This post continues a topic I began on February 19.
Another law-bug has plagued us in recent years, that really illustrates what I mean when I say a law has a bug. The DMCA protects the owners of copyright with the ability to make “takedown” notices. The concept is simple: you notice that some website is displaying a picture, video, song, a book text or whatever ; something whose copyright belongs you. You don't want them to display it; you never gave them permission. So you send whoever is operating their website a “takedown” notice, and they must remove it.
The people who wrote this law considered that there might be some reason for the victim of the takedown to reinstate his item, and the law provides a cumbersome procedure for that. They also considered that some nasty outsider might try to make malicious takedowns, so they made another cumbersome procedure, with nasty fines, to deter malicious takedowns. (Not surprisingly, malicious takedowns are much more common than fines for issuing them.)
We know today that it was incredibly stupid of the legislators to assume that almost all takedowns would be issued by lawyers of large media companies who know exactly what they have the rights to. Many companies have used these notices to get rid of any web content that offends them, even content they do not own. Takedowns might be less common if the person issuing a takedown had to do anything reasonable to show a right to do it; but they don't. It's cheap to issue one takedown about one creation, even if you've no right to do it. It's fairly expensive to combat that takedown notice when you know it's wrong.
Bad bug.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Time out for a more important subject:
I just realized that President Obama is having a hard time because he's losing the slogan war. He must have better slogans, or else how is he to fight the charge that he's leading America into Socialism? Fortunately, I would never raise this subject unless I had the answer.
Hey, everyone! President Obama is fighting the war on financial terrorism!
Hey, everyone! President Obama is fighting the war on financial terrorism!
Gaming the Undebugged DMCA:
If you haven't been following my current train of thought, please go back to my Feb 21 posting, A Breed Apart (2), and catch up. Thanks.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in the year 2000 to protect the rights of big companies that produce audio, video, movies and games. The law provides strong penalties for many actions that people use to take for granted, such as taking a thing apart and seeing how it works, in order to build a competing thing. That's not the worst part, though. The law was written on the assumption that only a few intended companies would ever use it, and of course, they would always use it judiciously. This law should have been debugged.
Hewlet Packard was the first company to find a serious bug in the DMCA, and they used it to block competition in the printer cartridge business for two years. Details of this case and others are here.
HP's clever idea was to prevent other companies from making printer cartridges that would work in their printers. (For many years, you have had a choice of buying HP cartridges, or buying cheaper from competitors.) HP placed a small computer processor in each cartridge and gave it a small program to run. Competitors had to reverse-engineer what this CPU did, in order to produce competing cartridges. Such reverse engineering has, in the past, broken AT&T's monopoly on hopelessly expensive connections to the phone network, and brought down the prices of (IBM compatible) computer hardware. But HP alleged that this reverse engineering is illegal according to the DMCA. We are lucky that eventually they lost this case; the technical issues at law were complex and not easy to call.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in the year 2000 to protect the rights of big companies that produce audio, video, movies and games. The law provides strong penalties for many actions that people use to take for granted, such as taking a thing apart and seeing how it works, in order to build a competing thing. That's not the worst part, though. The law was written on the assumption that only a few intended companies would ever use it, and of course, they would always use it judiciously. This law should have been debugged.
Hewlet Packard was the first company to find a serious bug in the DMCA, and they used it to block competition in the printer cartridge business for two years. Details of this case and others are here.
HP's clever idea was to prevent other companies from making printer cartridges that would work in their printers. (For many years, you have had a choice of buying HP cartridges, or buying cheaper from competitors.) HP placed a small computer processor in each cartridge and gave it a small program to run. Competitors had to reverse-engineer what this CPU did, in order to produce competing cartridges. Such reverse engineering has, in the past, broken AT&T's monopoly on hopelessly expensive connections to the phone network, and brought down the prices of (IBM compatible) computer hardware. But HP alleged that this reverse engineering is illegal according to the DMCA. We are lucky that eventually they lost this case; the technical issues at law were complex and not easy to call.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Timeout: Crime or Sickness?
Martin Langeland commented on my post, An Unfixable Law-Bug He said, "But why criminalize a health problem? Wrong approach all together. No way to turn that into a feature."
Before I continue my previous train of thought, I want to comment on this quote. I believe Martin is arguing that drug-related issues (marijuana at least) ought to be treated as health problems; if he's right, my implicit suggestion that the law should prescribe smaller penalties for these acts is just wrong.
I cited a small quantity of marijuana in my example (in the post). But there are many kinds of drug-related crimes, and I think that many of them should be treated as crimes. It's also possible that some drug-related recreation should not be criminalized at all. Criminalizing all drug use has actually produced the kind of law-flouting that alcohol prohibition generated in this country. A remarkable percentage of drug users swell our prison population, and drug-related profits fuel a lot of the worst violence in our towns and cities. It's amazing that, to us citizens in general, these two stories -- the prohibition of alcohol and the prohibition of drugs -- seem different enough to warrant different solutions. Wake up! They are remarkably similar, so why did the first one lead to decriminalizng, while the other does not?
I doubt that we worked out the ideal solution for alcohol either, after prohibition. We don't know how to moderate alcohol use, how to prevent drunk driving deaths, and how to prevent way-underage kids from drinking, to the detriment of society. Having said all this blather, I would like to share with you the insight I had, while serving on a grand jury:
Many of the crimes we voted to prosecute were against drug dealers. Sounds serious, doesn't it? But I'm talking about dealers who earn a hundred or two a week when they can get a supply. Tiny dealers serving customers with minuscule needs. The arresting officers told us how they identify a person as a dealer, and one of the things they look for is a small amount of cash (under a hundred), distributed among a person's pockets. I believe that arresting these dealers in a city tends to make the city a more lawful place, because it prevents dealers from staking out a part of the city and regularly working there, creating an area of lawlessness. But it does not cut off or slow the supply of drugs. The people who want these little regular hits always find another dealer. The USA has a terrible procedure for criminalizing drugs, and we make too many people go to jail and ruin their futures to keep the enormous drug business a little more tidy. Can't we think of some other way, and stop putting so many people in jail?
