Words to live by
Courtesy of contemplate.us: I think that Machiavelli may have said this. ..bruce w..
Category: Information Technology
“An American Carol”: a brief review w/spoilers
[UPDATED 2134 MDT: Uh, corrected David Zucker’s last name. Thanks, Kevin!] [UPDATED 1604 MDT: Got an Ace-o-lanche going on, with other links coming in — welcome all! Also made a few minor edits.] The Devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked. — Sir Thomas More I went into “An American Carol” with guarded […]
The latest Baseline columns
The first column, “Second Class Software Quality for Major IT Projects”, talks about the curious fact that organizations are willing to spend millions, tens of millions, even hundred of millions of dollars on major IT project and yet still nickle-and-dime their software quality assurance (SQA) effort. It doesn’t help that SQA personnel are pretty much […]
Rise of the machines
From Military.com (emphasis mine): A Virginia-based company is hoping to test-fly a vertical take-off and landing drone before the end of this year that, ultimately, could do triple duty as strike vehicle, medevac or special ops insertion/extraction plane. The Excalibur is currently being developed as an armed, tactical unmanned aerial vehicle by Aurora Flight Sciences […]
Solid state music vs. solid state video
John Paczkowski has a deservedly skeptical article today on how SanDisk’s announcement of the ‘slotMusic’ format, an effort to put individual music albums on microSD cards — so that you can plug an album into your cell phone or other devices that accept microSD cards. John pretty much sums up the problems with this format: […]
Palin Email Hacker Admits It
When the AP published a bundle of her personal information online shortly after her appointment as the Republican VP pick, there were bound to be ramifications. Some of that information helped motivate the delinquent son of a Memphis TN Democrat Congressman to hack Palin’s personal email account. Sadly for this troubled little dweeb he has […]
Speaking of infamy…
…or at least cluelessness, the Obama campaign released (on TV) today an ad that, among other things, mocks McCain for not using e-mail or knowing how to use a computer, presumably because he’s so old (another theme of the ad). Here’s the ad itself (if it’s still up on YouTube): Personally, I think it’s a […]
“Inside-Out”: IEEE presentation in Longmont (09/02/08)
On September 2nd, I’ll be speaking at a meeting of the Denver IEEE Reliability Society. It will be held at 5:30 pm in the Seagate Building in Longmont (CO), on Nelson Road between 75th Rd and Airport Rd. Here’s my abstract of the talk: INSIDE-OUT: Organizations too often treat software reliability as an ‘after the […]
Latest Baseline column up
My latest Baseline column is now up: Last week, I talked about some of the reasons why large organizations often reject the best solutions for a troubled IT project: fear, pride, budget, and the ever-present internal politics. This week, as promised, I will talk about what it takes to champion the right solution. I can’t […]
New Baseline column up
I have a new Baseline column up on the tendency of large organizations to reject the best solutions for a troubled IT project: The consultants, usually with the help of the employees in the trenches, would use their time, effort, and expertise to analyze the system under development or in production. They would arrive at […]
