Wow! THIS is pretty dammed cool. Sun is building a shareable server and tool system for games with five 9s reliability. That is awesome.
When I worked for public safety, we loathed to guarantee five nines for mission critical real time dispatch systems. Five nines is awesome for massive multiplayer games.
Two of the reallyDumbMistakes made while I was in that field are worth relating. The first was having two Development VPs in a row stating that real time 3D was of absolutely no interest to the company or to the public safety market. (Actually, the dumbest was a former company president making the absolute statement that XML was only Microsoft FUD and in no way would affect the public safety market, but I digress). The second reallyDumbMistake was a decision made with the formation of an Innovation Team charged with getting new ideas into Development. One of our senior staffers boasted proudly that when the first batch was submitted, they quickly eliminated any that mentioned games.
A few years later, a major and very significant RFP for public safety required the application of the XML 3D standard application language, X3D, in a game simulation environment for massive multiplayer training. Of course, the company had to license code from two developers in France just to get started because a "leader in spatial graphics technology for fusion of real time information" was caught flat footed.
Now Sun (Notice, Sun, not Microsoft that is twaddling along with the public safety industry) can provide THE key component for these serious 'games'.
And so it goes. It will be interesting to see if X3D clients can use the services of Project Darkstar. Given the open source Java implementations of X3D toolkits, I'd be surprised if the answer is no. If so, there is a very neat opportunity for some of the public safety vendors to get a fast leg up on their front running competitors.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Lead By Example
Let's take this out of the comments.
http://news.com.com/Colin+Powell+urges+corporate+philanthropy
General Powell gives a good speech. I watched a video of this speech when he gave it to my last employer's conference in Orlando. Just a few points in response:
So it really comes down to picking someone's pocket in these corporate initiatives unless contributions are matched in kind by all and by percentage of income. Otherwise, the next time the call goes out for these contributions, tell them that you are happy to do your community work, but that you will donate where the branding of the effort does the most good: give at church. Advancing the career of your minister seldom increases his or her income, career potentials, or customer base. It just goes to where it will do the most good with the least claims.
And if your employers subtly or overtly insinuate that contributions and company-brandable effort are required for consideration of leadership potential, do as the subject of the cited article, General Powell, did when faced with such: seek other employment. That is the hallmark of leadership: lead by example.
http://news.com.com/Colin+Powell+urges+corporate+philanthropy
General Powell gives a good speech. I watched a video of this speech when he gave it to my last employer's conference in Orlando. Just a few points in response:
- If the corporation is making the claim and receiving the credit for philanthropy, the donation needs to come off the bottom line: corporate profits. Since stockholders tend to object to that and rebel against executives who are generous in this regard, this doesn't happen often or in quantity.
- That leaves employee contributions. We are all familiar with the scene where the office geishas send out memos asking us to contribute to some charity in a city where our company wishes to do future business. We've all heard the speech from the guy representing the PAC of a favored local politician and seen that after the employees contribute, that guy gets a very big promotion. We are familiar with the math of large bonuses for executives based on performance numbers built on employee-contributed hours of unpaid overtime while these same executives tell us that the company can only afford a 2% raise for those who shouldered the burden of the miraculous turn around.
So it really comes down to picking someone's pocket in these corporate initiatives unless contributions are matched in kind by all and by percentage of income. Otherwise, the next time the call goes out for these contributions, tell them that you are happy to do your community work, but that you will donate where the branding of the effort does the most good: give at church. Advancing the career of your minister seldom increases his or her income, career potentials, or customer base. It just goes to where it will do the most good with the least claims.
And if your employers subtly or overtly insinuate that contributions and company-brandable effort are required for consideration of leadership potential, do as the subject of the cited article, General Powell, did when faced with such: seek other employment. That is the hallmark of leadership: lead by example.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
It's Good To Know. It Feels Like Me.
Being unemployed is scary. Being unable to find work would be a lot scarier. Scary can be good though. I'm out finding gigs to play. So far, so good. It seems my kind of act is back in vogue. There are all of these little coffee shops and new classy joints opening in town, and they are all looking for the soiled smoky voice sound that too many years of screaming over the top of electric guitars produces, except they want it over the top of an acoustic guitar so they can talk.
They're conversing. That's good. It's a sign of the times. I've seen this before. This was the mood when I was 18 and first playing in the bars. There was an unpopular war on then, trust in the government was low, and there was the sense that maybe people should stop watching the news and start talking to each other. Culture is marvelously adaptive. Businesses and art somehow blend into the need for a place to talk, furnish the sounds, the coffee, the magazines and the comfortable chairs. This possibly scares the lunatic right wing fringe. It should. It means common sense is overcoming fear, one coffee at a time.
Here is something personally neat for me. I'll quote it and those of you with some understanding of the Southern music scene can relate:
It's good to know. So, May 13, 7:30 CST, back to the Bluebird with three original songs and no chatter. It is the scariest gig in the world for reasons you'd have to be a solo songwriter/singer to understand. And one of the best.
Scary can be good. I may be unemployed, but I'm working, and yanno, it feels like me again and that feels good.
They're conversing. That's good. It's a sign of the times. I've seen this before. This was the mood when I was 18 and first playing in the bars. There was an unpopular war on then, trust in the government was low, and there was the sense that maybe people should stop watching the news and start talking to each other. Culture is marvelously adaptive. Businesses and art somehow blend into the need for a place to talk, furnish the sounds, the coffee, the magazines and the comfortable chairs. This possibly scares the lunatic right wing fringe. It should. It means common sense is overcoming fear, one coffee at a time.
Here is something personally neat for me. I'll quote it and those of you with some understanding of the Southern music scene can relate:
From: Dbluebird@aol.com [mailto:Dbluebird@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 2:51 PM
To: cbullard@hiwaay.net
Subject: Re: [BlueBirdCafe Calendar Request]
>>Do I need to audition again to be included in the rotation for Sunday Writer's Night?
Len,
Though it's been 10 years since you played on a Sunday Writers Night, you scored well enough not to have to audition again. Just call any Tuesday - Friday from 11 AM - 4 PM to rebook on a Sunday.
-Fran (Bluebird Cafe)
It's good to know. So, May 13, 7:30 CST, back to the Bluebird with three original songs and no chatter. It is the scariest gig in the world for reasons you'd have to be a solo songwriter/singer to understand. And one of the best.
Scary can be good. I may be unemployed, but I'm working, and yanno, it feels like me again and that feels good.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
The Mean Drum
Most nightclub music pros can tell you about gigs where the crowd is large, the drinks are flowing, the dancers are frenzied and heat and humidity push them all to a sort of madness. At that point, a band can choose to mellow them down for the trip home, or push the beat harder and louder. I call that pumping the Mean Drum. The drummer snaps as hard on the snare as he can and we play sounds that are as raw and fierce as flesh and electronics can emit.
If we play the Mean Drum, fights break out either on the dance floor or in the parking lot afterwards. Experienced bands don't do it. They've paid the price for it in smashed gear, broken jaws, and occasionally sending a mate or friend to the hospital or the morgue. At the point of that kind of crazyiness, we play ballads, turn down, or end the performance. It's just smart.
In America, for the last eight years, we have been pumping the Mean Drum. Yes we were attacked on 9/11, but it started before that. It's been a dominant beat in American society for years.
If we continue to beat the Mean Drum, mean is all we will see and experience.
Look at the rise in social violence lately. Society resonates like a drum head and all of the other drums in the kit resonate with the snare if it is pounded hard enough. This pushes the edge cases closer to and off the edge.
Then students shoot principals, psychopaths shoot young students, and so on. We saw this same movie towards the end of the Vietnam era as the political rhetoric ratcheted up the 'us OR them' thinking. Accepting it as a norm of modern politics as both Cheney and Clinton suggest we do in the Washington Post article is not only dumb, it is social suicide with the innocents sacrificed first on the altars of egomania and the lust for power.