Before I continue my previous train of thought, I want to comment on this quote. I believe Martin is arguing that drug-related issues (marijuana at least) ought to be treated as health problems; if he's right, my implicit suggestion that the law should prescribe smaller penalties for these acts is just wrong.
I cited a small quantity of marijuana in my example (in the post). But there are many kinds of drug-related crimes, and I think that many of them should be treated as crimes. It's also possible that some drug-related recreation should not be criminalized at all. Criminalizing all drug use has actually produced the kind of law-flouting that alcohol prohibition generated in this country. A remarkable percentage of drug users swell our prison population, and drug-related profits fuel a lot of the worst violence in our towns and cities. It's amazing that, to us citizens in general, these two stories -- the prohibition of alcohol and the prohibition of drugs -- seem different enough to warrant different solutions. Wake up! They are remarkably similar, so why did the first one lead to decriminalizng, while the other does not?
I doubt that we worked out the ideal solution for alcohol either, after prohibition. We don't know how to moderate alcohol use, how to prevent drunk driving deaths, and how to prevent way-underage kids from drinking, to the detriment of society. Having said all this blather, I would like to share with you the insight I had, while serving on a grand jury:
Many of the crimes we voted to prosecute were against drug dealers. Sounds serious, doesn't it? But I'm talking about dealers who earn a hundred or two a week when they can get a supply. Tiny dealers serving customers with minuscule needs. The arresting officers told us how they identify a person as a dealer, and one of the things they look for is a small amount of cash (under a hundred), distributed among a person's pockets. I believe that arresting these dealers in a city tends to make the city a more lawful place, because it prevents dealers from staking out a part of the city and regularly working there, creating an area of lawlessness. But it does not cut off or slow the supply of drugs. The people who want these little regular hits always find another dealer. The USA has a terrible procedure for criminalizing drugs, and we make too many people go to jail and ruin their futures to keep the enormous drug business a little more tidy. Can't we think of some other way, and stop putting so many people in jail?
Sunday, February 22, 2009
An Unfixable Law-Bug:
Please read the last two posts before this one.
Thanks.
New Jersey has a law that greatly increases the punishment for drug-related offenses, if they are committed within 1,000 feet of a public school. If you flee from police because you have a marijuana cigarette in your car, and they chase you and catch you; and if – during your flight – you passed just within 1,000 feet of a school at 3 a.m. on a Sunday night in July, when there's nary a student in sight, your penalties are increased.
Now obviously, it was not the intent of the people who wrote that law to apply it to such a silly situation, but that's how the law was written (and of course: not debugged). There have been calls to fix the wording of this law, to make it apply to schools that are open, with children around. But the law cannot be fixed. Anyone who votes to modify it will be seen as “soft on drugs.” Legislators have already resisted requests to fix the law for this very reason. No can do. They should have debugged the law in the first place, before passing it.
Thanks.
New Jersey has a law that greatly increases the punishment for drug-related offenses, if they are committed within 1,000 feet of a public school. If you flee from police because you have a marijuana cigarette in your car, and they chase you and catch you; and if – during your flight – you passed just within 1,000 feet of a school at 3 a.m. on a Sunday night in July, when there's nary a student in sight, your penalties are increased.
Now obviously, it was not the intent of the people who wrote that law to apply it to such a silly situation, but that's how the law was written (and of course: not debugged). There have been calls to fix the wording of this law, to make it apply to schools that are open, with children around. But the law cannot be fixed. Anyone who votes to modify it will be seen as “soft on drugs.” Legislators have already resisted requests to fix the law for this very reason. No can do. They should have debugged the law in the first place, before passing it.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
A Breed Apart (2): Computer Programmers:
Please read the previous blog post before this one.
Thanks.
I know that most of you are sick about the quality of the computer programs you have to use. They are riddled with bugs and bad behaviors, and sometimes you'd like to kill the programmers who created them. But you're only seeing those programs after they've been debugged. If they hadn't been properly tested, if they hadn't been designed for debugging, they would be a thousand times worse.
Programmers understand debugging. We know that a series of instructions to carry out a process, no matter how clear and obvious it looks, may be riddled with mistakes. We know how to find most of those mistakes. We know how to arrange the instructions to minimize bad mistakes. We know how to feed sets of prepared data into programs to determine whether they produce correct results.
Most of the rest of humanity hasn't a clue about debugging. And to us, that's a great tragedy, a disaster in the making, and there's nothing we can do about it. You can mix with us, but our skill won't rub off on you. Here are two awful examples:
Spreadsheets often rule businesses. Complex spreadsheets shot through with formulas. Executives bow to their spreadsheets and adjust their company priorities as the spreadsheet results demand. But how many of these damn things are debugged? Many of them have been created by businessmen with no software discipline in them. Those spreadsheets are more likely to be full of bugs than the programs you hate to run. But where a software bug may make you restart your computer, a spreadsheet bug may make a Fortune 1000 company restart its destiny.
Laws are largely signed without any debugging. They are usually modified in last minute compromises and then cast in concrete. Often, the bugs in a law cannot be corrected for political reasons, no matter how dumb they are. I'll give you an example in my next post.
I cringe every time I hear that a prosecutor, or a vendor, has found an imaginative, unexpected way to use a law. That generally means they have found a BUG, a mistake in the original intent. No one knows anything about testing laws before they are signed, designing them to minimize bugs, running test cases on them, applying beta tests to see what unexpected problems they can cause. Laws govern our lives even more than computers, and they are riddled with stupid errors. I'll give you a few favorite examples soon. Legislators may read the final draft and say, “Yes, that's what we mean,” but they don't apply real world tests to their laws before they are signed.
There's got to be a better way. And there isn't.
Thanks.
I know that most of you are sick about the quality of the computer programs you have to use. They are riddled with bugs and bad behaviors, and sometimes you'd like to kill the programmers who created them. But you're only seeing those programs after they've been debugged. If they hadn't been properly tested, if they hadn't been designed for debugging, they would be a thousand times worse.
