How To Succeed In the Software Business

In response to Headspring:

Not project management technique, nor tools nor talent are proven to guarantee success. As a wise friend taught me, promise control is everything.

Simple rules that work:

1. Every RFP is reviewed by a person on the technical staff who by practice and background can recognize features required and match them to development features required.
2. Every item is recorded in a database with citations and a succinct technical response including a time estimate based on the feature type. It is a lie that all development is custom or new if there is a base product set. What is a new feature has to be evaluated not for it's value to the customer but for it's value to the base product.
3. If marketing or contracts changes a bid based on that response, they are held to account in the review for bid/nobid. Do not bid a project that can compromise the rate of maintenance over the cost of new development (feature creep).
4. Never bid what you cannot demo. IOW, if it isn't already under development, it is probably outside your base product strategy. A demo is not a fully-developed feature of necessity.
5. Never commit to a feature that doesn't have value to at least 80% of your customers. NO one offs.

If you do not have a base product, you do not have a core market. You are creating custom one off software. This is a bad business to be in for the majority of technical businesses. That's your fault. The idea here is you should be in a market where you understand the customer's technical requirements to a depth that you can anticipate what they will need.

Use the RFP db to keep track of requests for a feature. When one customer asks, do your research. When two ask, put it on the list of items for possible development. When three ask, schedule it EVEN if you did not win the bid. You will.

Greed is the reason most projects fail in ANY business. Risk is the reason most businesses succeed if they manage it.

Thieves and The Culture of Enablers

At The Trichordist, in an article about the New Internet Association, Steve Merola asks

A thief is a thief. Don’t they know that a pirate is not a good thing? A pirate is a thief. A thief is one who steals. A lowlife, a parasite who exists simply because of the work of others.

Their response is to redefine thievery. By applying the notion that a copy does not deprive the owner of the original, they assert that copying does not constitute thievery. It is a transaction loss. This turns the argument into attempts to collect more money instead of defending a right. It is a transparent attempt to relieve the server farm owners of the obligation to track the theft. It attempts to relieve the web community of the responsibility to combat piracy. It enables a global conspiracy of criminals some of whom have begun to use violent means to establish their territories.

The justification is that copyright infringement and theft are different kinds of crimes, adjudicated differently, in different courts with different applicable laws and punishments. This semantic judo is used by some of the sharpest people I know from years of working with them on various projects. Communities such as XML-Dev became livid for posts making reference to this site. References to the "politics of IP" are to be shunned in these communities while they go about their way making it possible. Eventually it becomes self-evident that these communities however functional they are or laudable their history of accomplishments are also to be shunned.

This wrinkle in the Internet cultures began a long time ago. It has insinuated itself into the fiber of thought and will not be easily untangled. It reaches into some of the most prestigious circles of standards committees, open source communities and small start-ups. The challenge is these are people who after many years of online presence have become very adept at the kinds of arguing made in legal circles and social causes.

Demagoguery requires that the assertion have a little truth to be accepted by the audience to promote behaviors which they would otherwise not commit. See George Wallace, former Governor of Alabama. Eventually the little truths must be acknowledged and the greater good made self-evident. Otherwise, there is a lot to be said for digital forensics and proceedings that focus on the points of law instead of the laudable need to build a better world perverted into the blind support of a growing society of shiny criminals.

Web Design: It's The Browser, Stupid!

Yet another article asking why web pages suck?

And the usual answers are discussed in the comments. Let me add by typing in HTML by hand from memory in the Google HTML editing box that maybe:

1. Worse really is worse
2. The simplest thing that can possibly work produces the simplest thing that can only work for one simple thing.
3. Hypertext As The Engine Of Application State is still the slowest dumbest architecture for a Model View Controller.

When the owner of a company stood over me looking at a simple but fast, easily maintained and completely functional web site and said, "You really aren't a graphics designer." then directed me through the process of adding dozens of non-functional features that met his tastes but slowed the web site to a crawl and turned updates into full day affairs instead of half an hour, all of which he would pay for as he drove his company into bankruptcy, I ceased to care.

You get what you pay for.

Philosophers Who Poke Sticks in Their Eyes to See The Truth Clearly

Tim Bray posted a blog on bit rates and the quality of music.

First, take the topic up with Neil Young or T-Bone Burnett. Ask experts. Casual comparisons don't mean much.

OTW, having done a fair bit of recording as an amateur (analog and digital):

1. You are right that every filter past the initial mic or first input is a noise maker. This is a matter of production cost. Factoring it into the distribution format is like talking about javascript when writing an operating system.
2. Comparing digital to digital is comparing sour milk to flat beer for everything except editing. How many toes are on a normal foot? A normal foot of what? If you don't know how the example was produced then mastered, discussions of bit rate distribution are noise. Produce in analog if you can afford it.
3. Comparisons have to also rate the ears. Some people hear better. Training matters.
4. Means of distribution and how they affect piracy forensics are more important to what gets produced than technology. If you are worried about how much disk space an uncompressed file wastes, you are a music consumer, not a listener.