It is time to quit beating on the mean drum. As we learned from the early years where all we used were email lists, ignore trolls and they go elsewhere. Laughter is still the best medicine. That is why the most important political pundit for today's youth is Jon Stewart. That's a clue.
If we play the Mean Drum, fights break out either on the dance floor or in the parking lot afterwards. Experienced bands don't do it. They've paid the price for it in smashed gear, broken jaws, and occasionally sending a mate or friend to the hospital or the morgue. At the point of that kind of crazyiness, we play ballads, turn down, or end the performance. It's just smart.
In America, for the last eight years, we have been pumping the Mean Drum. Yes we were attacked on 9/11, but it started before that. It's been a dominant beat in American society for years.
If we continue to beat the Mean Drum, mean is all we will see and experience.
Look at the rise in social violence lately. Society resonates like a drum head and all of the other drums in the kit resonate with the snare if it is pounded hard enough. This pushes the edge cases closer to and off the edge.
Then students shoot principals, psychopaths shoot young students, and so on. We saw this same movie towards the end of the Vietnam era as the political rhetoric ratcheted up the 'us OR them' thinking. Accepting it as a norm of modern politics as both Cheney and Clinton suggest we do in the Washington Post article is not only dumb, it is social suicide with the innocents sacrificed first on the altars of egomania and the lust for power.
It is time to quit beating on the mean drum. As we learned from the early years where all we used were email lists, ignore trolls and they go elsewhere. Laughter is still the best medicine. That is why the most important political pundit for today's youth is Jon Stewart. That's a clue.
Friday, September 29, 2006
The More Stuff You Own
The more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you.
It is the undeniable fact of modern life that we obsess over what we have, where we got it and how big a space we have to control to keep it. We work longer, harder and consume more than we thought we ever could when we were 12 years old and believed a well-read comic book collection was the ultimate expression of our mojo.
Cultures are classified by the stuff they throw away. Ask any archaeologist and they'll tell you their careers are made by digging through ancient garbage dumps. So your fame after this life is defined by the garbage you dispose of. Consider that the next time you and your significant other are arguing about keeping Great Grandma's piano that can no longer be tuned and therefore played. Maybe it is time to memorialize her in the museum of greatness: the local town landfill. At least then you could start on your own memorial by purchasing the spinet the family down the street is keeping in their minivan because they've run out of room in their four bedroom split level with the unattached garage and 3000 square foot basement.
I've read that an American Indian tribe had a custom where members would give away all of their stuff and start over. Today we call that a garage sale and get more money to get more stuff. Garage sales replace malling as one gets older in America. They say the richer we get the more we obsess over quality stuff but corporations have to spend billions every year tearing down malls that are less than ten years old and rebuilding them to keep us coming to shop there. Do you replace your garage in the same location that often? No. You have a garage sale but you rarely sell the garage so it can be hauled away and you definitely never give it away. Somewhere in the function of trading stuff for more stuff, real economics take over.
Except for the uber-wealthy in America. They are the biggest garage sale buyers in all history reflecting a culture that has found it can buy and sell anything except taste and a reasonable government.
If you can get to Christies' next week, you can buy original parts of the Star Trek set (original series) although Paul Allen already owns Captain Kirk's chair. Someday maybe Paul will have the world's highest quality garage sale.
And so it goes.
It is the undeniable fact of modern life that we obsess over what we have, where we got it and how big a space we have to control to keep it. We work longer, harder and consume more than we thought we ever could when we were 12 years old and believed a well-read comic book collection was the ultimate expression of our mojo.
Cultures are classified by the stuff they throw away. Ask any archaeologist and they'll tell you their careers are made by digging through ancient garbage dumps. So your fame after this life is defined by the garbage you dispose of. Consider that the next time you and your significant other are arguing about keeping Great Grandma's piano that can no longer be tuned and therefore played. Maybe it is time to memorialize her in the museum of greatness: the local town landfill. At least then you could start on your own memorial by purchasing the spinet the family down the street is keeping in their minivan because they've run out of room in their four bedroom split level with the unattached garage and 3000 square foot basement.
I've read that an American Indian tribe had a custom where members would give away all of their stuff and start over. Today we call that a garage sale and get more money to get more stuff. Garage sales replace malling as one gets older in America. They say the richer we get the more we obsess over quality stuff but corporations have to spend billions every year tearing down malls that are less than ten years old and rebuilding them to keep us coming to shop there. Do you replace your garage in the same location that often? No. You have a garage sale but you rarely sell the garage so it can be hauled away and you definitely never give it away. Somewhere in the function of trading stuff for more stuff, real economics take over.
Except for the uber-wealthy in America. They are the biggest garage sale buyers in all history reflecting a culture that has found it can buy and sell anything except taste and a reasonable government.
If you can get to Christies' next week, you can buy original parts of the Star Trek set (original series) although Paul Allen already owns Captain Kirk's chair. Someday maybe Paul will have the world's highest quality garage sale.
And so it goes.
Monday, September 25, 2006
DealNews! You Rule!
I went to a fun job interview today. To understand why, you have to understand that unlike Silly Valley or Vain Vancouver, I live in one of the hearts of Eisenhower’s military industrial complex. Some interviewers and interviewees wear clothes that at their most liberal would be conservative-gotta-meet-a-client Monday in Silly Valley. Targeted selection questions modeled, scored and integrated into a politically-correct and technically empty script determine rat fir color to confirm that one is the right kind of rat fit to be on a team of rats who have spent more time obtaining degrees than time spent with their spouses or children.
Cheese, please?
Today, I was interviewed by a real web company. woooh... It reminds me of the first West Coast conference I went to after years of East Coast conferences. The differences are profound.
This was not a startup. These middle school buddies started in a garage ten years ago a few doors down from where my much older middle school buddies used to hang in their bedrooms hooking Christmas tree lights to a stereo and listening to the Allman Brothers while swapping the wisdom of the Furry Freak Brothers. These guys hooked up MACs, learned to code, and built web pages. They didn't go for venture capital. They budgeted, invested and published. They found a niche, survived the dot.bomb, stuck to their business plan, implemented LAMP not because it was cool but because it was everywhere they needed to be, and hired an accountant who doubles as an office admin.
They offer you a Diet Coke before they get around to brewing coffee, have machines sitting next to the office door and office furniture stacked against the wall because they need the space to spread out and work, and otherwise, remind me of garage bands that play their axes, sharpen their chops, record their originals and make it happen while having a helluva good time together. They build multi-platform web pages and enable their customers to buy office equipment cheaper and faster. In other words, without a deep sales teams, planning committees who write studies, scads of ads, moribund meetings and polyphonic professional e-mails, they provide a service and make a profit.
SWUUUUHHH! Take a deeeeeep breath....
It was humbling. I'm not web-ignorant and I certainly have been on the pioneering end of some stuff, but I've never had the moxie these kids have, and that is why they have a successful company interviewing me instead of the other way around. They are completely the opposite of the dour sour greedy little buggers I'd come to know in other circumstances. The guys who interviewed me today were ALMOST apologetic that they were still building their own tools, didn't have ASP.Net, didn't need it and had no intention of buying Ferraris with their first millions if they could buy more gear for their business. They laughed, carried on, swapped stories and all the while asked questions one needs to hear to know this is a serious business but not a religion, a pipe dream or an ego trip.
It was a breath of fresh air.
I may not get the gig but I hope I get to visit with them again. It's good to smell ambition mixed with sweat equity and hard headed practical programming chops instead of meetings drenched in lattes and sarcasm. I've seen a few bands like this web company. They were the ones who made it and kept it and enjoyed it. They take their angsts to the skateboard park rather than the shrink. They succeed the old fashioned way: turn, burn and return.
