Chris Blanc: Play and Projects: Blog
Archive for May, 2008
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Microsoft’s Bill Gates spills some new strategy:
We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don’t have a lot of work to move that data back and forth. ^
And:
Microsoft is set to announce Tuesday that it is launching a “public preview” program for two server products based on its Windows Server 2008 operating system.
The products, one aimed at small business and the other at midsize firms, combine the server operating system with Exchange Server and other software into a bundle designed to cost less and be easier to install than acquiring the products separately. ^
Microsoft is going to push Server 2008 instead of Vista toward business, while refining Windows 7 as a dual attack: sharing of data across multiple devices, not SaaS, and making a light and fast operating system because, among other reasons, portable devices like the Asus Eee PC are redefining how we use computers, watch television, and communicate.
They are listening to their customers in Redmond, and have come up with a mature strategy.
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Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Many managers observe that some tasks happen quickly and effectively, while others (usually the least exciting) drag on into infinity. What’s most interesting is that these tasks are approached different ways, and that can make a huge difference in what work needs to be done. If there are 100 tasks needed to be done on a project, but ten of those tasks constitute 90% of its functionality, tackling those ten in a dynamic matter might liberate the rest to be done later or make them easier, since the framework will already be built.
Numerous studies have found 10:1 differences in productivity and quality among individuals and even among teams. The original study that found huge variations in individual programming productivity was conducted in the late 1960s by Sackman, Erikson, and Grant. They studied professional programmers with an average of 7 years’ experience and found that the ratio of initial coding time between the best and worst programmers was about 20 to 1; the ratio of debugging times over 25 to 1; of program size 5 to 1; and of program execution speed about 10 to 1. They found no relationship between a programmer’s amount of experience and code quality or productivity. ^
It’s not just programming: the best workers in all fields know how to separate the consequential from the inconsequential.
Q: Do workaholics accomplish more than people who work fewer hours?
A: Often, they don’t. That is because, as perfectionists, they may become so fixated on inconsequential details that they find it hard to move on to the next task, [Psychiatrist Bryan] Robinson said.
As Gayle Porter [a professor who has studied workaholism] put it: “They’re not looking for ways to be more efficient; they’re just looking for ways to always have more work to do.
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The person may look like a hero, coming in to solve crisis after crisis, when in fact the crises could have been avoided. Sometimes, the workaholic may have unwittingly created the problems to provide the endless thrill of more work. ^
The management science involved is knowing the design of the task you’re attempting to accomplish, and finding core tasks that are necessary, then postponing others so they don’t get in the way. This keeps people from inventing work, or from getting stalled on relatively inconsequential tasks when bigger tasks need doing.
Another view of the same:
Sarah and I just got back from a talk at Haas about “deliberate practice†as it relates to excellence. The idea is that how good (or expert) you become at a skill has a lot more to do with how you go about doing your work than it has to do with merely performing the skill a large number of times or over a long length of time.
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This all reminds me of an old study of what differentiated classes of swimmers, The Mundanity of Excellence (it seems to be readable through Google book search). The researchers found that swimmers who moved up in class did it almost entirely by how they went about performing their practice. It was the quality of their work, not the quantity of their work that mattered. Moving up in class could be as simple as changing the way you cupped your hand during your swim stroke, as long as you were willing to practice that improved stroke during every lap of every practice. ^
And still another take from one of the great success stories of the last century:
But if Toyota doesn’t look like an innovative company it’s only because our definition of innovation — cool new products and technological breakthroughs, by Steve Jobs-like visionaries — is far too narrow. Toyota’s innovations, by contrast, have focussed on process rather than on product, on the factory floor rather than on the showroom. That has made those innovations hard to see. But it hasn’t made them any less powerful.
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So how has Toyota stayed ahead of the pack?
The answer has a lot to do with another distinctive element of Toyota’s approach: defining innovation as an incremental process, in which the goal is not to make huge, sudden leaps but, rather, to make things better on a daily basis. (The principle is often known by its Japanese name, kaizen — continuous improvement.) ^
Clearly defining important tasks, focusing on what they are as actions and goals, and then streamlining to make those goals occur more reliably and efficiently is a cornerstone of good management. This applies whether you’re talking about programming, dog walking, rocket science or impressionistic painting. It’s good discipline — good psychology — for succeeding at anything. The core of it is filtering the fringe tasks from the core.
And then there’s this 1994 book: Office Biology or Why Tuesday Is Your Most Productive Day and Other Relevant Facts for Survival in the Workplace. There is a whole book about how Tuesdays are so productive. How could I have missed this incredibly important fact for all these years? ^
It’s not that Tuesdays are magic, but the position Tuesday holds in the week. Monday is getting re-acquainted with what will get done that week, and getting a huge list of tasks as everyone meets. Tuesday is when you cut that list down to what can be reasonably accomplished and pick the most important parts.
Again, it’s defining task, by what is most important, in order to stay on task.