Programmers understand debugging. We know that a series of instructions to carry out a process, no matter how clear and obvious it looks, may be riddled with mistakes. We know how to find most of those mistakes. We know how to arrange the instructions to minimize bad mistakes. We know how to feed sets of prepared data into programs to determine whether they produce correct results.
Most of the rest of humanity hasn't a clue about debugging. And to us, that's a great tragedy, a disaster in the making, and there's nothing we can do about it. You can mix with us, but our skill won't rub off on you. Here are two awful examples:
Spreadsheets often rule businesses. Complex spreadsheets shot through with formulas. Executives bow to their spreadsheets and adjust their company priorities as the spreadsheet results demand. But how many of these damn things are debugged? Many of them have been created by businessmen with no software discipline in them. Those spreadsheets are more likely to be full of bugs than the programs you hate to run. But where a software bug may make you restart your computer, a spreadsheet bug may make a Fortune 1000 company restart its destiny.
Laws are largely signed without any debugging. They are usually modified in last minute compromises and then cast in concrete. Often, the bugs in a law cannot be corrected for political reasons, no matter how dumb they are. I'll give you an example in my next post.
I cringe every time I hear that a prosecutor, or a vendor, has found an imaginative, unexpected way to use a law. That generally means they have found a BUG, a mistake in the original intent. No one knows anything about testing laws before they are signed, designing them to minimize bugs, running test cases on them, applying beta tests to see what unexpected problems they can cause. Laws govern our lives even more than computers, and they are riddled with stupid errors. I'll give you a few favorite examples soon. Legislators may read the final draft and say, “Yes, that's what we mean,” but they don't apply real world tests to their laws before they are signed.
There's got to be a better way. And there isn't.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Breed Apart (1): Statistics, Probability.
A small subgroup of the human race understands statistics and probability. The rest of us don't, and most of the time we make terrible decisions based on our vague misunderstanding of what's more likely to happen. We can mix with those who understand better than we, but hardly anything of their knowledge rubs off on us. This elite subgroup seems a bit weird to us, but to them: we seem like noble idiots enacting a grand tragedy. They can hardly bear to notice how poorly we behave.
I have mentioned this subgroup because, in my next post, I want to tell you about a similar group, a subgroup to which I belong. Oh, the tragedy ...
I have mentioned this subgroup because, in my next post, I want to tell you about a similar group, a subgroup to which I belong. Oh, the tragedy ...
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The iPhone Key:
It's so easy to see this coming: you buy a new car, and you own an iPhone (probably a future iPhone, with some additional hardware). You download the Carkey application from the Apple app store. The car dealer gives you the code for your car, and you program that into the Carkey app. Now you can unlock and start your car from your iPhone, you don't need to buy an expensive metal “smart” key for your car. And as usual, this feature comes to Apple first; all the other phone manufacturers eat their hearts out for a year or two, before they are allowed to offer the Carkey app for their own phones.
Why not? This is just routine computer convergence.
Oops, I better call AAA; my iPhone needs a recharge.
Why not? This is just routine computer convergence.
Oops, I better call AAA; my iPhone needs a recharge.
Friday, February 13, 2009
'Dissing' Steve Post:
Steve Post used to produce a morning classical music progam on WNYC. It was a fine program. His choice of music was good, and his news-reading was incomparable. He would read bad news in a mordant tone, expressing remarkable doubt at every assurance given to us by those in the mainstream. You only had to hear Steve read, just once, that a reported accident had released no significant radiation into the environment, never to believe such assurances again.
Well, WNYC revamped its programming format, and Steve Posts's program disappeared. I found that very sad, but time has gone on, and now Steve Post has a program that really feels like a Podcast. (Some of the shows are available as podcast downloads.) It's called the No Show. Steve mixes music of many types, mostly not classical, to punctuate his reminiscences and reveries on life. He's allowed to talk a lot more now, and some of his extended musings are worth listening to.
I recently received an email notifying me that there will be eight more episodes of the No show this year. I am repeating this email in its entirety, because it seems to contain the worst insult that Steve Post has ever received. Here it is:
In case you missed it, here's the insult:
"Note that The NO SHOW will not be heard on March 14 in order to bring you a special program of much greater interest, to be determined."
Evidently, Steve's show will not be heard on March 14 because the station already knows that they will broadcast something more important; but they do not know what that is yet. This plan makes sense, if WNYC has already determined that everything else in this world is more important than the No Show. Steve, say it isn't so!
Well, WNYC revamped its programming format, and Steve Posts's program disappeared. I found that very sad, but time has gone on, and now Steve Post has a program that really feels like a Podcast. (Some of the shows are available as podcast downloads.) It's called the No Show. Steve mixes music of many types, mostly not classical, to punctuate his reminiscences and reveries on life. He's allowed to talk a lot more now, and some of his extended musings are worth listening to.
I recently received an email notifying me that there will be eight more episodes of the No show this year. I am repeating this email in its entirety, because it seems to contain the worst insult that Steve Post has ever received. Here it is:
There's good news and there's bad news.
The good news is that The NO SHOW with Steve Post is returning to the air for an eight-week run.
The bad news is that The NO SHOW with Steve Post is returning to the air for an eight-week run.
(It all depends on your point of view.)
The NO SHOW will air on Saturdays at 4 PM on the following dates:
February 7, 14, 21, 28
March 7, 21, 28
April 4
Note that The NO SHOW will not be heard on March 14 in order to bring you a special program of much greater interest, to be determined.
In case you missed it, here's the insult:
"Note that The NO SHOW will not be heard on March 14 in order to bring you a special program of much greater interest, to be determined."
Evidently, Steve's show will not be heard on March 14 because the station already knows that they will broadcast something more important; but they do not know what that is yet. This plan makes sense, if WNYC has already determined that everything else in this world is more important than the No Show. Steve, say it isn't so!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
How to save the Newspapers:
I may have been intemperate in my previous post. I shouldn't have blamed us all for overcontemplating A-Rod and his steroids. I should place the blame where it belongs, on the great desire of newspapers to stay in print. They've got to entertain us now, even the New York Times, and they are trying hard.