Barton Hollow is another trend soon to be replaced by another trend. That isn't a knock on The Civil Wars. Music lover's are more interested in the means to support a living wage for working musicians so more musicians will be working. Consumers are focused on which musicians are working. Audiophiles are focused on their gear. This is their one commonality with musicians.

Unless the costs of high fidelity production can be supported by the consumer market, the consumer gets what they get and storage wars are like riots in the middle east: largely to be ignored because they are their own cause.

Festering: The Objectivist At Leisure

Sometimes I read comments on Facebook where I feel a tang of sympathy for the sentiment, then you realize that it is a tale told by someone who never actually has to confront the results of what they say they believe in. This comes from the pages of two local stores where the person was posting to make the point as large as possible.

What a shame. Stores used to close in this country to show respect and observance of our country's hard-fought Independence Day. I am a regular TJMaxx shopper, but I will not be shopping on the 4th of July in TJMaxx or any other store...and I hope no one else will be either. I am pro-capitalism, but our country's Independence Day is a day for patriotism, picnics, fireworks, family ---- NOT a day to shop.

Truett Cathy, the owner of Chick-Fil-A, stands on his principles and continues to close on Sundays, and yet, even in this tough economy, he prospers. It's sad that many in this next generation have been so schooled in situation ethics rather than foundational principles that they don't always understand the value of doing what's right because it's right...and then trusting that, when we put our principles first, in the long run, we'll be blessed all the more for it.

It sounds good until I realize this is a person who shops a lot, who buys into the hard right wing republican nonsense, the faux economics of lightweights like T. Sowell and just "loves" Dagny Taggart. It's a pity really because this is person who writes well but thinks shallowly.

I wonder of those of you criticizing these stores, do you actually have jobs? For some, a day off is a day they can get things done and independence means just that: being independent to choose as you will instead of what a small minority says you must. My wife worked because the senior citizens at the home where she cares for them needed her. She is THAT kind of Christian woman: Others First. I went to Lowe's to buy things we needed to fix the house. Yes, we celebrated Independence Day by exercising our independence, and we still had hot dogs and hamburgers and fireworks.
How many of you are veterans or have a child or father in the service? Did you serve or do you take up the flag to wrap it around your pro-capitalism that has come to signify the 1% who took the wealth such that the rest have to work on holidays for that time and half that pays for their kids to get an education increasingly out of reach?

There was a time when we could afford to have the entire country take a holiday. What was true: one car per family, no air conditioning, houses were a third the size on average, only a small percentage got past high school, food came from family farms or not at all, we didn't drive fifty miles to try the scones in a restaurant, and mother sewed the clothes of our older brothers and sisters so we would have them.

Times change. The glory that is America is that we change with the times because when we don't we fail to be a good country. That is the true foundational principle: we change. We grow. We care. We can do and will.

Yes, Independence Day is a day to count our blessings and today that means having a job.

Making A Better Deal for the Artists

There are contentious debates about the role of the web digital service industry in the decline of monies remunerated to content artists.   Some suggestions:

1. Metadata standards for legally obligating agreements on the web. Fix this first. This is a very big bang across the services. It is in everyone’s interest that these be made soon, simple and ubiquitous because it predicates the service agreement bindings to legal documents. IOW, control the lawsuit space at jump and innovate opportunities with the same markup of the text. Even SharePoint knows how to nag an author for the missing fields in the columns. If you are an industry person aggregating content for publication, you want this.


2. Make it fair. The obligating contracts are not to the algorithms that currently sort monetization. In the case of YouTube, these do not work or are poor at best and I can prove it. The metadata is important to the fairness of the opportunity. Publish the rules for ajudication and see 3: turn ajudication into opportunity sharing. It is an opt in strategy and those are shown to be least onerous.

3. Innovate opportunities. Today, a mashup using photos that Google provides cannot be monetized because the obligation to own all content or have all attesting documentation is onerous. Facilitate this task. Google is using the photos and video too. They are the gateway.  Why do they not offer the service to inform all parties of an opportunity instead of a infraction? Divide the monetization fairly and transparently.

Big Data is here. Use it wisely and fairly. Technology can enable you to innovate opportunity but it cannot make you moral. You do that by the technology you choose to buy and use. If you wish to direct the evolution in your markets over being their prey, then the way you agree to create and foster opportunity is the ultimate tool: choice of choices.