Posted in Management Science | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
When the company brain trust repairs to the Ballmer Bunker to chew over its next big idea, post-Yahoo, I’ve got a suggestion: how about doing something to deal with e-mail and its discontents? Something grand–like bringing Microsoft Outlook into the 21st century. I don’t mean a tweak here and there; I’m talking about a top-to-bottom overhaul.
The product debuted in 1997 and has improved very little since. Given the absence of real competition for most of the last decade, you shouldn’t be surprised at the glacial pace of improvement. ^
John C. Dvorak refers to himself as a “cranky geek,” but the word he’s really looking for is cynical. Cynicism means you know that people are out in the world acting selfishly, and you see the results, and then realize it’s very little — another two hundred person hours, another 10% of budget and time — that separates the mediocre standard products we have now from ones that are actually a joy to use like the applications that inspire people to go into computing.
I agree with the authors above that Microsoft Outlook is a piece of junk, although it has some surprisingly flexible features, and that its interface is as god-awful as Windows 3.1. However, I have to ask: why is it so hard for humanity to produce good versions of its most basic software needs, like browsers, email clients, even internet forums and blogs?
I haven’t yet found an email client on Windows that I like. Pegasus I can respect, but there are parts of its interface that are so brick-stupid it’s impossible not to scorn it and some point, and although it functions well in most cases, under heavy load in some areas it snaps like a twig. Thunderbird? Junk. Opera’s built-in mail? OK, with some glaring oversights. Eudora? Mostly, except it has always been feeble like most Macintosh software. It’ll do OK if you have very basic needs, but put it under pressure and it doesn’t even make it to twig strength.
The same could be said of browsers. Opera is all-around the best, but even it collapses when Flash plugins tax it. Firefox is good, but often has inexplicable problems and seems to crash quite a bit, a good deal more than IE and much, much more than Opera. IE… well, Microsoft had a good five years without competition and did nothing impressive, and now it’s fairly big and some of its standards interpretations are weird. Safari? Who needs Safari? It’s like a Firefox clone with bad JavaScript.
I could go on, but you see the point. The everyday apps are the ones that people assume have no glory, so they get ignored. If they’re not ignored, the high competition means no one is going to jump into the fray and try to shave off some percentage of a massive userbase. Let’s not forget that Firefox inherited Netscape’s userbase, and Opera has forged a might 1.69% after ten years of existence. Uh, yeah.
I wish the Open Source community would tackle more of these fights, because what needs to be done is clear. Outlook could be replaced by a program that took Eudora’s approach to interface, Pegasus’ approach to file formats and data handling, and Lotus Notes’ approach to calendaring and encrypted, revisioned mail. It really isn’t that hard. Just go through what exists, pick the best features, find a way to make them work together, and then code something as light and fast as possible. The users would benefit.
Posted in Information Technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Why even bother with candidates at this point? Elections have come to resemble fund-raisers or sports events, and I can’t tell which.
When we go to vote, hand us a budget with all known expenditures listed, and the ability to pencil in a percentage of our nation’s budget to each expenditure. At the bottom, let us write in future programs we’d like and how much of our budget they should get.
Throw away all ballots which do not add up to 100%.
Then average the results, and have a second election for the stuff we penciled in.
We’re about at that stage anyway.
Posted in Psychology | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Neat stuff during a busy time.
GUIs, compared. See the history of the GUI unfolding before your eyes, and pick the features you’d put in your dream GUI.
New Copyright Wrinkle. You must load a program into RAM to run it. Technically, this is copying, although some will point out that the program manages its own loading sequence in most cases.
Blizzard is fighting against a company that sells a bot program for use with World of WarCraft, but is doing so in a novel, and scary way: using your RAM to play games is copyright infringement, until Blizzard tells you it isn’t.
Actually, Vista works. When you remove the crapware, get the right drivers, and set up the system like a sane person, it’s zippy. Caveat: you need newer hardware and 2-4gb of RAM.
Today’s conventional wisdom, based on more than a year’s worth of relentless negative publicity, says Vista is hopelessly broken. In fact, my experience says the exact opposite is true. I proved the point in the first installment of this series, where I restored a sluggish $2500 Sony Vaio notebook to peak performance in a few hours. And I think anyone with a modicum of PC smarts can do the same.
Editor wants to end anonymous commenting. He says it leads to unproductive debate. I’m not sure I disagree or agree. It really depends on who is talking, and how much background they have in logic and debate.
“I think part of the problem is that people aren’t held accountable on the Web,” Brady said. “People say things online they would never say when disagreeing with someone at the dinner table. I think heated debate is fine, but when there are (flame wars), many people won’t take part for fear they will be attacked and bashed over the head with the (Internet-equivalent) of a steel pipe.”
Wi-Fi is the new TV. To be ad-supported, free, through private effort and not government in most cities.
Travelers want to log on everywhere at no charge, while hotels, airports and coffee shops are looking for a way to pay for their Wi-Fi networks as visitors increasingly use greater amounts of bandwidth.