I'm rooting for the papers, so I have a helpful suggestion: they should try to find some dirt on whether A-rod has paid social security taxes for all the people he's employed. Any mistake there should sell a few copies, especially if he decides to run for office as Sarah Palin's VP candidate (he'll be over 35). Maybe A-Rod and Madonna did something so weird that they needed baby sitters, who knows?
I'm rooting for the papers, so I have a helpful suggestion: they should try to find some dirt on whether A-rod has paid social security taxes for all the people he's employed. Any mistake there should sell a few copies, especially if he decides to run for office as Sarah Palin's VP candidate (he'll be over 35). Maybe A-Rod and Madonna did something so weird that they needed baby sitters, who knows?
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Assesslessness: and a Nation of Prudes:
The revelation that A-Rod tested positive for steroids in 2003 has set off so much over-analysis, handwringing and backfiling, that I will not even bother to link to a single instance of all the smugrage. Rodriguez was caught in preliminary tests that were supposed to be destroyed and not made public. He apparently used an illegal substance before baseball moved to make it formally illegal. And yet, somehow, he’s expected to grovel, very convincingly, if he desires not to shove his reputation down the tubes.
Meanwhile, our national leaders erase their disasters with stupid admissions like “mistakes were made." What's going on? A pattern is emerging, and it’s a very distressing one. We’ve invented side tests for important roles. A good politician, as I’m sure you know, is someone who has paid all possible taxes, and avoided all sexual kinks.
Why do we apply these side tests (side bets?) to our public figures? Here's what I think: we as a nation have given up our right to assess real quality; we prefer to substitute meaningless measures wherever we find them. By the year 2020, I expect the president of the United States, and also the highest paid player in American sports, to be people who have never eaten transfats. Or smoked. Or left a lightbulb on overnight.
Sheesh.
Meanwhile, our national leaders erase their disasters with stupid admissions like “mistakes were made." What's going on? A pattern is emerging, and it’s a very distressing one. We’ve invented side tests for important roles. A good politician, as I’m sure you know, is someone who has paid all possible taxes, and avoided all sexual kinks.
Why do we apply these side tests (side bets?) to our public figures? Here's what I think: we as a nation have given up our right to assess real quality; we prefer to substitute meaningless measures wherever we find them. By the year 2020, I expect the president of the United States, and also the highest paid player in American sports, to be people who have never eaten transfats. Or smoked. Or left a lightbulb on overnight.
Sheesh.
Monday, February 09, 2009
The Yankees, very $$$$$$:
If you're wondering why the Yankee's recently bought yet another incredibly expensive baseball player, I can explain. They are trying to become too big to fail.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Up/Down Spin:
We recently stayed at a hotel that has a pair of toilet roll spindles in each bathroom. I've seen this arrangement in other places. The idea, as I'm sure you know, is that you keep using one roll until it's empty, and then housekeeping has plenty of time to replace that roll while you start on the other one.
But the toilet paper rolls in our bathroom were arranged to solve an entirely different problem. One roll dispensed paper from the top; the other dispensed from the bottom. Many people feel rather passionately that one of these arrangements is the only way to go. Well, whichever you prefer: we had that one.
But the toilet paper rolls in our bathroom were arranged to solve an entirely different problem. One roll dispensed paper from the top; the other dispensed from the bottom. Many people feel rather passionately that one of these arrangements is the only way to go. Well, whichever you prefer: we had that one.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
I fixed a hardware problem!
It rarely happens that a software guy fixes a hardware problem. I treasure these rare events, and, well, here's another one. It doesn't matter that I brought it on myself in the first place.
We have a nice Dell desktop computer. The first time I needed to open it, to install a board, I could not figure out how to get the box open. But – as you may have heard – the Internet is wonderful. I searched for the PC's model number and the words “open case”, and I got instructions on how to open it up to get at the computer's innards.
But ... before I searched the Internet, I had tried something simpler. I yanked the front panel off. I heard a small piece of plastic break, and there I was, holding the separated front panel, with no way to get at the inside of the computer. I replaced the front panel and attached it in place with – you know what I'm going to say, don't you – Duct Tape.
Okay, so now it's a year later, and occasionally my wife complains that the on/off button's not working. (And I should have listened to her, you know what I mean?) A few days ago, we came home from vacation and turned the computer on just fine. But now, it's off and it won't go on. Pushing the ON button doesn't even make the PC run its Power On Self Test.
I suspected a power supply problem, something I thought I could diagnose and fix. But I decided to check for the even simpler problem first. I undid the duct tape, ripped off the front panel again, and pressed the real ON switch. (When you press the ON switch on that front panel, it presses another switch beneath it; that's the real ON switch.) The computer came up just fine.
I fixed this problem with larger pieces of Duct Tape. Okay, I know you're going to complain that Duct Tape isn't really hardware. Let's call it: firmware.
We have a nice Dell desktop computer. The first time I needed to open it, to install a board, I could not figure out how to get the box open. But – as you may have heard – the Internet is wonderful. I searched for the PC's model number and the words “open case”, and I got instructions on how to open it up to get at the computer's innards.
But ... before I searched the Internet, I had tried something simpler. I yanked the front panel off. I heard a small piece of plastic break, and there I was, holding the separated front panel, with no way to get at the inside of the computer. I replaced the front panel and attached it in place with – you know what I'm going to say, don't you – Duct Tape.
Okay, so now it's a year later, and occasionally my wife complains that the on/off button's not working. (And I should have listened to her, you know what I mean?) A few days ago, we came home from vacation and turned the computer on just fine. But now, it's off and it won't go on. Pushing the ON button doesn't even make the PC run its Power On Self Test.