As to the HTTP censorship code, do you think that the right frame to discuss server blocking by legal means? I don’t. It presents the opportunities in a black and white zero sum frame and none of the advantages of having a legal means with teeth to enforce our laws. For those who say this is Big Government, I say, that’s exactly what it is and exactly why we have them. A government has the obligation to protect it’s citizens and their property in my opinion. Means may be negotiated but they are found and applied.

Lord, Come Walking

Old fashioned bible thumpin stories for babies and a shout out in the hard scrabble times.   Put your hand in the hand....

Born Again

A new video for you. I made the video effects with ChaosPro (www.chaosPro.de) which is an excellent package for working with, constructing and animating fractals. Please enjoy!

Samantha Brown

When you're home ill, who is the friendliest face on TV?

al Bari

al Bari, the evolver, is one of the 99 names of God in the faith, Islam. This is a meditative piece on the idea that positive change, evolution, is a spiritual goal and exercise.

Occupy the World

For those people cold in their tents, for those people in the drum circles, for those people who march, for those willing to be arrested, for the people who know justice will come because they demand it, you are beautiful.

Pirate Polifix

A protest song for your consideration.

Let Me Be Near You

A love song..

Loves Overtaken and Wall Street

Something bitter and something sweet. The kids have it. The eyes have it.

Danny Boy

A non-traditional rendering of a traditional irish ballad. And a protest and a prayer.

If not peace, then mercy.

The Use of Religion as A Weapon of Mass Destruction

Because many of the comments I've heard regarding the recent events in Washington that led to the downgrade in our credit are about the American character and how American politics suffer by it, I will add this thought because from my perspective, this has been developing for years. There are economic impacts, but I think the theories of economics will not yield a means to change the problems of character.

So FWIW:

Americans are a deeply religious people and that is a strength in our character that has been used to weaken us. When the neocons and Rupert Murdoch and his sheik partner and other media moguls who obtained ownership over too many of our media began to accelerate the fusion of religion and state, we allowed a disease to creep into our national character that our founding fathers warned us about: separation of church and state is critical to our way of life. It is critical to our system of governance because freedom of worship must be coupled to freedom from worship. Otherwise our ability to rationally do the business of the government erodes.

Religion is not bad. It has the problem of being a very potent way to declare classes of us and them, then force people to be in one of those classes through true social networks which represent access to economy. When religion becomes the tool of choice of those who divide us for their own agendas, we are almost helpless to prevent it. It is a known hit point in our governance and our culture, and it has been exploited to the hilt.

The result is a sort of neurosis in good times. In bad times when we are antagonized and reactive, it can become a psychosis. The events in Washington are at that transition point. So now it is a matter of how many of us are still rational and ready to assert ourselves in the face of these mavens of mad but determined men.

We must not let love of God be coupled to fear for our future. This is easily understood as failing to trust God. And it is the means by which we are deceived.

Presumption of Guilt

Today I was at work after a six month vacation courtesy of the State of Alabama unemployment insurance I've paid into these past forty years. It was marvelous. I learned to play rock piano, wrote some songs, made some videos, and I thank the rest of you who kept the ship going while I sat at home in my bathrobe. It's good to have a job again.

The strangest thing today was reading a military technical manual specification and seeing paragraphs that I authored twenty years ago. Very strange. It's not like being J.K. Rowling; it's like being the first person to type a smiley into an email message and later realizing it may have been the most long lasting typing I'd ever done. It shows we have to treat the least we do like the most we do and that we may wake up one day to find out our high school sweethearts haven't aged but we have. You never know.

But to get this job, for the first time, I had to submit to drug testing.

I know this is common and that the fact I've held the positions I've had and never done this is a little exceptional, but I never have had to piss in the little cup.

And I didn't like it one bit.

The results weren't in doubt. Despite rumors and innuendo, I'm real middle of the road. I didn't like it because I have to piss in a cup as a pre-condition of employment. I don't like it because that is humiliating. I live in a country of free men and women who find that because a raving looney ex-first lady who went to astrologers to arrange her husband's schedules decided we could all just say no but if there was any doubt she and her class of friends had the right to make us piss in cups.

I want to go piss on her husband's grave. I know, that's nasty, but it seems to me one reason we can't stand up to the lunatics who run our government today is because they've managed over the last three decades to humiliate us into pissing in cups to have jobs. They've convinced us we must be presumed guilty and then prove ourselves innocent or we don't deserve to have those jobs they are creating for us with the money we gave them in the form of tax cuts.

I don't like it. Not one bit. If you don't like it, if you don't like their refusal to pay their fair share, if you are tired of their presumptions of guilt on our parts while they rob us blind, do this: next time you have to go piss in the cup, save some of that and go piss on their lawn, their car, or maybe their graves.

We aren't guilty of anything except working too hard for too many hours for too few people. Are they guilty of anything? Well, presume they are guilty the same way they presume we are. Piss on them.