Hey DealNews! You rule! Thanks for a great morning and the Diet Coke and the cup of coffee!
Cheese, please?
Today, I was interviewed by a real web company. woooh... It reminds me of the first West Coast conference I went to after years of East Coast conferences. The differences are profound.
This was not a startup. These middle school buddies started in a garage ten years ago a few doors down from where my much older middle school buddies used to hang in their bedrooms hooking Christmas tree lights to a stereo and listening to the Allman Brothers while swapping the wisdom of the Furry Freak Brothers. These guys hooked up MACs, learned to code, and built web pages. They didn't go for venture capital. They budgeted, invested and published. They found a niche, survived the dot.bomb, stuck to their business plan, implemented LAMP not because it was cool but because it was everywhere they needed to be, and hired an accountant who doubles as an office admin.
They offer you a Diet Coke before they get around to brewing coffee, have machines sitting next to the office door and office furniture stacked against the wall because they need the space to spread out and work, and otherwise, remind me of garage bands that play their axes, sharpen their chops, record their originals and make it happen while having a helluva good time together. They build multi-platform web pages and enable their customers to buy office equipment cheaper and faster. In other words, without a deep sales teams, planning committees who write studies, scads of ads, moribund meetings and polyphonic professional e-mails, they provide a service and make a profit.
SWUUUUHHH! Take a deeeeeep breath....
It was humbling. I'm not web-ignorant and I certainly have been on the pioneering end of some stuff, but I've never had the moxie these kids have, and that is why they have a successful company interviewing me instead of the other way around. They are completely the opposite of the dour sour greedy little buggers I'd come to know in other circumstances. The guys who interviewed me today were ALMOST apologetic that they were still building their own tools, didn't have ASP.Net, didn't need it and had no intention of buying Ferraris with their first millions if they could buy more gear for their business. They laughed, carried on, swapped stories and all the while asked questions one needs to hear to know this is a serious business but not a religion, a pipe dream or an ego trip.
It was a breath of fresh air.
I may not get the gig but I hope I get to visit with them again. It's good to smell ambition mixed with sweat equity and hard headed practical programming chops instead of meetings drenched in lattes and sarcasm. I've seen a few bands like this web company. They were the ones who made it and kept it and enjoyed it. They take their angsts to the skateboard park rather than the shrink. They succeed the old fashioned way: turn, burn and return.
Hey DealNews! You rule! Thanks for a great morning and the Diet Coke and the cup of coffee!
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Feeds and Seeds for Thoth
Tim Bray posts http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/09/21/Atomic
That is worth a read if any of my ex-company colleagues are keeping up with this blog. I suggest you follow his link to that review he cites by a US agency. It is a thorough piece of work and relevant to your product lines.
I promised a blog on targeted selection techniques. A good friend gave me some literature to review and I will post that blog when I finish the review. It's an easy system to game but interesting in what it sets out to achieve.
That is worth a read if any of my ex-company colleagues are keeping up with this blog. I suggest you follow his link to that review he cites by a US agency. It is a thorough piece of work and relevant to your product lines.
I promised a blog on targeted selection techniques. A good friend gave me some literature to review and I will post that blog when I finish the review. It's an easy system to game but interesting in what it sets out to achieve.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Getting Credit: Fight for It
Tim Bray writes that WikiPedia is trumping other more authoritative resources. I've noted this myself some time back and have been commenting on the effects of PageRank since it was introduced on XML-Dev and elsewhere. Inbound linking is a popularity contest. It doesn't confer authority. It confers perception. Perception is NOT reality. Reality requires sustainability. Let me give an example.
Kurt Cagle writes a blog on XML and eXist. He uses a comparison. Should he cite others or can one assume the idea, once out in the wild, can be claimed by anyone? Is it plagiarism? (I'm not accusing. Kurt is a friend. This is just an example.)
http://mailman.ic.ac.uk/pipermail/xml-dev/1998-August/005720.html
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/xml-dev/1397752
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200602/msg00130.html
Those are three of a number of hits in order of idea emergence provided by Google and I suppose, PageRank. What does this mean?
Credit isn't just about 'showing up'. It is about checking sources. This is why PageRanking works and why it doesn't. In the end, you don't have to be 'given' credit; you have to fight for it. I mentioned some yerars ago on XML-Dev that a program that abstracted ideas from various sources and did a thorough comparison against all published resources would yield a different history of the sources of the ideas than are commonly accepted. Given the potentials in our ranked search systems and overreliance on the web, it's time the search vendors developed such a utility. It would answer a real need and might be a competitive discriminator if the definition of 'authoritative' rougly equals 'original'. It doesn't but that's a different discussion.
Credit is sustainability. Sustainability trumps authority.
Kurt Cagle writes a blog on XML and eXist. He uses a comparison. Should he cite others or can one assume the idea, once out in the wild, can be claimed by anyone? Is it plagiarism? (I'm not accusing. Kurt is a friend. This is just an example.)
http://mailman.ic.ac.uk/pipermail/xml-dev/1998-August/005720.html
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/xml-dev/1397752
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200602/msg00130.html
Those are three of a number of hits in order of idea emergence provided by Google and I suppose, PageRank. What does this mean?
Credit isn't just about 'showing up'. It is about checking sources. This is why PageRanking works and why it doesn't. In the end, you don't have to be 'given' credit; you have to fight for it. I mentioned some yerars ago on XML-Dev that a program that abstracted ideas from various sources and did a thorough comparison against all published resources would yield a different history of the sources of the ideas than are commonly accepted. Given the potentials in our ranked search systems and overreliance on the web, it's time the search vendors developed such a utility. It would answer a real need and might be a competitive discriminator if the definition of 'authoritative' rougly equals 'original'. It doesn't but that's a different discussion.
Credit is sustainability. Sustainability trumps authority.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
A Good Week: The Job Hunt
I’ve had a good week. After the separation anxiety passes, a euphoric feeling of freedom emerges from the constraints of the past job, and an enthusiasm for the things to come. This is exciting even when the outcome is not yet known.
I haven’t been job hunting in over twenty years. That process has changed as have most business processes due to the web. Consolidated job sites enable one to submit a resume once to a series of forms then use job jars to search among the various client companies and submit to all of them. In some, you can set up ‘bots to track new listings and send email to inform you in case you want to add these to the jar. The same technology that powers shopping enables us to shop ourselves. This evolves toward a means to continuously shop one’s services to find the highest bidder, I suppose. Pretty neat, really.
At other sites one discovers the practice of web design is still done by inexperienced programmers. The most common mistake I’ve seen is phone number entry fields that need a specific format and error out without informing the user what the correct format is. The best sites enable one to load in the digital resume one has carefully constructed using the templates provided by word processors. Otherwise, it is a cut and paste process.
The web is fast between the hours of 4AM and 6AM. Since you may have the time to nap in the afternoon, getting up early and doing the online work during these hours is a good idea. The house is quieter too and if you are using a dial up line, you aren’t holding the phone hostage during the day when prospective employers call to arrange interviews.
Interviewing techniques have evolved but I’m not too sure if these have improved. There is less emphasis on discovering the job skills and more questions aimed at discovering the fit of the potential employee. Some of this is amateur psychology but it cuts both ways because one learns a lot about the potential employer. They seem to come in groups of three playing good cop/bad cop with one silent observer. It’s worth going on interviews just to practice this game. Nervousness is normal. I do suggest that when you are called for the interview, you get the job posting number and find the web listing. It usually has enough information to start a web search that reveals enough information to prepare answers and questions. Since practically all of the interviews end with an opportunity to ask questions, you should prepare. Where I feel like I’ve not done a good job are the “Do you have questions for us?” and “Here’s a chance for you to tell us why we should hire you.” Most of us don’t think about selling ourselves, aren’t that practiced, probably have developed a distaste for people who do that as a habit, and may feel that it is too easy to scare people. Get over that but this is why it is a good idea to prepare.
