The cartoon villain behind SOPA
Kevin Fogarty, writing in Best idea of 2011: Give control of Internet content to group that sued a dead grandmother via IT World, goes after the backers of SOPA, especially the RIAA. The anti-piracy enforcement arm of the RIAA has, for almost a decade, been so aggressive about investigating, suing and attempting to prosecute those it accused of illegally downloading movies or music that it was sued by illegal investigatory practices and invasion of privacy, for fraud, conspiracy and extortion, deceptive business practices and violation of the RICO statutes normally used to prosecute bosses of organized crime families.
One version of the truth
Its not uncommon for different software systems in a company to contain the same kinds information as others. However, it is very uncommon for this information to be the same across all systems. Often the accounting system has different information than the trading system, for example. Inventory systems often have different stock levels than sales systems. The impact of this is that traders trade on what they know, accountants report profit on what they know, and sales happens on what they know.
Smoke Screening
Charles C Mann writing on Smoke Screening in Vanity Fair, spends an afternoon at the airport with Bruce Schneier looking at the TSA in action and asks whether any of it actually makes is safer? His conclusion is obviously no, locked cockpit doors and aware passengers are the only things that work. Even the $1.2b worth of scanners and another $1.2b in air marshals are totally useless. We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless.
Adam Savage on SOPA
Adam Savage from Mythbusters writing in SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It at Popular Mechanics (sorry about their ads folks). The Internet is probably the most important technological advancement of my lifetime. Its strength lies in its open architecture and its ability to allow a framework where all voices can be heard. Like the printing press before it (which states also tried to regulate, for centuries), it democratizes information, and thus it democratizes power.
The missing feature
My new product seems to be missing a key feature. One that every client so far has asked about. They are almost incredulous that I do not provide it. Come to think of it, none of the software created in my career, that’s 21 years folks, has ever had this feature. The feature I am talking about is export to Excel for users*.
No export to Excel? Am I nuts. What kind of software does not have an export to Excel function? You need export to Excel, don’t you?
No you do not, you don’t even want it.
Developer and Power Tools
Justin Williams has a pretty good list of tools he uses both for daily use and for development in My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition). I have quite a few of the same, but several key differences: Acorn I have, but use Photoshop, Illustrator and Pixelmator a lot more BBedit is open all the time, but I use TextMate for programming (already switched to TextMate 2 Alpha) Appviz instead of Appfigures The great Kaleidoscope for file compares instead of Changes Tossing up between Coda (my old favorite) and Espresso 2 (because I think the old CSSEdit was the best) Skitch for snapping instead of LittleSnapper (use only for storing well designed web pages, though thinking of going back now that Evernote owns Skitch) Fantastical instead of Today New to me:
If it ain't broke, break it
You have all heard the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”. The implication being that if something is working adequately well, leave it alone. Unacceptable! If this were the case, we’d still be using stone axes and living in caves, as we did for 98% of the past 100,000 years. The reason we have metal axes and houses, electricity and cars and computers and internet is because there were people out there who felt it was broke, and they found new and interesting ways to fix it.
Bring in the nerds
Joshua Kopstein, writing in Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works, getting angry with Congress on the SOPA hearings: It’d be one thing if legitimate technical questions directed at the bill’s supporters weren’t met with either silence or veiled accusations that the other side was sympathetic to piracy. Yet here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can’t explain, and having the temerity to suggest there’s no need to “bring in the nerds” to suss out what’s actually on it.
On the topic of talent
Jorge Quinteros, writing on the Topic of Talent. Talent is the natural ability to do something for which people may think there’s not much effort put into accomplishing something and that’s simply a result of people not always being previewed to what you go through to do what you do. I’m a very good software designer. Proof? I have a long track record of excellent software. Those who know me and my work invariably describe me as talented.
Speculative work hurts
Sebastiaan de With, a really great designer, posts on Facebook of all places on how speculative work hurts the design industry at large. Happens in software too, where clients expect you to plan, document and design the software before entering into a contract.