His mom and I are trying to get the boy to log off the computer and go to bed. “Hang on,” he says, “I’m looking at a PC World thing.” “What is it?” I ask. “’10 Cool Gadgets You Can’t Get in the U.S.’” “If you can’t get them in the U.S., what do you care?” “They’re cool. Don’t forget about that part.” His mom is running out of patience. “Oh, am I steaming,” she says. The boy’s still looking at the computer. “Mmmm . . . cool,” he says. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Computers
Getting to Know You
My son’s just diagnosed and fixed a problem with my wife’s laptop PC . . . “I should join the Northwood [his high school] Tech Squad,” he says, “with all the guys who tuck their shirts in.” “That reminds me,” my wife says to him. “What clubs are you in at school?” “What clubs am I in?” he says. “How about none?” “You need to be in a club,” she says. I say, “He’s in football and roller hockey.” “He can be in those,” she says, “but he still needs to be in a club so he can get to know people.” For some reason, this launches the boy into a Rodgers and Hammerstein tune . . . “Getting to knooooow yooooou . . .” “Can you look it up,” my wife says, “and see what clubs they have at Northwood?” “No,” I say. “I’m busy.” Which I am. “When… Read more →
He Looks Almost Lifelike!
The annual ACM Awards banquet was held last month in San Diego. Recipients were afforded the singular honor of being photographed next to the embalmed corpse of ACM President Stuart Feldman (left): Read more →
What Has Steve Jobs Done With His Money?
Bill Gates and the Microsoft crowd have been very prominent in charitable circles, saving Africans from disease, etc. By contrast, a Google search for “Steve Jobs charity” or “Steve Jobs donation” turns up nothing except an article on how Apple bought him a $90 million Gulfstream bizjet. So… if Steve Jobs doesn’t give money to charity and doesn’t pay for his own jet, is he doing something interesting with his $billions? — Philip Greenspun Read more →
Four Questions to Ask a Hiring Manager
I’m rereading parts of The Psychology of Computer Programming and I notice that several of Weinberg’s “food for thought” questions at the end of each chapter would be good questions to pose to a hiring manager: How long have you been in charge of your present group? How many of the original people remain? How many people have left and what were the reasons for their departure? What sort of provisions do you make for this kind of turnover? Describe the sequence of work planned for your current project. Is the actual work proceeding according to the original plan? Do you expect it to continue in this manner? How close is your progress reporting scheme to the reality of the work that goes on? What checks do you have to find out if it corresponds to reality? What is your impression of what motivates your staff? Is it the same… Read more →
Barbie Speaks
I’m listening to an online interview with Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres and Tom DeMarco. My son hears Andres’ voice and says, “You’ve got a woman teaching you about technology?!” “What a sexist you are,” I say. “I’m just repeating what you always say: ‘Oh, women don’t know anything about computers.’” “When did I ever say that?” “You say it all the time. ‘Men are a lot smarter than women.’” I deny this vehemently, and not just because my wife is sitting across the room. Meanwhile, Andres is saying something: Blah blah blah Kent blah blah blah . . . “Ken!?” the boy says. “Who’s advising you? Barbie?” Read more →
Dishonest Estimation
I saw the following attributed to Ralph Johnson. I’m not sure if that’s the Gang of Four Ralph Johnson, but it probably is: The problem is that almost all software schedules and budgets are bogus. They are created for political effect and have little relationship to reality. Thus, whether they are met has nothing to do with the people working on the project. Who makes your schedules? Project managers? They are almost certainly the wrong people. You can’t predict how long something will take unless you are an expert at doing it. The programmers? Are they allowed to say “we don’t have enough information to make a prediction”? Are they ever told “that is too long, you’ll have to do it in six months”? The only way to get honest schedules is from people who have experience in doing the work who know that they need to get the schedule… Read more →
Madden NFL 07 Racist?
My son’s sitting in the family room playing the new Madden NFL 07. His computer-controlled kicker misses two extra points, after which the other team’s computer-controlled kicker makes a 50-yard field goal. “Oh my gosh!” he yells. “Can you say ‘racist’?” He’s a mixed-race kid — his mom is Asian — and he treats every slight as a racial issue. I think he’s kidding most of the time. One feature of Madden 07 is that when there’s a break in the action, it pops up player profiles — photos and career blurbs — of old school players that, for the most part, the boy has never heard of. “Fred Biletnikoff!? Looks like a stuck-up white boy to me! OHHHH! WOOOOOO!” Read more →
iCasey
Every time one of those iPod silhouette ads comes on, my son asks can we make something like that with him in it. This weekend we tried it with Paint Shop Pro and this is the result (click to enlarge). Read more →
Better, Faster and Cheaper?
