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March 2012
It’s Not Easy Being a Dog
I’m taking a nap upstairs but I’m hearing noises from downstairs. When I hear a noise, I have to estimate how likely it is to be food-related, and how likely it is if I get up and go downstairs I’ll be able to get some of it. I can stay right here and snooze. That’s a sure thing. Or I can go downstairs and try to get some food. But if I get up and go downstairs and I don’t get any food, then a good nap has been spoiled. I have to do this estimation every time I hear a noise. Being a dog is not as easy as people think. — Lightning Read more →
At the Dog Park
A pug (not mine) is humping a beagle . . . “You could have puggles,” I suggest to one of the owners, “except they’re both boys.” Read more →
It may look like a crisis, but it’s only the end of an illusion. — Jerry Weinberg
The Buffalo Bridle
“Well, if you’re going to control buffalo, you got to know two things, and only two things: First is, “You can make buffalo go anywhere, just so long as they want to go there. “And second, “You can keep buffalo out of anywhere, just so long as they don’t want to go there. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
No difference plus no difference plus no difference plus … eventually equals a clear difference. — Jerry Weinberg
The Titanic Effect
The thought that disaster is impossible often leads to an unthinkable disaster. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Intelligence in the Cloud
IBM Watson, the Jeopardy champion, runs on 90 IBM Power 750 servers, with eight 3.5 GHz cores per server. Currently on Amazon EC2, eight extra large compute instances will cost you $2.40/hour. If you want to run 90 of them, you’re looking at a shade over $200/hour. This brings up a couple of questions: For what tasks could artificial intelligence be as good or better as a highly trained person at $200/hour? What would this mean for society? Thanks to David Patterson at UC Berkeley for bringing this to my attention. Read more →
Whatever the Client is Doing, Advise Something Else
People who are close to a problem tend to keep repeating what didn’t work the first time. If it did work, they wouldn’t have called in a consultant. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Make sure they pay you enough so they’ll do what you say. — Jerry Weinberg
It’s Always a People Problem
Even when it’s “really” a technical problem, it can always be traced back to management action or inaction. Even so, the experienced consultant will resist pointing out that it was management who hired all the technical people and is responsible for their development. At the same time, the consultant will look for the people who should have prevented this problem, or dealt with it when it arose. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Television
Not once during those months did there emanate from the screen a genuine idea or emotion, and I came to understand the medium as subversive. In its deceit, its outright lies, its spinelessness, its weak-mindedness, its pointless violence, in the disgusting personalities it holds up to our youth to emulate, in its endless and groveling deference to our fantasies, television undermines strength of character, saps vigor, and irreparably perverts notions of reality. But it is a tender, loving medium; and when it has done its savage job completely and reduced one to a prattling, salivating infant, like a buxom mother it stands always poised to take one back to the shelter of its brown-nippled bosom. — Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes Read more →
Stick to the Script. Don’t Ad Lib.
I’m at the Carl’s Jr. drive-thru, and in keeping with the time-honored fast food tradition of having the person with the worst command of the English language and/or the most unintelligible accent work the drive-thru, the guy says, “Welcome to Carl’s Jr. Would you like to try [unintelligible] patty [unintelligible]?” “What?” “Welcome to Carl’s Jr. . . .” Read more →
Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.” Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked. Read more →
Aside
You can’t tell which way the train went just by looking at the track.
If You Want to Be Great
If you want to be great, you need to learn about all the possible relevant ideas that have worked for others. You need to create new ideas, blend, adapt and prioritize them, and constantly test the best ideas to see which ones work for you. Only then can you fully implement — while continuously adjusting — the ideas that really work. — Apple’s People Have Dented the Universe — Can You? | OpenView Blog Read more →
Speaking Ill of the Recently Deceased
This notice went out today from David Carson, the moderator of the Who’s Alive and Who’s Dead mailing list, which among other things, sends out an email to subscribers when a famous person (like Andrew Breitbart) dies: Something I unfortunately have to remind everyone of once in a while is, if you have something uncomplimentary or unpleasant to say about the recently deceased, you don’t need to say it to me. (This is only an issue when someone conservative dies, by the way. I’ve never gotten any nasty-grams when a liberal, moderate, or any other kind of person has died. But a conservative? Every single time, including today. Make of that what you will.) Read more →