The compromise that is emerging is to offer both free and paid options, with the free services increasingly requiring something in return, like viewing an advertisement or signing up for a loyalty program.
Sounds like TV and cable, respectively, to me.
Non-profit projects help you learn vital skills. For most things, people need a justification to do it and then they feel justified and can go ahead. Non-profit, or Open Source, programming (or any other type of activity) gives them that excuse to feel good enough to just go out there, play like a simian and have a good time, and thus, to learn.
can remember thinking at the time that I would be able to sell these, along with the SDK, to clients who wanted sophisticated and easy-to-use windowing components all over the globe, and then be able to retire and ride my bike forever more. It didn’t quite work out like that. I was smart enough (but only after I’d spent all the effort) to realise the daunting challenge it would be to control installation and version, handle environmental issues and bug reports, and manage the trade-offs between protecting intellectual property and hindering users. And then there’s the hassles of the financial side and the daunting nature of the warranties. Long story short is that the controls were never commercialised. They see action in various bespoke projects for clients from time to time, as well as in several of my internal / free tools. But all that effort has never seen a direct payoff. The payoff in learning was immense, however, and I’m very glad for it.
Making complex interpretations visual reduces electorate’s dependence on interpreters and commentators. Sounds good, if nothing else to cut the number of talking heads in the world.
By distilling climate policy choices down to the most key, and letting you rate them all for reasonableness, — these being the ones to which the accepted econometric models are generally most ‘sensitive’ — anyone can model the economic impact of climate policy ideas being bandied about by politicians, lobbyists, Think Tank “experts” and newspaper editors. You don’t have to be an mathematician or economist to work the scenarios.
The effect, we hope, will be to “disintermediate” the pundits and paid experts who so dominate American political life.
Selling music through video games, direct. Soon every part of reality will not only be covered in advertising, but have a “buy it now” button. Ick.
It’s been well established how TV shows, ads and videogames are growing areas of music discovery and promotion. But until “GTA IV,” there’s been no construct that allows for the immediate identification and purchase of those songs from videogames. “GTA IV” has added that “buy” button, and record labels welcome the innovation.
Posted in Linkpost | No Comments »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Lots of good things these past few weeks, and it’s hard to pick just a few.
Posted in Linkpost | No Comments »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
 The old, Google model: lots of little servers in a network designed for redundancy in case of failure.
The new old IBM model: a few centralized servers, but they’re more efficient and reliable and engineered to not only not waste cycles, but to last for decades. However, they’re designing them around an old mainframe strength — internal bandwidth speed — and using it as the basis for a new mainframe computing based heavily on flexible parallelism, or “cell” computing.
“We have been running multitenancy [running multiple customers on a single machine with a single application instance] for decades and decades,” he told me.
“It’s a mainframe model where things run together but in isolation. The issue is whether the machines will bear up under the load of diverse work or will they grind down and you’ll need to provision another machine. You need reliability, security, auditing, privacy, data integrity, automation and full isolation. You need to have a lot of layers in the environment.”
In 2000, IBM resurrected the mainframe by bringing Linux and WebSphere to the platform and lowering the price of entry, according to William Zeitler, senior vice president of IBM’s Systems & Technology Group. “You can build out a thousand smaller servers that need to be connected to ports and a fabric. You end up with a complexity crisis that has to be rationalized,” Zeitler said. ^
The more small servers you have talking to each other, the more the communication becomes complex. Like in CPUs, the real question is how fast can they move information, not how fast they can calculate. Calculation speed is the model of old personal computing, from the early 1980s. Now we’re talking about moving massive amounts of data around and avoiding latency and internal correction that slow the process down.
A UC Berkeley paper [PDF] recently submitted to the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium manages to highlight two common and seemingly unrelated themes that have come up a number of times over the past few years in my reporting on the high-performance computing (HPC) space: 1) IBM’s Cell is really good at HPC workloads when you invest the time to write custom code for it, and 2) Intel’s Xeon platform is perennially bandwidth starved and not very power-efficient. ^
IBM’s solution: Use processors that emphasize moving information between each other and working collaboratively, like the Cell. Build a few giant boxes and over-engineer them so they’re reliable and efficient. This is in contrast to the PC/server market, where a new design comes out every six months and is under-engineered to avoid introducing potential conflicts and to get it out the door on time. They also have found out that these products are nice and green, since it’s easier to constrain efficiency on a few specialty designs than impose it on general purpose ones.
International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) on Wednesday launched tools to reduce computer energy consumption as IBM hopes to boost its business of selling power-saving technologies.
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“Energy efficiency has become a critical business metric, like product reliability and customer satisfaction,” William Zeitler, head of IBM’s systems and technology group, said in an interview with Reuters. ^
After having seen too many servers fail over the past few years, and having heard service technicians refer to two-year-old machines as “antiques,” I think this is a positive possibility. We’ve reached a possibly temporary plateau in processor power; programmers are still finding ways to take advantage of multiple cores, and it’s likely we’ll need to redesign how we write code and operating systems. Then again, the mainframe guys have been doing it all along.
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