Because of the consolidation of software around web services, there are a lot of jobs where the languages and experience are virtually identical. ASP.Net is the big winner here. I’ve seen one listing for ADA and one can easily predict what that job is about. There are still plenty of Java and C++ jobs but in the area where I live, Microsoft rules. If you know a bit about my hometown, there is an emerging and obvious trend there. If you are someone who got stranded in a legacy language (say Foxpro, C, and even C++) it is time to move on with the training, and if the job situation at your current employer is still legacy work, move on from there.
As the insurance ad says, life comes at you fast. Life is not about sitting around; it’s about getting around.
I haven’t been job hunting in over twenty years. That process has changed as have most business processes due to the web. Consolidated job sites enable one to submit a resume once to a series of forms then use job jars to search among the various client companies and submit to all of them. In some, you can set up ‘bots to track new listings and send email to inform you in case you want to add these to the jar. The same technology that powers shopping enables us to shop ourselves. This evolves toward a means to continuously shop one’s services to find the highest bidder, I suppose. Pretty neat, really.
At other sites one discovers the practice of web design is still done by inexperienced programmers. The most common mistake I’ve seen is phone number entry fields that need a specific format and error out without informing the user what the correct format is. The best sites enable one to load in the digital resume one has carefully constructed using the templates provided by word processors. Otherwise, it is a cut and paste process.
The web is fast between the hours of 4AM and 6AM. Since you may have the time to nap in the afternoon, getting up early and doing the online work during these hours is a good idea. The house is quieter too and if you are using a dial up line, you aren’t holding the phone hostage during the day when prospective employers call to arrange interviews.
Interviewing techniques have evolved but I’m not too sure if these have improved. There is less emphasis on discovering the job skills and more questions aimed at discovering the fit of the potential employee. Some of this is amateur psychology but it cuts both ways because one learns a lot about the potential employer. They seem to come in groups of three playing good cop/bad cop with one silent observer. It’s worth going on interviews just to practice this game. Nervousness is normal. I do suggest that when you are called for the interview, you get the job posting number and find the web listing. It usually has enough information to start a web search that reveals enough information to prepare answers and questions. Since practically all of the interviews end with an opportunity to ask questions, you should prepare. Where I feel like I’ve not done a good job are the “Do you have questions for us?” and “Here’s a chance for you to tell us why we should hire you.” Most of us don’t think about selling ourselves, aren’t that practiced, probably have developed a distaste for people who do that as a habit, and may feel that it is too easy to scare people. Get over that but this is why it is a good idea to prepare.
Because of the consolidation of software around web services, there are a lot of jobs where the languages and experience are virtually identical. ASP.Net is the big winner here. I’ve seen one listing for ADA and one can easily predict what that job is about. There are still plenty of Java and C++ jobs but in the area where I live, Microsoft rules. If you know a bit about my hometown, there is an emerging and obvious trend there. If you are someone who got stranded in a legacy language (say Foxpro, C, and even C++) it is time to move on with the training, and if the job situation at your current employer is still legacy work, move on from there.
As the insurance ad says, life comes at you fast. Life is not about sitting around; it’s about getting around.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
On Innovation
Tim and Nick Carr are having a shootout on innovation.
Wrong. Planners do this sort of stuff every day.
I don't quarrel with Nick's 'merely competent' argument, but
this bit
is off target:
They should narrow where they will invest, not what they should be thinking about.
They both miss the target because what they are really arguing about is not the processes of innovation but who should get credit and who should pay. The first is about face management and the second is about resource management. They are both right from those related but distinct points of view.
Anyone who is really involved in advanced research such as DARPA can tell you that you don't invent strategic change, or buy strategic innovation: you breed it.
That takes time, some loose planning and a number of generations. You will get both crops that do what you required and some happy accidents. Readiness is everything and that is absolutely a Zen-like experience because you have to confront your own prejudices about what is successful and what is utilitarian.
DARPA doesn't want the crops. They want the seeds.
Tim says: fortunes are made, and industry titans are built, where management isn’t really looking, almost always. The big pieces of innovation come out of garages and low-rent offices in lousy locations, and they’re produced by small groups without much management backing. It can be done at big companies (the business personal computer at IBM, Java at Sun) but then it’s always in an off-the-mainstream skunkworks. Nobody—I repeat, nobody—is smart enough to predict where the next big strategic innovation is going to come from...
Wrong. Planners do this sort of stuff every day.
I don't quarrel with Nick's 'merely competent' argument, but
this bit
is off target:
Nick says: companies should narrow their sights when it comes to innovation: "You need to bring the same kind of discipline to deciding where you innovate as you'd bring to any other kind of management question. You want to make sure that you innovate in those few areas where innovation can really pay off and create a competitive advantage and not innovate in other areas where it won't pay off.
They should narrow where they will invest, not what they should be thinking about.
They both miss the target because what they are really arguing about is not the processes of innovation but who should get credit and who should pay. The first is about face management and the second is about resource management. They are both right from those related but distinct points of view.
Anyone who is really involved in advanced research such as DARPA can tell you that you don't invent strategic change, or buy strategic innovation: you breed it.
That takes time, some loose planning and a number of generations. You will get both crops that do what you required and some happy accidents. Readiness is everything and that is absolutely a Zen-like experience because you have to confront your own prejudices about what is successful and what is utilitarian.
DARPA doesn't want the crops. They want the seeds.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
It's A Dog's Life
I've been asked why I quit my job. It's a reasonable question, so here goes.
It's a dog's life. I stuck my neck out for a fence jumping German Shepherd and a French Poodle. The Shepherd rolled over but the Poodle went for my throat. So even if it is expensive and hard on my family, I went home to hang out with my trustworthy Sheltie because otherwise, the Poodle would have lost her dog house and the Shepherd will still be jumping fences.
Dogs will be dogs.
It's a dog's life. I stuck my neck out for a fence jumping German Shepherd and a French Poodle. The Shepherd rolled over but the Poodle went for my throat. So even if it is expensive and hard on my family, I went home to hang out with my trustworthy Sheltie because otherwise, the Poodle would have lost her dog house and the Shepherd will still be jumping fences.
Dogs will be dogs.
Why The Top of the Long Tail Fails
Tim Bray opines
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/09/11/Nine-Eleven
linking to Bruce and saying what some way out of the top of the long tail curve have been saying for five years: terrorism is mainly a law enforcement problem. I'm glad to see the top of the tail finally gets it, particularly some that were rooting for the US to go stomping into Iraq, guns blazing, while their citizens sat safely at home blogging.
It really doesn't surprise me that the so called top bloggers tend to be the slowest at actually 'getting it' on almost any topic. That is what a inbound-link based system does: it popularizes an idead the same way a media machine does it and it creates the same fisheye lens effect that distorts even as it appears to cover more information. The long tail is a negative power law when it comes to early detection of important emergent effects. The curve is inverted.
Emergent effect comes from the edges of the network, but that means in the beginning, it is a very weak signal and if the effect of the fisheye is to marginalize and distort, it prevents it from being noticed until it moves to the center, to wit, into a top blogger's blog.
So it keeps us from doing the smart thing early because the center is by effect and definition, slow and often mediocre thinking. After so many years of studying information systems and their en masse effect, I repeat what I've said before: the values of one's values are all that is really important because judgement and justice are individual contributions into a system that by its very nature has neither of these as native qualities.
Take a position, take a chance, pick up the prize or the consolation of knowing you are giving it your personal best, and not just following the herd over the cliff.