I suspected a power supply problem, something I thought I could diagnose and fix. But I decided to check for the even simpler problem first. I undid the duct tape, ripped off the front panel again, and pressed the real ON switch. (When you press the ON switch on that front panel, it presses another switch beneath it; that's the real ON switch.) The computer came up just fine.
I fixed this problem with larger pieces of Duct Tape. Okay, I know you're going to complain that Duct Tape isn't really hardware. Let's call it: firmware.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Two Remarkable Mini-Computer Contracts:
In the 1970's, I worked at a company that sold specialized mini-computers and software for process control, mostly to refineries and power companies. I've already blogged many of my experiences at this company, but recently one more story popped into my mind. Here are two of the strangest contracts I have ever worked on.
We developed a process control computer for a small group at Westinghouse. One programmer at our company did the entire thing, and it was expected to be about a three month job. But the manager at Westinghouse kept finding fault and requesting changes. Some of these were bugs that our company had to fix. We made some of the changes free, for the goodwill we expected to get when the system was up and running. And the customer paid for a few of the changes, I believe.
After an entire year, the manager at Westinghouse accepted the system. Westinghouse immediately fired him and his entire group. Our directors ruefully post-mortemed with our customer. He explained that he had always known his group would be canned the moment the computer was delivered; he kept the project going as long as he could to save his job. If only we had known! We could have made the requested changes in a much more trivial fashion, if the computer system was never going to be used. (If this story doesn't make much sense to you ... well, it never made much sense to us, either.)
The second contract is even stranger. (I've updated this blog entry to make it clearer. I hope.) My company had a customizable product, a computer system that analyzed Electrocardiograms and sent reports back to cardiologists. Salesman 'A', who worked for a medical company I will not name, did a “middleman sale” for his company. That is, he sold our system to a customer, and hired our company to customize and deliver it. My company always worked on fixed price contracts. That means that we guesstimated all hardware and development costs, and made a bid we guessed we could profit from. We delivered this machine, and salesman A's company paid us for it. I think we made a modest profit on delivery. I'm sure that at this point, A's company also profited from what the customer paid them. Shortly thereafter, salesman A disappeared, and the medical company sent salesman B to talk to us.
Mr. B had a problem. Or rather, the customer who had bought the electrocardiogram analysis system had many problems. They wanted a lot of unpaid changes to the computer system, and the medical company was prepared to pay us to make every one of these unexpected changes. Mr. B explained that salesman A had nailed down this deal by adding a remarkable clause that should never have gotten past the company's lawyers. The contract said that the system would be modified in any way the customer desired, until they were entirely satisfied. I'm not making this up! Salesman B was not expecting to make money on this contract. He was just hoping the work would not go on forever. His company paid us for a lot of additional work, before the customer ran out of changes to request.
We developed a process control computer for a small group at Westinghouse. One programmer at our company did the entire thing, and it was expected to be about a three month job. But the manager at Westinghouse kept finding fault and requesting changes. Some of these were bugs that our company had to fix. We made some of the changes free, for the goodwill we expected to get when the system was up and running. And the customer paid for a few of the changes, I believe.
After an entire year, the manager at Westinghouse accepted the system. Westinghouse immediately fired him and his entire group. Our directors ruefully post-mortemed with our customer. He explained that he had always known his group would be canned the moment the computer was delivered; he kept the project going as long as he could to save his job. If only we had known! We could have made the requested changes in a much more trivial fashion, if the computer system was never going to be used. (If this story doesn't make much sense to you ... well, it never made much sense to us, either.)
The second contract is even stranger. (I've updated this blog entry to make it clearer. I hope.) My company had a customizable product, a computer system that analyzed Electrocardiograms and sent reports back to cardiologists. Salesman 'A', who worked for a medical company I will not name, did a “middleman sale” for his company. That is, he sold our system to a customer, and hired our company to customize and deliver it. My company always worked on fixed price contracts. That means that we guesstimated all hardware and development costs, and made a bid we guessed we could profit from. We delivered this machine, and salesman A's company paid us for it. I think we made a modest profit on delivery. I'm sure that at this point, A's company also profited from what the customer paid them. Shortly thereafter, salesman A disappeared, and the medical company sent salesman B to talk to us.
Mr. B had a problem. Or rather, the customer who had bought the electrocardiogram analysis system had many problems. They wanted a lot of unpaid changes to the computer system, and the medical company was prepared to pay us to make every one of these unexpected changes. Mr. B explained that salesman A had nailed down this deal by adding a remarkable clause that should never have gotten past the company's lawyers. The contract said that the system would be modified in any way the customer desired, until they were entirely satisfied. I'm not making this up! Salesman B was not expecting to make money on this contract. He was just hoping the work would not go on forever. His company paid us for a lot of additional work, before the customer ran out of changes to request.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
No snow for old men:
If you're male and over forty, I hope you know that there's danger of heart attack and death if you shovel snow. Unfortunately, snow obeys Murphy's law, finding special ways to fall on your grounds such that you're the only person available to do something about it. Now I'm not a doctor, and I probably have no idea what I'm doing, but here's what I do:
I do not lift snow. I just push it out of the way. Lifting, especially with heavy snow, is just asking for trouble.
I use shovel snow barehanded. I want to do only a little at a time, and I come inside when my hands feel cold and awful. This is a graduated limiting maneuver, because my risk increases as the temperature drops, but my hands get cold faster, and send me inside sooner, when the temperature is low.
So far, so good. Comments? Advice? I'd appreciate advice.
I do not lift snow. I just push it out of the way. Lifting, especially with heavy snow, is just asking for trouble.
I use shovel snow barehanded. I want to do only a little at a time, and I come inside when my hands feel cold and awful. This is a graduated limiting maneuver, because my risk increases as the temperature drops, but my hands get cold faster, and send me inside sooner, when the temperature is low.
So far, so good. Comments? Advice? I'd appreciate advice.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
A reference to Robert Musil (not completely unclever) is now credited forever to the wrong person:
Sorry about the long title, but I'm still chuckling over another example of how mistakes on the web run rampant forever.