Somehow we’ve got it in our heads that every programmer in India is good, fast, and cheap, and every programmer in the United States is lousy, slow, and expensive. My theory is that for version 1.0 of a product, the maximum allowable distance between the engineers and marketers is thirty feet. — Guy Kawasaki Read more →
3 Former Titans of Industry Now Having a Worse Day Than You
Ken Lay – On trial for conspiracy and fraud. Could get 20 to 30 years in prison. Not good if you’re already 64 years old. Scott McNealy – Following yet another dismal financial report, resigns as Sun’s CEO after 22 years. Sanjay Kumar – Former CA Inc. CEO pleads guilty in $2.2 billion accounting fraud, faces up to 20 years in prison. Read more →
Sun Microsystems Circles the Drain
Sun Microsystems Inc. said co-founder Scott McNealy will give up the job of chief executive to the No. 2 person at the company, Jonathan Schwartz, a historic transition for a computer maker facing stiff pressure to cut costs and boost revenue. — The Wall Street Journal So long, funny man! Read more →
World of Warcraft
My kid’s explaining World of Warcraft to me . . . if I understand it correctly, it’s like an old-fashioned game of Capture the Flag, but with some killing. And yet as I’m watching him play it, it looks more like World of Running Pointlessly Through a Forest. There’s no warcraft, no nothing. “Dude,” he says, “that’s because I’m at Level 6. When you get to, like, Level 19, there’s more warfare.” “Maybe it should be called World of Jogging Aimlessly Through the Fields Picking Flowers Like a Girl Until You Get to Level 19,” I suggest. “You don’t pick flowers, stupid. You quest.” Read more →
Whale Cams
The guy in the next cubicle is spending the afternoon looking at animal cams on the web. “Look at this whale cam,” he says. “It’s underwater!” Read more →
A 12-Year-Old Emails the Pope
Did you know that the pope has an email address? I wonder if he has a blog too? If my son were to send a greeting to the Holy Father, I imagine it would look something this: $71!! $(4r3d 70 (h4!!3ng3 m3 w17h l337 4? w3!! 1 93$$ U j5$7 dun 907 17 1n y4 y0, unl1|{3 m3, wh0 h4$ 907 d4 m4d $|{1!!$ n3d4%, n371m3! U d5n 907 n0 $|{1!! y0, 5 4 $71ff, 4 w4nn4b3, 7h0. u (4n7 (0n741n m3 n3d4y, n0 r34$0n n0 w4y. 1 907 d4 p0w3r, 1m (0n73n7 1n my 4(710n$… 1 907 n0 7r0ubl3 1n $|{00L1n u 4nd n0 7r0ubL3 w17 fr4(710n$. 1f U ju$7 L1$73n 70 m3 4nd j5$7 4lr43dy 91v3 17 up… 1 d4 L337 m4$74 d00d, 1 d4 f47h4. 1m d4 b19 D099, u d4 PUP! lol, lmbo, rotfl, hahahahahaha!!! i rok… Read more →
Steve Jobs: Me, Me, Me
Self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing BS, a.k.a. Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford, gets a good skewering . . . Read more →
A Pretty Good One-Sentence Analysis of Blogs
True believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. — Randell Beck Read more →
Into the Digital Abyss
The Globe and Mail reports that a “small but determined group of computer geeks [is] trying to translate open-source software into African languages, in an effort to reach the continent most isolated by the digital divide.” Read more →
Dogfood
From Netcraft: The LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco is the center of the Linux universe this week, celebrating the best Linux apps and advancing the cause of Linux in business. If you can’t be at the Moscone Center, you can read the latest conference news at the LinuxWorld Expo web site, which naturally is powered by … Windows Server 2003. Linux enthusiasts are not alone in finding their “World” running on Microsoft software, as the Mac World Expo is also hosted on Windows Server 2003. Read more →
Thanks, Bill!
Microsoft said Tuesday that it will boost its dividend, buy back shares and offer a $3-per-share one-time payout as part of a plan to return up to $75 billion to shareholders over the next four years. — “Microsoft to share its wealth with investors,” CNET News.com Bill Gates announced that he will donate his share of the proceeds — he owns over 1 billion shares, so that comes to $3+ billion — to charity. Read more →