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/09/11/Nine-Eleven
linking to Bruce and saying what some way out of the top of the long tail curve have been saying for five years: terrorism is mainly a law enforcement problem. I'm glad to see the top of the tail finally gets it, particularly some that were rooting for the US to go stomping into Iraq, guns blazing, while their citizens sat safely at home blogging.
It really doesn't surprise me that the so called top bloggers tend to be the slowest at actually 'getting it' on almost any topic. That is what a inbound-link based system does: it popularizes an idead the same way a media machine does it and it creates the same fisheye lens effect that distorts even as it appears to cover more information. The long tail is a negative power law when it comes to early detection of important emergent effects. The curve is inverted.
Emergent effect comes from the edges of the network, but that means in the beginning, it is a very weak signal and if the effect of the fisheye is to marginalize and distort, it prevents it from being noticed until it moves to the center, to wit, into a top blogger's blog.
So it keeps us from doing the smart thing early because the center is by effect and definition, slow and often mediocre thinking. After so many years of studying information systems and their en masse effect, I repeat what I've said before: the values of one's values are all that is really important because judgement and justice are individual contributions into a system that by its very nature has neither of these as native qualities.
Take a position, take a chance, pick up the prize or the consolation of knowing you are giving it your personal best, and not just following the herd over the cliff.
Monday, September 11, 2006
The Path From 9/11: Respect for the Law
Today we remember the terrible morning of the planes and the towers. We remember where we were and whom we talked with, what was said, what was felt and with wisdom, what has come of all that. Perhaps we watched the misguided "Path to 9/11" last night, or perhaps as I did with my son, we watched the Ted Koppel's Discovery Channel program of a live debate with some of the decision makers and the families of the victims.
At a point in that program, a man who was a co-author of the Patriot Act stepped forward to say that President Bush has wisely used power not granted under US law and when challenged, has demanded that Congress give him such power. The man said that this was right, that the commander-in-chief should always be given such power under such circumstances. The Republicans in the group could be heard saying "Strong! Very strong." I commented to my son that this was the 'Strong Man' argument often heard in such historical crises. I told him that such cries have led to three strong men being granted unprecedented power, in recent memory, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, but also in historical memory, George Washington.
I asked him what the difference among these men was. He said immediately, the first two wanted the power and Washington didn't because he knew it was wrong. I asked him if there were other differences and we talked about that.
We surmised that Washington not only knew it was wrong, he understood that he had the time to work by other means. While Hitler and Mussolini gained that power citing external existential threats just as we hear from the Republican Party today, Washington knew the external threats were an ocean away and in that time, it may as well have been the Moon because though it was possible to be threatened, that threat took enormous resources to make good. Today, that threat can be within our borders in hours, but that does not change the nature of the difference among these men who were granted great power in a time of crisis. The difference though is still the immediate and strongest threat, as the Republicans say, the existential threat.
Washington saw a different existential threat: the threat from within.
Though the British would come back, Washington, as military leader knew it would take time and if during that time, the young nation destroyed itself from within with bickering and competition between the States and the powers of the central government, if the military did not yield to the Congress and the will of the people, if we became a nation of power but not law out of fear of each other, then everything the Revolutionaries had fought for would be lost, and deservedly lost. So Washington used his power to build the nation, to prepare the nation and when the British did return as he knew they would, the leaders of the nation and the nation itself could withstand the losses and repel the invasion. America became a great nation by working within the law thus enabling the law to be the dissolver of fear from without and more importantly, fear from within.
As we approach the midterms, we will be exercising the right passed down from Washington's generation, the right to choose our leaders and not to inherit them or be inherited by them. As we make that choice, look to the men and women who as Washington did, respect and are bound by the law, and are not proclaiming themselves to be the law. For only as we make that choice wisely will be preserve the good that has made of us a great nation respected throughout the world and feared by the enemies of goodness; a nation of laws and not of men.
As one gentleman quoted during the program from deToqueville, "America is great because America is good. When America is no longer good, it will no longer be great."
At a point in that program, a man who was a co-author of the Patriot Act stepped forward to say that President Bush has wisely used power not granted under US law and when challenged, has demanded that Congress give him such power. The man said that this was right, that the commander-in-chief should always be given such power under such circumstances. The Republicans in the group could be heard saying "Strong! Very strong." I commented to my son that this was the 'Strong Man' argument often heard in such historical crises. I told him that such cries have led to three strong men being granted unprecedented power, in recent memory, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, but also in historical memory, George Washington.
I asked him what the difference among these men was. He said immediately, the first two wanted the power and Washington didn't because he knew it was wrong. I asked him if there were other differences and we talked about that.
We surmised that Washington not only knew it was wrong, he understood that he had the time to work by other means. While Hitler and Mussolini gained that power citing external existential threats just as we hear from the Republican Party today, Washington knew the external threats were an ocean away and in that time, it may as well have been the Moon because though it was possible to be threatened, that threat took enormous resources to make good. Today, that threat can be within our borders in hours, but that does not change the nature of the difference among these men who were granted great power in a time of crisis. The difference though is still the immediate and strongest threat, as the Republicans say, the existential threat.
Washington saw a different existential threat: the threat from within.
Though the British would come back, Washington, as military leader knew it would take time and if during that time, the young nation destroyed itself from within with bickering and competition between the States and the powers of the central government, if the military did not yield to the Congress and the will of the people, if we became a nation of power but not law out of fear of each other, then everything the Revolutionaries had fought for would be lost, and deservedly lost. So Washington used his power to build the nation, to prepare the nation and when the British did return as he knew they would, the leaders of the nation and the nation itself could withstand the losses and repel the invasion. America became a great nation by working within the law thus enabling the law to be the dissolver of fear from without and more importantly, fear from within.
As we approach the midterms, we will be exercising the right passed down from Washington's generation, the right to choose our leaders and not to inherit them or be inherited by them. As we make that choice, look to the men and women who as Washington did, respect and are bound by the law, and are not proclaiming themselves to be the law. For only as we make that choice wisely will be preserve the good that has made of us a great nation respected throughout the world and feared by the enemies of goodness; a nation of laws and not of men.
As one gentleman quoted during the program from deToqueville, "America is great because America is good. When America is no longer good, it will no longer be great."
Monday, August 28, 2006
August Is Brutal
August is a brutal month. In one month, I’ve left a job, my band mate has contracted lung cancer, my former colleague, Rebecca Addams, dies in a plane crash in Kentucky, and I’ve contracted one very nasty cold. It is definitely time to count my blessings and work on a new attitude.
I can’t believe the news about Rebecca. She was a kind, funny, good soul. One of the last projects I worked on was for her. We never know, do we?
Hug your loved ones and remember what the Good Book says: tomorrow is promised to no one.
I can’t believe the news about Rebecca. She was a kind, funny, good soul. One of the last projects I worked on was for her. We never know, do we?
Hug your loved ones and remember what the Good Book says: tomorrow is promised to no one.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Universal Web Access
The promise of a New South (as in the United States) has long been bedeviled by the very concentrations of wealth that spawned the term. In short form, the complete takeover of Southern politics by the combined forces of the noveau riche and the evangelical right wing which finds such fertile ground in the native traditional culture stymies progress in providing the very means by which a democratic society is created: exchange of information. While declaring surpluses and tax cuts, the areas of the South that could benefit most immediately from access to the Internet are twenty-five miles from a browser.
Internet access and skills today define literacy. Those left behind in this information revolution cannot succeed in today's job market or even their own culture. To be uninformed is to be dispossessed.
The information revolution that we speak of so powerfully as a transformative force for other countries such as China isn't available to the rural South without investments from State government and far sighted planning. It is achievable but that requires policy and leadership.