You Reeka! Hooters and Shooters

“And ALERT: My character “Hollie Martin” starts her 7 episode run on Eureka July 18th - Felicia Day”

A season featuring Felicia Day that begins with footage of the launch of a Mercury Redstone is not without the irony of an inside reference to her. Cute.

On the other hand, the season premier is weak in the knees.

Leave it to Canadian production to take pieces of American history and mash them up. From the perspective of someone who lived through that history up close, the season opener was clumsy. The holes and misattributions are glaring like a 1950s pre space era sci-fi movie. I found myself laughing in all the wrong places.

As to Siffy’s season premiers: C for effort and keeping a lot of CGI types in work, but the writing is derivative and in critical need of innovative originality.

It is possible the writers are coming at this from a gamer's perspective. We've never really mastered the art of interactive character and plot development. It gets in the way of action and grinding for gold or solving puzzles that are neat in first person but terrible in dialog. When you apply that approach to a series, you get what a friend of mine calls "chicks in tank tops" or simply, hooters and shooters.

I get the same sense from the Siffy season openers and premiers as I get from gen y music; it is as if they don’t have their own experiences so they keep going to the baby boomer well and sipping shallowly. They try to make themselves look smarter or more cool than the baby boomers and simply come off as plastic heros with boob and gun fetishes. The 60s had their share of schlock too. No contest. The question is how to do better.

Felicia Day can do better as one of the most original voices of her own generation. Her best work is The Guild. She writes from her own experience as they say a writer should, but more importantly, she isn't writing a game. She is writing a comedy series that explores the foibles and strengths of her generation or gamers and in doing so, also as a writer should, reveals the universals there. How well she could craft a decent sci-fi series is up for debate but I doubt she can do worse and I'm willing to bet she can do quite a bit better. Otherwise she should distance herself from Siffy and take a hard look at offers that will enable her to develop her own considerable talents as a writer while she continues to hone her acting chops.

Give her the shot. It's time to quit imagining greater; imagine better.

Nothing More (Oblatio Sui)

A song of penitence dedicated to all those who raise their eyes to God in service regardless of religion or place in the world. The Oblatio Sui is a prayer by Ignatius Loyola and this is inspired by that text.

The Evil Mirror

We pay a price for the perfection of media. I tell my kids to watch the TV shows before color such as the Red Skelton Shows. I tell them to note two things:

a) It was a very Caucasian world.
b) Women had hips.

For the first, I am glad. This had to change and as painful as that change was for some on the wrong side of history, the world is better.

For the second, I am sad. We live in the reflections of Snow White's Evil Step Mother's mirror where all the edges are ground away and only the super luminous colors reach our eyes. We photoshop our way into believing in things that are not real and the delusions rob us of the subtle colors. So much beauty is hidden by the glare and the irony is we perceive it by the power of the shadows to give edges to that unseen beauty.

Here's an example: Leland Sklar copies the obit notice by Fred Steiner's daughter, Wendy Waldman. Leland is A-list. I know who he is and enjoy the privilege of his conversations on Facebook. Fred composed the Perry Mason theme and many other famous soundtracks, so I am dimly aware of his work. But Wendy, his daughter? I didn't have a clue. And that is tragic but I know how that happened.

The world of entertainment is dominated by the high frequencies of the A-list, the stars who become super-luminous. In the world of Red Skelton, that was all one would see and in the super competitive money-driven world of today's entertainment industry, things are no different with the exception that as some of the A-listers who are brave enough or reckless enough to actually converse on the pages that represent them, occasionally their less famous but equally talented friends shine through. It took the shadow of her father's passing for me to see her there. And that is regrettable but there are greater tragedies.

Ron Paul says he doesn't believe in evolution. It wouldn't matter because evolution doesn't care. It works whether we believe in it or not. The difference is that by his super luminosity he gives a not inconsiderable number of people the excuse to also disbelieve and to persuade others of such. Again, evolution goes on but what is lost is that evolution is not inviolate. It can be directed and those most aware of that who can gain control over self and others can do that. Some like to say 'program or be programmed' but that is just one technical approach, valid but insufficient. It isn't enough to program; one needs to know what to shape and why it might matter.

It matters that women have hips. It matters that the world is not all Caucasian. It matters that Wendy Waldman is a brilliant, gifted songwriter and producer who is one of the pioneers of Southern California country folk rock because these are the people we learn from, the people who can illumine what matters. It matters that we see the subtle colors that make up the majority of the light.

How sad that we can only see them because for a moment the Moon passed over the Sun and shadows outlined the shapes of subtle beauties. How wonderful that we are not yet so blinded by super luminosity, we can still notice and our hearts still care for that last part is the miracle of love, that we can still feel. Snow White will sleep until we cut down the brambles put there by those who own the mirror and only feel empowered if what we see there is the most fair, the most bright, the single parts because the best are often the most subtle.