Charlotte Roche's novel Wetlands (a questionable translation of the original German title: Feuchtgebiete) has finally been published in English. The British paper Observer published a review, and you can find the following quote all over the web:
The hilarious 'line' from the review is:
But mostly, she thinks, in the great German tradition. Where Musil had a Man Without Qualities, Roche brings us a Woman without Pants.
If you appreciate that quote, then you may share in Sophie Harrison's likely frustration at being misnamed. Here's Sophie Harrison's review. And if you're curious, here's a more balanced review.
Charlotte Roche's novel Wetlands (a questionable translation of the original German title: Feuchtgebiete) has finally been published in English. The British paper Observer published a review, and you can find the following quote all over the web:
Sophie Hannah's review provides this hilarious line about the book's protagonist:
The hilarious 'line' from the review is:
But mostly, she thinks, in the great German tradition. Where Musil had a Man Without Qualities, Roche brings us a Woman without Pants.
If you appreciate that quote, then you may share in Sophie Harrison's likely frustration at being misnamed. Here's Sophie Harrison's review. And if you're curious, here's a more balanced review.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable Soup: no longer Kosher:
Look sharp, you may still find a few cans of Campbell's Vegveg soup that has a Kosher symbol. According to Arlene Mathes-Scharf, Campbell used to produce the VegVeg soup (and possibly a few other soups?) at a separate Kosher plant, but they are now making the soup in all their plants, due to the increased cost of shipping.
Update: I can't be sure about this, but it looks like my queries to the Kashruth Alert web page and the Webbe Rebbe led to more alerts about Campbell Soup. This is really sad, especially since shipping costs must be pretty low at this moment.
Update: I can't be sure about this, but it looks like my queries to the Kashruth Alert web page and the Webbe Rebbe led to more alerts about Campbell Soup. This is really sad, especially since shipping costs must be pretty low at this moment.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
43, 44 and counting:
We have our 44th president. We also have our 43rd Superbowl. Next year, I hope we will still have our 44th President, and our 44th Superbowl. During President Obama's term, the Superbowl count will pass the presidential count. (Oh, ... so what ...).
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Follow that PDA!
While on vacation, we dined at a restaurant that is in the Shamash restaurant data base. While we enjoyed our meal, I took out my N800 Nokia PDA and camped onto a nearby wireless network. I connected to the Shamash data base and brought up the one review of this restaurant, which was very positive.
When the owner came to our table, I showed him the review. He got quite excited and asked if he could show his wife (the cook). She was sitting just a few tables away at that moment, so I said “sure.” He took my PDA to her, and then took it to yet another table to show some regular patrons. It was kind of sweet, watching my PDA parade around the room, bringing so much pleasure with it. I kept an eye on my PDA, wondering if it was going to stay in sight (it did). Eventually, I even got it back.
The restaurant, which is a lot of fun and has good food, is: Sabra, in Tucson, Az.
When the owner came to our table, I showed him the review. He got quite excited and asked if he could show his wife (the cook). She was sitting just a few tables away at that moment, so I said “sure.” He took my PDA to her, and then took it to yet another table to show some regular patrons. It was kind of sweet, watching my PDA parade around the room, bringing so much pleasure with it. I kept an eye on my PDA, wondering if it was going to stay in sight (it did). Eventually, I even got it back.
The restaurant, which is a lot of fun and has good food, is: Sabra, in Tucson, Az.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Chivalry dies again:
I'm just back from a vacation, on which I rented a car that did not have a remote-control key. Only the driver's door could be opened by a key. From there, I could lock and unlock all the doors by pressing buttons on the inside of the driver's door.
This arrangement struck me as really dumb. In part, I had to get used to it. Our old car was entirely manual, but it had key locks on all four doors. Our new car has a remote control key to unlock any door. But the real problem with this rental car is a matter of chivalry: it's impossible to unlock and open the passenger door first, which is often exactly what one wants to do. (Call me old-fashioned if you wish, but I'm also thinking of bitter wind and rain.)
This arrangement struck me as really dumb. In part, I had to get used to it. Our old car was entirely manual, but it had key locks on all four doors. Our new car has a remote control key to unlock any door. But the real problem with this rental car is a matter of chivalry: it's impossible to unlock and open the passenger door first, which is often exactly what one wants to do. (Call me old-fashioned if you wish, but I'm also thinking of bitter wind and rain.)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Grand mA:
Boats are the most varied of vehicles. From kayak to aircraft carrier, there are distinctive classes of boats of every size, and incredible variety in every class. Perhaps that's why most boats are individually named. Still ... why not cars? Why don't most car owners want to detail a name on their car?
I'm trying to think of a good car name right now. It's not easy, but when I do ...
I'm trying to think of a good car name right now. It's not easy, but when I do ...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
What is a Seminar?
Every once in a while, you see a word so badly misused that you can take pleasure in knowing that the speaker (or writer) has no idea what he's talking about; or alternatively, that a word has acquired a ridiculous new meaning. I felt that way years ago, when I received a spam email from a porno web site that boasted: "we only use professional amateurs."
Well here we go again: I received a four-page ad for a course on estate planning and retirement. The glossy says, in big bright letters: "This 3 session course is not a seminar!" Now what could they mean by that? The next sentence of their brochure explains: "No companies or products will be mentioned." Now that's a seminar.
Well here we go again: I received a four-page ad for a course on estate planning and retirement. The glossy says, in big bright letters: "This 3 session course is not a seminar!" Now what could they mean by that? The next sentence of their brochure explains: "No companies or products will be mentioned." Now that's a seminar.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Imaginary Hardware:
I blogged once before about how I needed to imagine the existence of unseen hardware, in order to turn my Archos player on and off. The ON button tended not to do anything until I imagined that there was a contact beneath it that was loose inside the case, that had to be pressed by pushing the ON button at just the right angle. I have no idea what is truly under that ON button, but my imagination enabled me to control the player.