I had a chance to chat with Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley yesterday. She is the Democratic Party candidate for Governor in a State where all of the money is betting on the Republican candidate. I was very impressed with Mrs Baxley. The initiatives she proposes look to the future of the State of Alabama. While the Republicans are continuing their tired tactics of isms and distortion, Lucy Baxley is providing a clear-minded and bold but practical approach to the challenges we face at the dawn ofthe 21st century.
I was particularly impressed with her eagerness to begin enabling Internet access to the rural residents so that their children wil lbe better prepared for the 21st century economy. If information exchange is the definition of democracy, such an initiative brings both knowledge and democracy to every citizen as a right sustained by good government.
I admired her character and ethics in saying she did not have all the answers for getting this done,but insisting that just as we had to wire the rural South for electricity not that long ago, we had to bring the information highway by starting now and solving the problem one step at a time.
While this a State election probably of not much concern to the web community, I wonder if candidacies such as hers are not golden opportunities for the open source community to advance its own economic model with ideas for how such rural literacy and senior citizen access can be achieved.
What can open source provide to make such a promise achievable and sustainable? What must we do to make it open to all who wish to learn and achieve? Inclusiveness and transparency are the twin horses of open source. Inclusiveness and transparency are the twin goals of the Baxley campaign. Whatever the political pundits say, we who have the brains and the knowledge have left the choices for the future of our communities for too long in the hands of those who believe that proprietary control preserves their wealth even if at the cost of our future. It's good to win in Boston, but American political power is in the South and so is the red state base of ignorance.
While nothing will change that tomorrow, only education has a chance of changing that at all. I would appreciate your insights into the challenges of bringing the Internet into the rural South where driving to a library every day as a means for a child to do their homework isn't a practical answer.
Perhaps the Googles, Red Hats, Suns and IBMs of the world have an answer. Perhaps the Gates Foundation will help as well. Meanwhile, perhaps the collective brain power of the web can help with ideas as to how this can be achieved.
What will it take to create a model for universal access that is realizable, scalable, sustainable and replicable to other parts of the world?
Internet access and skills today define literacy. Those left behind in this information revolution cannot succeed in today's job market or even their own culture. To be uninformed is to be dispossessed.
The information revolution that we speak of so powerfully as a transformative force for other countries such as China isn't available to the rural South without investments from State government and far sighted planning. It is achievable but that requires policy and leadership.
I had a chance to chat with Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley yesterday. She is the Democratic Party candidate for Governor in a State where all of the money is betting on the Republican candidate. I was very impressed with Mrs Baxley. The initiatives she proposes look to the future of the State of Alabama. While the Republicans are continuing their tired tactics of isms and distortion, Lucy Baxley is providing a clear-minded and bold but practical approach to the challenges we face at the dawn ofthe 21st century.
I was particularly impressed with her eagerness to begin enabling Internet access to the rural residents so that their children wil lbe better prepared for the 21st century economy. If information exchange is the definition of democracy, such an initiative brings both knowledge and democracy to every citizen as a right sustained by good government.
I admired her character and ethics in saying she did not have all the answers for getting this done,but insisting that just as we had to wire the rural South for electricity not that long ago, we had to bring the information highway by starting now and solving the problem one step at a time.
While this a State election probably of not much concern to the web community, I wonder if candidacies such as hers are not golden opportunities for the open source community to advance its own economic model with ideas for how such rural literacy and senior citizen access can be achieved.
What can open source provide to make such a promise achievable and sustainable? What must we do to make it open to all who wish to learn and achieve? Inclusiveness and transparency are the twin horses of open source. Inclusiveness and transparency are the twin goals of the Baxley campaign. Whatever the political pundits say, we who have the brains and the knowledge have left the choices for the future of our communities for too long in the hands of those who believe that proprietary control preserves their wealth even if at the cost of our future. It's good to win in Boston, but American political power is in the South and so is the red state base of ignorance.
While nothing will change that tomorrow, only education has a chance of changing that at all. I would appreciate your insights into the challenges of bringing the Internet into the rural South where driving to a library every day as a means for a child to do their homework isn't a practical answer.
Perhaps the Googles, Red Hats, Suns and IBMs of the world have an answer. Perhaps the Gates Foundation will help as well. Meanwhile, perhaps the collective brain power of the web can help with ideas as to how this can be achieved.
What will it take to create a model for universal access that is realizable, scalable, sustainable and replicable to other parts of the world?
Monday, August 14, 2006
The Point of Uncertainty
A friend sent me this link
http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp
to a video that purports to expose fraud on the part of Reuters and other national news organizations. Because I have no way to vette these, I leave it to the reader to form their own conclusions. I have opinions about the means.
Manipulation of the media, spinning the message, denying the obvious, affirming the absurd leads one to trust nothing, and believe no one. Maximum ambiguity creates maximum uncertainty and that is the precise goal of demagoguery, because then only a small truth is needed to create an amplified and incendiary effect.
In orbital mechanics there is a phenomenon known as a lagrange point. In a lagrange point, all of the gravitational forces of different bodies in the system are cancelled out. A lagrange point is a location for a parking orbit that enables telecommunications satellites to remain ‘geostationary’ if no extra force acts to move them. Tiny perturbations are cancelled out with tiny forces. On the other hand, it is the point of maximum uncertainty because the tiniest force can be used to push any object in the lagrange point to favor one of the opposing forces. This is the principal for deep space probe navigation known as low energy transport. It is the phenomenon that characterizes commodity products in economics, and the means to sell the unsellable.
It is also the means to create permanent conflict. No rational self-interested people will pursue their own destruction for multiple generations unless subtle and continuous means are applied to shape the patterns by which they observe and react to that end. The push comes from all sides and keeps them in a continuous uncertainty until a tiny force, a tiny moment of momentum pushes them toward one of the local attractors.
Why is it that peace is the least certain position of the opposing forces in the mideast?
The solution will be to put international forces on the ground between the combatants and as a policeman going to a domestic violence call, the probability that both sides will fire on the policeman is quite high. Then ever greater forces will be put into the region with an ever widening conflict, or the international forces will withdraw and the violence will go on locally until all are dead or exhausted. It is reasonable to assume that as long as the US provides armaments to Israel and Syria and Iran provide armaments to Hezbollah or the latest flavor of Arab violence, the killing will continue. At some point, the Iranians or an outside source will provide Arabs with their own nuclear weapons to match the ones already in the Israeli arsenal.
Will they risk what follows? Will they destroy the holy land once and for all?
I don’t know because I can’t conceive of any Heaven worth going to through a garden of nuclear devastation that destroys the holy places of three world religions. What God greets one as a hero if one has destroyed eternal Jerusalem for eternity?
http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp
to a video that purports to expose fraud on the part of Reuters and other national news organizations. Because I have no way to vette these, I leave it to the reader to form their own conclusions. I have opinions about the means.
Manipulation of the media, spinning the message, denying the obvious, affirming the absurd leads one to trust nothing, and believe no one. Maximum ambiguity creates maximum uncertainty and that is the precise goal of demagoguery, because then only a small truth is needed to create an amplified and incendiary effect.
In orbital mechanics there is a phenomenon known as a lagrange point. In a lagrange point, all of the gravitational forces of different bodies in the system are cancelled out. A lagrange point is a location for a parking orbit that enables telecommunications satellites to remain ‘geostationary’ if no extra force acts to move them. Tiny perturbations are cancelled out with tiny forces. On the other hand, it is the point of maximum uncertainty because the tiniest force can be used to push any object in the lagrange point to favor one of the opposing forces. This is the principal for deep space probe navigation known as low energy transport. It is the phenomenon that characterizes commodity products in economics, and the means to sell the unsellable.
It is also the means to create permanent conflict. No rational self-interested people will pursue their own destruction for multiple generations unless subtle and continuous means are applied to shape the patterns by which they observe and react to that end. The push comes from all sides and keeps them in a continuous uncertainty until a tiny force, a tiny moment of momentum pushes them toward one of the local attractors.
