We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. — William James
I’ve Got a Little List
From the LinkedIn profile of a linguistically challenged IT manager:
High-Level Strategic Planner and Executioner
Alternative Uses for Beer
I’m picking up a few things at Trader Joe’s — some Clif bars, a couple boxes of cereal and a bottle of IPA.
The checker points to the bottle and says, “That’s good. Have you tried it?” Like he’s the beer expert and I don’t know anything.
“Yeah, I’ve tried it.” Not to be outdone, I pointed to the cereal boxes and said, “Have you tried it on cereal?”
“No.”
“Well . . . think about it.”
Mobile Site vs. Full Site
From Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox:
The basic ideas are to:
- cut features
- cut content
- enlarge interface elements
This Scam Still Needs a Little Work
I got this in my email today:
From: paypal@service.com
Subject: account information needs to be updatedDear PayPal Costumer …
News Judgment
Dog bites man — not news.
Gravy-wrestling model hit in the face with monkey wrench after finding friend having sex on her sofa — now THAT’S news!
Aside
Steve Denning: The Best-Kept Management Secret On The Planet: Agile
Steal Like an Artist
There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income.
I think the same thing is true of idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.
Ashley Corral Wins 3-Pt Competition
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 
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.