Well, my newer Zen player also has unseen hardware that I need to press just at the right angle. This player has a common feature: you turn it off; then later you turn it on, and it picks up playing where it left off. The player is turned on and off by sliding a switch to the left. Recently this feature stopped working. I would turn the player on and it would start playing from the beginning of the current track. I could not imagine what had gone wrong. I had no choice but to manually bookmark the track before turning the player off, an infernal nuisance.
One day, as I turned the player off, I noticed that before losing power, it went back several tracks. For example, let's say I turned the player off in the middle of track 5. Before the display shut down, I saw the player go to the beginning of track 5, track 4, track 3.
I had the inevitable inspiration. The “left arrow” hardware button must be right next to the “on/off” button, inside the player's case. When I moved the on/off slider to the left, it touched the “left” button on the way, because that button had somehow scrunched up a little beyond where it ought to be.
The player is working fine for me now. But every time I use the on/off slider, I'm careful to slide it without pushing it down at all. That way, I avoid touching the unseen “left” button. Once again, I've conquered my player by learning how to operate its imaginary hardware.
Well, my newer Zen player also has unseen hardware that I need to press just at the right angle. This player has a common feature: you turn it off; then later you turn it on, and it picks up playing where it left off. The player is turned on and off by sliding a switch to the left. Recently this feature stopped working. I would turn the player on and it would start playing from the beginning of the current track. I could not imagine what had gone wrong. I had no choice but to manually bookmark the track before turning the player off, an infernal nuisance.
One day, as I turned the player off, I noticed that before losing power, it went back several tracks. For example, let's say I turned the player off in the middle of track 5. Before the display shut down, I saw the player go to the beginning of track 5, track 4, track 3.
I had the inevitable inspiration. The “left arrow” hardware button must be right next to the “on/off” button, inside the player's case. When I moved the on/off slider to the left, it touched the “left” button on the way, because that button had somehow scrunched up a little beyond where it ought to be.
The player is working fine for me now. But every time I use the on/off slider, I'm careful to slide it without pushing it down at all. That way, I avoid touching the unseen “left” button. Once again, I've conquered my player by learning how to operate its imaginary hardware.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Rush, Rush, Rush!
I blogged before about my adventure in ordering business cards from Vista Print, a company that claims that everything they sell is free; and then they tempt you with options and add-ons. Someone at Vista Print has a wicked sense of humor. How else to explain that they have offered me 25% off my next order, even though that order will be FREE!
Of course, no order is free, you have to pay for shipping. I bought 25 magnets for my novel, Raven's Gift. And once again, I took the cheapest shipping option, “21 day shipping”, to keep my costs down. (The 21 day shipping price is very reasonable.) And yes, I called their buff again! It took them three days to process my order, and three more days to ship it. But here's the fun part: my “21 day shipment” package had two words printed on it that you just won't believe. Here's what they said: Time Sensitive.
Of course, no order is free, you have to pay for shipping. I bought 25 magnets for my novel, Raven's Gift. And once again, I took the cheapest shipping option, “21 day shipping”, to keep my costs down. (The 21 day shipping price is very reasonable.) And yes, I called their buff again! It took them three days to process my order, and three more days to ship it. But here's the fun part: my “21 day shipment” package had two words printed on it that you just won't believe. Here's what they said: Time Sensitive.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Physical Therapy, lots of stretching exercises:
Could you make a good guess regarding the five most common words in your speech and your thoughts? I'm pretty sure I know mine. Here they are: A an the and Mississippi.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Raven's Gift -- online and complete, plenty of text:
Way back on July 20, 2008, I announced that the first five chapters of my novel, Raven's Gift, were online. The entire novel is now available free, in 29 audio downloads, at PodioBooks, in their fantasy category. And here's the RSS feed. I've also published the text of the first seven chapters at RavensGift.com. As my wife will tell you, keeping to the schedule of one recorded chapter per week turned me into a regular grump. Currently I'm not driven by any self-imposed deadlines, and oh, how relaxing that is. Worse, I know perfectly well that some of the "todo" items in my personal life ought to have deadlines. Oh well...
Monday, January 05, 2009
Little nibbles of Web Info:
A nice NYT piece by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn on the sad state of US finance has appeared in the online Times in little chunks. You can start it here, and then follow it through three more short web pages, and on to the rest of the article. I've read many short stories that are segmented into shorter webpages like this one, and I just don't get it. The short pages don't make me click on more ads, they just waste my time. What's the point? Does the NYT think that everyone who wants to read about finance has a 1,200 bps dialup modem?
Thursday, January 01, 2009
The wrong tattoo:
Plaxico Burress, the NY Giants receiver who shot himself in the nightclub, has now crashed his car when it was uninsured. Burress has a tattoo that reads:
Everything happens for a reason.
I think he made a mistake. His tattoo should say:
Everything happens to me.
Everything happens for a reason.
I think he made a mistake. His tattoo should say:
Everything happens to me.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Two-way Street:
The local university is crowded with buildings. Every bit of roadway that lets you get around with a truck or a car is precious.
A few months ago, a work crew began to pretty up a short, straight lane, about a hundred yards long. They cut up and removed a strip of asphalt and laid down white stone brick to make a sidewalk. While they worked, they reduced this lane to a one-way street, leaving them some room to work. They chopped away enough road to make a handsome sidewalk, and a curb to separate the sidewalk from the roadway. The stone brick did not extend into the space they left for a curb, however. That was apparently a job for other workers.
Every week, I walk down this lane to the radio station, and I worried about this curb. It would narrow the lane enough to turn it permanently into a one-way road, and neither direction would be adequate. This lane faces two important buildings and connects the biggest parking garage to the rest of the university; better to leave it two-way if possible. But one day another load of brick was delivered, and another group of workmen came with it. I expected that the following week, I would find a new curb jutting up into a now-permanently one-lane road.
The next week, there was still an open space to build a curb, but the brick to fill in the curb was gone. The following week, the space in the road for the curb was filled in with asphalt. So now we have a nice brick walk that will be shared by the cars and trucks that use this lane. And it will remain two-way. A good decision, I think.