Why is it that peace is the least certain position of the opposing forces in the mideast?
The solution will be to put international forces on the ground between the combatants and as a policeman going to a domestic violence call, the probability that both sides will fire on the policeman is quite high. Then ever greater forces will be put into the region with an ever widening conflict, or the international forces will withdraw and the violence will go on locally until all are dead or exhausted. It is reasonable to assume that as long as the US provides armaments to Israel and Syria and Iran provide armaments to Hezbollah or the latest flavor of Arab violence, the killing will continue. At some point, the Iranians or an outside source will provide Arabs with their own nuclear weapons to match the ones already in the Israeli arsenal.
Will they risk what follows? Will they destroy the holy land once and for all?
I don’t know because I can’t conceive of any Heaven worth going to through a garden of nuclear devastation that destroys the holy places of three world religions. What God greets one as a hero if one has destroyed eternal Jerusalem for eternity?
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Open Source: The Plan
A comment on the adoption of open source by governments and the military:
That process has been underway for almost 16 years. US DoD and allies have been sponsoring internal development via contractors for many years. One of the first SGML hypertext system code bases was purchased by the US Army at that time and is still managed, maintained and developed by USAMICOM and contractors. The reason was simple: transparency of the code base ensures that features are continuously improved and secured against IP threats or malicious code. Transparency is a survival trait. It occurs naturally in certain kinds of systems in certain kinds of ecosystems, but not all.
Cultivation of ecosystems and low-energy transport models are both models of non-linear systems with common evolutionary control types. A cluster of traits acts similarly to attractor basins with an evolution towards different semantic/functional clusters as energy is applied continuously or discretely. The cycles can be changed by local energy applied at strength (eg, a Hohman transfer) or by applying smaller bursts and using force vectors of multiple basins to amplify the change where the force vectors attract, push, or cancel. Maps across such basins model the evolving orbits of any situation-aware system that self-directs. This is a model for trading on time and energy to direct evolution via intelligent choice.
Although the hosting systems (eg, operating systems) could not be secured, reasonable assurance could be provided that this would not be a threat source and in any case, the host systems would not open fast enough to scale, so the persistence of the monopoly systems of the time provided the stable base. The opening effect in these would take a longer cycle but would eventually evolve toward the same attractors that create commodity lagrange points.
Once the switching costs (cost of basin change) begin to orbit closer to markets where commoditization creates lagrange points (minimal switching costs), transparency emerges naturally as the monopolies face the linearly increasing costs of loss leader research. As the logistic curve narrows, so does the available talent. Ideas and costs are inversely proportional. Monopolistic basins begin to lose force in commoditized markets unless they control distribution. The Internet by its very design and therefore, cultivar traits, would enable smaller systems (think messages) to become very difficult to control with respect to impeding distribution. as long as the necessary ideas are available (the flaw of abundance economics, btw).
Like life, the contest is not fair but everyone gets to enter.
If you know your hypermedia history, you know that military applications were the earliest sponsorship source and particularly with regard to markup applications. While there were more public projects such as the Oxford Dictionary work, these were small by comparison. Modern hypermedia emerges for the most part from the deep pockets of the military-industrial complex guided by the deft hand of DARPA, ONR, USAF and US Army research investments.
The Web got the touchdown but the drive down the field was government work.
And that's the problem. Government work is expensive, slow and requires too much planning, management and incentive to be cost effective except in the incubation stages of technologies. Scale achieves simplification and reduction in costs while improving economic conditions. In the beginning of a technology while it holds a defensive/offensive advantage, it is kept close to the emergent economy. When it must scale, it must go commercial.
At the point the Internet was taken out of military logistics stockpiles and made available for commercial exploitation, its function as a command, control and communications was understood to be ineffective in that form. To become effective, it needed to be world wide, integrated, interoperable, and responsive to OSSINT technologies. As the satellite systems had shown, transparency is a key element of peaceful or offensive diplomacy. The technologies for warfare of the late 20th century had become so complex and decisive that only transparency provided a chance of avoiding the inevitable mistake or madness that leads to their application.
There is no perfect solution to technologies evolving faster than the understanding of their application. Technology evolves on a short cycle relative to the evolution of the understanding of strategic deployment and political will. In metaphor, there is a new car every year, but there hasn't been a new model of the user for 6000 years. Like the car, the fastest understanding emerges when the types of application increase (scope is a diverse population) and the reach scales exponentially. That is the basin behavior of commercial systems: it trades on functions for survival. This is a growth strategy; it increases the population but is not necessarily a fitness trait. With function comes complexity and this can weaken sustainability by narrowing choice. Every feature added perturbs the orbit with respect to the distribution.
In commercial systems, the competitive advantage required for survival is holding close control over resources for resources, not the implementations, but the ideas. This leads to IP and to incentives to retain and manage productive talented staffs. This is capitalism. It works as a means to create scaling effects because it evolves competitive traits for creating markets and acquiring market share. The feedback of reward for value is the engine of commercial scale at every level. It has disadvantages because securing competitive advantage reduces transparency required for scaling systems with diverse populations. To offset this disadvantage where it occurs, it is necessary to use the emergent budgets to stimulate cultivar that do exhibit the desirable trait and breed these with suppliers from the wild that have the necessary survival traits.
As hoped, the release of the Internet for public use has achieved that in the emergence of open source systems: a development and business model that mirrors the original goals of Internet communications, survivable communications systems where the locus of control can shift axiomatically if any part of the system is damaged or destroyed emerged to ensure the replication of that system at a rate that ensures an evolutionary stable strategy for sustainability. Open source emerges from an ESS with survivability as its goal. This resonates on the other emergent basin: the user populations.
Transparency across populations invites understanding but it cannot guarantee it. The understanding that diversity is the key to surviving and growing must be as well scaled and reached. Our tools cannot do this for us, but if these systems are as Doug Englebart described them, a means to augment human intellect, they are our tool to apply for growth or destruction. Choose wisely. Fitness is not what is most elite. The elite cultivar does not scale because it does not survive. A surviving system combines the weak traits from the edges of the network continuously. This is why simpler less complex products often evolve by means that are healthier for the ecosystem itself. It is responsive, agile, and adept.
Open source: at this point in history, it is not only logical to do this, it's the plan.
That process has been underway for almost 16 years. US DoD and allies have been sponsoring internal development via contractors for many years. One of the first SGML hypertext system code bases was purchased by the US Army at that time and is still managed, maintained and developed by USAMICOM and contractors. The reason was simple: transparency of the code base ensures that features are continuously improved and secured against IP threats or malicious code. Transparency is a survival trait. It occurs naturally in certain kinds of systems in certain kinds of ecosystems, but not all.
Cultivation of ecosystems and low-energy transport models are both models of non-linear systems with common evolutionary control types. A cluster of traits acts similarly to attractor basins with an evolution towards different semantic/functional clusters as energy is applied continuously or discretely. The cycles can be changed by local energy applied at strength (eg, a Hohman transfer) or by applying smaller bursts and using force vectors of multiple basins to amplify the change where the force vectors attract, push, or cancel. Maps across such basins model the evolving orbits of any situation-aware system that self-directs. This is a model for trading on time and energy to direct evolution via intelligent choice.
Although the hosting systems (eg, operating systems) could not be secured, reasonable assurance could be provided that this would not be a threat source and in any case, the host systems would not open fast enough to scale, so the persistence of the monopoly systems of the time provided the stable base. The opening effect in these would take a longer cycle but would eventually evolve toward the same attractors that create commodity lagrange points.
