I really enjoy Joel's writing. He does a nice job explaining the state of affairs: Martian Headsets - Joel on Software
I really enjoy Joel's writing. He does a nice job explaining the state of affairs: Martian Headsets - Joel on Software
Responding to Misha's post... I got too long, random and incoherent to actually leave this as a comment. So I'm just posting it on my own blog:
Actually most people I know who call themselves liberals are more interested in solving problems instead of the specific means of the solution; individualism, collectivism are each tools in the arsenal. I do agree with you to watch out for people who implement solutions and abandon metrics to see if it actually solves problems more effectively (or at all), or even worse, are proud of the numbers going south because it raises the consequences of "bad" personal behavior.
Since conservatives seem more dogmatic about how one solves problems (to use your definition) they tend to assume their opposition must be defined by solving problems the other way, collectivism. Every time they see other side use any form of collectivism, it just confirms their assumption. Of course they also seem to suffer from a giant blind spot when it comes to moral collectivism, in which case individual choice of behavior is no longer sufficient, and they back government coercion. To which I see the heart of the essay responding to. Those people aren't real conservatives then.
This brings up one of my open ended questions that I've been pondering the world with since high school. Can you can judge a political ideology by it's ideas alone, or if you have to evaluate it in the frame of how people have actually implemented them and the results. Of course this is a false dichotomy, you can't evaluate pure ideas regarding human behavior and social patterns, and no idea is ever purely implemented. (Asmoiv wrote an entire science fiction series on the existence of a general purpose scientific method of human behavior, it remains science fiction). This is a reminder to me that while you can try to define a movement all you like in terms of nice pat definitions, it is really the pragmatic behaviors of it's self proclaimed followers that we must judge it by. Misha falls into this trap by defining the intellectually pure movement he wishes instead of the movement it is. He fights against labels that are not really there to be descriptive, but rather mealy serve as a commonly agreed upon label, which at best is aspirational and more typically ironic.
There is also some non-sequiturs that seem to claim that because he, personally, wasn't convinced of a given governmental policy, it is therefore a delusional radical collectivist thing, instead of a policy adopted by the system of government we all implicitly and sometimes explicitly consent to live under. I also have to remind myself of that fact every now and then during this current administration.
In the end I see almost zero practical value in Misha's exercise. The reality is that either side will say whatever it takes to sound appealing to some measured off groups of constituents backed by some semblance of an intellectual fig leaf (mostly formed in demonizing the other group and pseudo-science). This continues until the internal contradictions of the coalition can no longer be overlooked by it members, causing the group to implode until a new form emerges.
I believe you need to simply hop on a bus that you think it heading in the right direction without wrapping your identity up with in the vehicle you are riding on that day.
A quick story to add to Pamela's announcement. After we got back the news that they didn't find amniotic fluid, I went to check with the doctor what the plan was. She told me that we were waiting for a call from our doctor, and if he doesn't get back in 15 minutes, she would do a check and probably send us home. I told her that I was glad for the more time because we still had some more work to do on choosing a name. At this point she looked up at me and said. "It won't help". The nurse next to her also looked right at me and said, "No, it won't."
After the delivery, Pamela was fixated for hours on finalizing our choice. At that point it was her highest priority (before the birth, there were a couple things on her mind too). I was focused on staying awake and getting some pictures in and I also knew that sans sleep I wouldn't be much use. Caitlyn was pretty much a done deal by that point (but I still sorta liked Chloe). However, the middle name was in flux. I did some more name searching and we slowly converge on the name from a list of about 5. I started over analyzing the combinations trying to figure out how some common sounds at ends of names "work" and some don't (need different count of syllables to add some balancing asymmetry to symmetry of the sounds?). At this point we took a step back and just went with what we had. Later, when I told the name to my mother, she went "Arwen? like in Lord of the Rings?". Sure enough the top web search hits where for exactly that (if we have another, I'll make sure to do a search before telling anyone the name). Further down the list was a link to the 28 most geeky baby names with an entry that read "Arwen - Again, it could have been Eowyn. Plus, it’s quite a pretty name." and a comment from an Arwen, "Nice thing about “Arwen” is that it is geeky to those who are geeks, and flies under the radar for others." Other sites had similar comments. That comment plus how I really liked the name decided the issue, so we kept it.
Why is it that people believe that every release of Windows is entirely new code? I've never seen anyone from Microsoft ever claim any such thing, but every release I see people talking about the claim. Having said that, in every OS release almost every component gets touched if just to fix potential security vulnerabilities found by automated tools. That's the advantage of a full OS release, you get the most complete testing cycle Microsoft can manage (internally and externally). Let's see if I can introduce a lexicon for people to talk about OS release changes. Here are some categories to count and measure:
Looking forward, we already know that some Architectural Rewiring is happing in the next Windows release with MinWin and with such major Subsystem Replacements in Vista and the compressed schedule for the next release, I can't imagine too many Subsystem Replacements happening, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Reading the original IE Blog Article and the /. Discussion on the X-UA-Compatible markings, I have reached a couple of conclusions.