A few months ago, a work crew began to pretty up a short, straight lane, about a hundred yards long. They cut up and removed a strip of asphalt and laid down white stone brick to make a sidewalk. While they worked, they reduced this lane to a one-way street, leaving them some room to work. They chopped away enough road to make a handsome sidewalk, and a curb to separate the sidewalk from the roadway. The stone brick did not extend into the space they left for a curb, however. That was apparently a job for other workers.
Every week, I walk down this lane to the radio station, and I worried about this curb. It would narrow the lane enough to turn it permanently into a one-way road, and neither direction would be adequate. This lane faces two important buildings and connects the biggest parking garage to the rest of the university; better to leave it two-way if possible. But one day another load of brick was delivered, and another group of workmen came with it. I expected that the following week, I would find a new curb jutting up into a now-permanently one-lane road.
The next week, there was still an open space to build a curb, but the brick to fill in the curb was gone. The following week, the space in the road for the curb was filled in with asphalt. So now we have a nice brick walk that will be shared by the cars and trucks that use this lane. And it will remain two-way. A good decision, I think.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Don't Give me Static!
Our home phone line had a loud background noise. It had been this way for a while. I finally decided to get it fixed. It took me an hour to arrange for Verizon to look into it. Here's why:
First, I tried to find Verizon's customer service number by Googling. This was hard, because many web sites collect complaints about Verizon, and they all show up in searches for Verizon phone and service. Now you might think I should go to Verizon's main web site and check out the "Contact Us" page. I eventually did that, but I had to make some guesses, because Verizon has a different "main" web site for each of its different services. From now on, I might remember the number for local customer service: 800-verizon.
Second, I called them and went deep, deep into a voice phone menu. It's always tempting to say, "Damn, I know more than this automated idiot" and break out, but often it's best to relax and stay with the menus as long as they offer reasonable choices. This menu was helpful. It isolated my problem and told me how to troubleshoot it before asking for a service call. They wanted me to do two tests, which the automated system was happy to tell me and retell me until I admitted that I understood them:
(A) Disconnect all phone devices and try one phone on the land line. I had already done that.
(B) Go outside my house and connect a phone to the network interface device that I would find on my outside wall, near the electrical service box. I could not believe that this device existed, but I looked and there it was.
Now I had to find a phone I could connect to this outside box. Most of our phones are wireless (no connector at all), or use A/C electricity and do not easily work outdoors. Our regular land line phone is attached very firmly to a wall. But I remembered something: an old phone in our attic that I was keeping for purely emotional reasons: it's a wonderful red color, and it looks like a Princess phone (it's more modern though). It's a simple, inexpensive two-piece telephone. I found it and took it outside.
(4) The Network interface device had jacks for six phone lines. It took me awhile to figure out which one was our land line. I disconnected it and plugged my red phone in. That's when I noticed that the red phone's headset was not attached to its base, so I couldn't hear anything. This connection requires something that looks like an RJ-11 standard phone jack, but it is narrow. My heart sank. Where would I find that in my house? I wondered if I could borrow this cable from our land line phone that's firmly attached to the wall. I went to look at it, and at once I realized I was in luck: the wire on that phone was RED! It was in fact the exact wire that was missing from my red phone.
(5) I plugged the red phone in outdoors, made a phone call and heard the bad background noise. Excellent! According to Verizon, I had just proved that it's their problem, not a problem in our house.
(6) I went deep into Verizon's menu again. It gave me a human who scheduled the work to fix the line. On the scheduled day, we got a phone call from a computer, telling us – correctly – that the problem was fixed.
In the good old days, you called a local service number and scheduled a fix in minutes. But phone calls also cost more in those times.
First, I tried to find Verizon's customer service number by Googling. This was hard, because many web sites collect complaints about Verizon, and they all show up in searches for Verizon phone and service. Now you might think I should go to Verizon's main web site and check out the "Contact Us" page. I eventually did that, but I had to make some guesses, because Verizon has a different "main" web site for each of its different services. From now on, I might remember the number for local customer service: 800-verizon.
Second, I called them and went deep, deep into a voice phone menu. It's always tempting to say, "Damn, I know more than this automated idiot" and break out, but often it's best to relax and stay with the menus as long as they offer reasonable choices. This menu was helpful. It isolated my problem and told me how to troubleshoot it before asking for a service call. They wanted me to do two tests, which the automated system was happy to tell me and retell me until I admitted that I understood them:
(A) Disconnect all phone devices and try one phone on the land line. I had already done that.
(B) Go outside my house and connect a phone to the network interface device that I would find on my outside wall, near the electrical service box. I could not believe that this device existed, but I looked and there it was.
Now I had to find a phone I could connect to this outside box. Most of our phones are wireless (no connector at all), or use A/C electricity and do not easily work outdoors. Our regular land line phone is attached very firmly to a wall. But I remembered something: an old phone in our attic that I was keeping for purely emotional reasons: it's a wonderful red color, and it looks like a Princess phone (it's more modern though). It's a simple, inexpensive two-piece telephone. I found it and took it outside.
(4) The Network interface device had jacks for six phone lines. It took me awhile to figure out which one was our land line. I disconnected it and plugged my red phone in. That's when I noticed that the red phone's headset was not attached to its base, so I couldn't hear anything. This connection requires something that looks like an RJ-11 standard phone jack, but it is narrow. My heart sank. Where would I find that in my house? I wondered if I could borrow this cable from our land line phone that's firmly attached to the wall. I went to look at it, and at once I realized I was in luck: the wire on that phone was RED! It was in fact the exact wire that was missing from my red phone.
(5) I plugged the red phone in outdoors, made a phone call and heard the bad background noise. Excellent! According to Verizon, I had just proved that it's their problem, not a problem in our house.
(6) I went deep into Verizon's menu again. It gave me a human who scheduled the work to fix the line. On the scheduled day, we got a phone call from a computer, telling us – correctly – that the problem was fixed.
In the good old days, you called a local service number and scheduled a fix in minutes. But phone calls also cost more in those times.
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