Once the switching costs (cost of basin change) begin to orbit closer to markets where commoditization creates lagrange points (minimal switching costs), transparency emerges naturally as the monopolies face the linearly increasing costs of loss leader research. As the logistic curve narrows, so does the available talent. Ideas and costs are inversely proportional. Monopolistic basins begin to lose force in commoditized markets unless they control distribution. The Internet by its very design and therefore, cultivar traits, would enable smaller systems (think messages) to become very difficult to control with respect to impeding distribution. as long as the necessary ideas are available (the flaw of abundance economics, btw).
Like life, the contest is not fair but everyone gets to enter.
If you know your hypermedia history, you know that military applications were the earliest sponsorship source and particularly with regard to markup applications. While there were more public projects such as the Oxford Dictionary work, these were small by comparison. Modern hypermedia emerges for the most part from the deep pockets of the military-industrial complex guided by the deft hand of DARPA, ONR, USAF and US Army research investments.
The Web got the touchdown but the drive down the field was government work.
And that's the problem. Government work is expensive, slow and requires too much planning, management and incentive to be cost effective except in the incubation stages of technologies. Scale achieves simplification and reduction in costs while improving economic conditions. In the beginning of a technology while it holds a defensive/offensive advantage, it is kept close to the emergent economy. When it must scale, it must go commercial.
At the point the Internet was taken out of military logistics stockpiles and made available for commercial exploitation, its function as a command, control and communications was understood to be ineffective in that form. To become effective, it needed to be world wide, integrated, interoperable, and responsive to OSSINT technologies. As the satellite systems had shown, transparency is a key element of peaceful or offensive diplomacy. The technologies for warfare of the late 20th century had become so complex and decisive that only transparency provided a chance of avoiding the inevitable mistake or madness that leads to their application.
There is no perfect solution to technologies evolving faster than the understanding of their application. Technology evolves on a short cycle relative to the evolution of the understanding of strategic deployment and political will. In metaphor, there is a new car every year, but there hasn't been a new model of the user for 6000 years. Like the car, the fastest understanding emerges when the types of application increase (scope is a diverse population) and the reach scales exponentially. That is the basin behavior of commercial systems: it trades on functions for survival. This is a growth strategy; it increases the population but is not necessarily a fitness trait. With function comes complexity and this can weaken sustainability by narrowing choice. Every feature added perturbs the orbit with respect to the distribution.
In commercial systems, the competitive advantage required for survival is holding close control over resources for resources, not the implementations, but the ideas. This leads to IP and to incentives to retain and manage productive talented staffs. This is capitalism. It works as a means to create scaling effects because it evolves competitive traits for creating markets and acquiring market share. The feedback of reward for value is the engine of commercial scale at every level. It has disadvantages because securing competitive advantage reduces transparency required for scaling systems with diverse populations. To offset this disadvantage where it occurs, it is necessary to use the emergent budgets to stimulate cultivar that do exhibit the desirable trait and breed these with suppliers from the wild that have the necessary survival traits.
As hoped, the release of the Internet for public use has achieved that in the emergence of open source systems: a development and business model that mirrors the original goals of Internet communications, survivable communications systems where the locus of control can shift axiomatically if any part of the system is damaged or destroyed emerged to ensure the replication of that system at a rate that ensures an evolutionary stable strategy for sustainability. Open source emerges from an ESS with survivability as its goal. This resonates on the other emergent basin: the user populations.
Transparency across populations invites understanding but it cannot guarantee it. The understanding that diversity is the key to surviving and growing must be as well scaled and reached. Our tools cannot do this for us, but if these systems are as Doug Englebart described them, a means to augment human intellect, they are our tool to apply for growth or destruction. Choose wisely. Fitness is not what is most elite. The elite cultivar does not scale because it does not survive. A surviving system combines the weak traits from the edges of the network continuously. This is why simpler less complex products often evolve by means that are healthier for the ecosystem itself. It is responsive, agile, and adept.
Open source: at this point in history, it is not only logical to do this, it's the plan.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Hard Things
Some things are hard. When the time comes to make the really hard decisions, one has to admit one is never free of the bias that is mammal, human, individual, and alone. These are the decisions that build, bind, activate and destroy. And they are lonely to make.
Two bits of wisdom, one bitter, one sweet:
o When the rules aren't the same for everyone, there are no rules. There is only fear. Fear kills the mind. When the mind is gone, one is animal. To overcome the animal, overcome fear.
o When one loves one does the right thing to the last thing, and if that does not succeed, one leaves for one has failed, but there is no shame for lovc.
Two bits of wisdom, one bitter, one sweet:
o When the rules aren't the same for everyone, there are no rules. There is only fear. Fear kills the mind. When the mind is gone, one is animal. To overcome the animal, overcome fear.
o When one loves one does the right thing to the last thing, and if that does not succeed, one leaves for one has failed, but there is no shame for lovc.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
I Need A Job
The title says it. I need a job.
Can travel but cannot relocate. Please reply to cbullard@hiwaay.net
My coding skills are rusty but my knowledge of XML, X3D/VRML, are excellent. I am a skilled analyst and writer. I have spent the last 10 years doing business development work in the public safety industry for the Intergraph Corporation.
Can travel but cannot relocate. Please reply to cbullard@hiwaay.net
My coding skills are rusty but my knowledge of XML, X3D/VRML, are excellent. I am a skilled analyst and writer. I have spent the last 10 years doing business development work in the public safety industry for the Intergraph Corporation.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Is Sustainability More Important Than Authority?
In a network of reputation management systems, one assumes that authority is the dominant metric for choosing a service. Yet over time, there is a tendancy for all services to reach a rough equilibrium in terms of information goodness (validatible and high correctness scores). It is akin to the problem of picking a news cast in any media. If all reputations for correctness are roughly equal, likability plays a strong role in reputation management.
But if mashups are the brave new application world, then the dominant metric is sustainability of the service over some lifecycle of use by similar and different applications. The tendancy of the system to evolve orbits around deep attractors (as in deep pockets) has not changed, thus the naïve but rough long tail economics continues unabated.
Note that while XML is agnostic to these dimensions of the hyperspaces of web information domains, it becomes doubly difficult for any specific-domain language to emerge unless it has high scores for sustainability. I suspect that this is a contributor to the failures of domain specific browsers that include all semantics in a strongly-coupled package of components. Their niche is self-limiting and not ESS-immune given the infecting nature of the loosely-coupled confabulations that attack from the edges of the information ecology. This explains why many weak semantics and apparently flawed strategies for creating applications can thrive in the face of better constructed and well-funded projects initially. If the locals have a rapid replacement rate, they cannot be unhosted.
Intelligence doesn't scale. Yet as a service, if it is tightly focused and sustainable, it cannot be unhosted until commoditized. At that point, its orbit crosses Lagrange points where small perturbations can drive the connection to other systems.
Savvy systems defend resources for resources until they become loss leaders.
But if mashups are the brave new application world, then the dominant metric is sustainability of the service over some lifecycle of use by similar and different applications. The tendancy of the system to evolve orbits around deep attractors (as in deep pockets) has not changed, thus the naïve but rough long tail economics continues unabated.
Note that while XML is agnostic to these dimensions of the hyperspaces of web information domains, it becomes doubly difficult for any specific-domain language to emerge unless it has high scores for sustainability. I suspect that this is a contributor to the failures of domain specific browsers that include all semantics in a strongly-coupled package of components. Their niche is self-limiting and not ESS-immune given the infecting nature of the loosely-coupled confabulations that attack from the edges of the information ecology. This explains why many weak semantics and apparently flawed strategies for creating applications can thrive in the face of better constructed and well-funded projects initially. If the locals have a rapid replacement rate, they cannot be unhosted.
Intelligence doesn't scale. Yet as a service, if it is tightly focused and sustainable, it cannot be unhosted until commoditized. At that point, its orbit crosses Lagrange points where small perturbations can drive the connection to other systems.
Savvy systems defend resources for resources until they become loss leaders.
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