utter and increasing dependency on our software. While there are largely politically- or religious-driven efforts to increase the friction of access to information, the global telecommunications infrastructure is just too decentralized to worry about more than just local effects (but this of course does not mean that one should just accept just restrictions).
The business of outsourcing - which lies at a curious cusp of the world of atoms (the people who do the work) and the world of bits (the artifacts that are produced) - has certainly taken a hit by the global economic malaise, but this does not mean that outsourcing as a business model is doomed: production will migrate to the place of lowest cost and greatest efficiency over time. While there are the usual large players in this space, I wanted to bring attention to a myriad of smaller, bazaar-like players.
RentACoder is one of the first such sites I stumbled across, but there's also ScriptLance (which has a wonderfully frictionless system for matching bids and offers), Guru, and Elance. TopCoder is a bit more difficult to classify - think of it as place for software gladiators to compete.
Quote of the day:
All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
Monday, February 23, 2009, posted by @ 3:35 PM
Piles And Piles Of Technology
I'm about to go heads down for two and a half months, working to get some closure to the (literal) several-feet-high piles of paper and notes I've collected for the Handbook. It's my intent to return to daily blogging, so here go a few random bits.
Though it's been several months, here's an interesting video on the timing technology behind the Olympics. Not meaning to be a downer, but despite the glitter of these past Olympics, the global recession has hit the Beijing building boom very hard (resulting in what the LA Times calls lots of "see-through" buildings.
Switching to another venue, here's a story on the technology behind last year's NBA Finals. If you are into following stars of a different sort, then check out some of the technology at yesterday's Oscars (Star Tracker is a product of Sportvision the good folks who also paint those electronic lines on football fields, among other things).
Quote of the day:
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan
Tuesday, February 17, 2009, posted by @ 9:14 AM
Coverity Architecture Library
The good folks at Coverity have released an architecture library consisting of the architecture diagrams of over 2,500 open source projects. Generated by the Coverity Architecture Analyzer, these diagrams illuminate what is effectively an implementation view, illustrating the connections among components (the Analyzer permits you to do much more than just view these static diagrams).
I'm taken by the breadth of their catalog: they have analyzed a panoply of open source projects, from well-known ones such as Apache to lesser known ones ranging from device drivers to ham radio applications to bioinformatics systems and beyond. My compliments to the Coverity team, both for making these results public as well as inviting other open source projects to take advantage of these services.
Quote of the day:
It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.
Albert Einstein
Thursday, February 5, 2009, posted by @ 1:00 AM
All For Want of a Brace
Sigh. I gotta replace my sysadmin.
Ok, I was integrating my Google Mini with the Handbook site, and declared victory earlier this morning. I returned to my site later in the day, and it had fallen over, with Tomcat reporting a stack overflow, yet I'd changed nothing in my code. I was flummoxed. So, this evening I returned to the scene of the crime, and methodically began to undo what I'd done the past 24 hours. But then it hit me: while my code had not changed, the state of my world had, meaning, my cookies had expired. That gave me a hint, for I'd added just five lines of code to coordinate the dance between the Mini and my site. Sure enough, I'd improperly set apart a block, and thus one line that should have been executed under certain conditions was now executing under all conditions...and that made all the difference in the world. With the addition of a pair of braces, all is now right with the world.
Well, the global economy is in free fall, but otherwise Life Is Good.
Quote of the day:
Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do.
Chris Mason
Wednesday, February 4, 2009, posted by @ 9:39 AM
Searching
A minor victory, but I finally brought up search for the Handbook site. I use a standalone Google mini that I've had for years, but had to redirect it to craw the new site, which is hosted outside of my network. Brilliantly simply to do, by the way. Along the way, I added searching by subcollections so that in advanced searching, one can limit searches to specific parts of the site.
I love it when technology works well and simply.
Quote of the day:
Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.
Jimmy Buffet
Tuesday, January 20, 2009, posted by @ 12:53 AM
Inauguration Day
I paused my day to watch the inauguration of our 44th president, Barack Obama.
What a refreshing ceremony. I found the prayers, the music, and especially President Obama's speech to be deeply inspiring and full of hope. These are challenging times, not just for this country but for the world, with much reconciliation and truth needed. The fact that this nation has persevered as it has is a testimony to the strength of our government and of its people. I am proud to call my self an American, but I do so with a deep sense of responsibility, for I am not just an American but also a citizen of the world and a fellow human on a journey as all other. It is by grace and by the efforts of those before me and beside me that I am where I am and can do what I do, and for that I am humbled.
Quote of the day:
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things, some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
President Barack Obama
Tuesday, January 6, 2009, posted by @ 10:17 PM
Welcome
I've closed down my original site which is why you may find yourself redirected here. Apologies for the inconvenience, but if you've not already done so, you'll have to register again.
Much, but not all, of the original content has been moved over, now accessible in a new, improved, and hopefully more approachable fashion.
Quote of the day:
When something is 'new and improved'. Which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it, couldn't be new.
Anonymous
Thursday, January 1, 2009, posted by @ 2:08 AM
Happy New Year
Best wishes for a prosperous, productive, creative, enchanting, and sacred New Year.
Quote of the day:
Trying to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but it's a lot harder than it looks because even though they had the same size feet as us, they weren't looking down the whole time while they walked to make sure they were doing it right.
Brian Andreas
If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. And there is nothing more to it than that.
Brian Andreas
|
|
|
|
Blog