For the sake of the last camp, I will attempt to make the issues clear up the problem constraints (and fail).
So now that you understand the constraints and you still have issues, make the world a better place and figure out a better solution then Microsoft did.
I was reading the comments in a post by Schneier today regarding some office in the military thinking about apple servers to avoid the attacks made against windows, and kept seeing the meme of "monoculture == bad". This is not a new debate, but I want to jot some thoughts.
From the Slate Daily podcast, I learned something (with the risk of invoking Godwin's Law) about the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance controversy:
For those who may have skipped that day in your constitutional-law class, it's worth repeating that the pledge controversy began in Hitler's Germany when the Nazis sent thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses to concentration camps to punish them for refusing to make the Hitler salute to the Nazi flag on the grounds that they don't believe in swearing allegiance to any worldly government and didn't recognize Adolf as a semi-demi-divinity.
As a result, the American leader of the Witnesses denounced the hand-over-heart flag-salute American Pledge of Allegiance on similar grounds. The flag as false idol. It would seem to me other religions should have joined in.
Just to reminds us what we mean by false idol; Cue Exodus 20:4-5:
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
Maybe the point of having the "under god" line added, to make sure it's clear that country is second before religion, although I think there are some wouldn't like that interpretation. Of course if one believes that the American government is fundamentally supposed to be a religious organization, then that might be a way out of the contradiction too.
As I learned from the Slate GabFest Cocktail Chatter segment, we have learned a bit more about how breast milk was giving an IQ boost. Turns out that some 10% of babies do not have the genetics to receive the IQ boost. The overall theme, It's Genetics + Environment, not Nature vrs Nuture.
I've never quite understood how economic conservatives deal with the cognitive dissidence of supporting abstinence-only education. Aside from being a wasteful use of tax money, the position runs counter to what makes free markets work; individual choice and information. Abstinence only education is on the wrong side of the equation; limiting choice and reducing available information. Why should anyone be surprised it is less effective at producing good outcomes?
Robert Reich recently passed through Seattle and one of his engagements was recorded on the KUOW Speakers Forumpodcast. He had earlier that day been by Microsoft and I unfortunately missed the event, I will have to see if it was internally recorded and skip to the Q/A. He is currently out on a book tour for his new book "Super Capitalism". The premise of the talk seems to attempt to explain the change in American politics from the 40s and 50s where people were widely involved and optimistic about democratic politics and organizations.He sketches out a model of how he feels the relationship between democracy and capitalism should work. In so many words he describes the idea the prisoner dilemma for consumers. You want to support some random cause such as not supporting companies involved with terrorist states or using child labor, but you rationally believe that your individual choice to not get the bet price/quality mix won't really matter. Specifically that you can't trust others to make the same buying choices. The solution is to control to common rules of the game via laws. However this runs into two major problems.
First, corporate lobbyist control a lot of the campaign cash flow and potential get a lot of stopping power against rules they don't like. Reich shows this by pointing out how common Congressional chastising is without any legislation. The appearance of concern without doing anything about it. A dog and pony show that works for both the companies and the politicians. Reich avoids blaming the companies for being in Washington because the primary reason they are in Washington is that their competitors are. (Proving the point, he mentions Microsoft and Yahoo for why Google has a large presence, when it was companies like IBM, Novell and Sun is why Microsoft has its presence).
Second, The effects of globalization (Reich calls it the technology inheritance of WWII). The transportation improvements meant that more companies could compete and putting a lot ore pressure on prices. The same technology boom enabled a huge growth in investment. These two pressures build up and give companies a lot of incentive to cut cost every way possible, leading to his point that you can't expect a company to be moral. Shame is a PR problem and it is responded to with more PR, not real change. He takes the PR shame approach to activism as a fundamentally flaw methodology. He doesn't adequately address the next problem, with laying down laws as the approach to corporate behavior change, globalization and very weak world government means that many such laws only hurt the country passing them. He makes two counter arguments. The extra-territorial affect of the US is really large and second that doing the right thing will cost something.
This last concept that there is a cost and benefit to such actions resonates deeply for me. All to often I've seen otherwise smart people rely on a form of wishful thinking to believe that you can't take actions like lower taxes or build roads and not have to pay for it somehow. Yes, yes, sometimes the system is so off that there is such an effect, but it's bizarre to me that people believe it is the common case. This brings us to Former President Bill Clinton's visit to campus. (You can catch roughly the same speech at slate). Clinton made almost the opposite argument from Reich. He basks in the glow of how many new non-governmental organizations now exist and how much money and affect they have. He also sells fixing global warming as something that actually benefits one's economy instead of hurting it.
Overall I was very happy to start to feel some of architectural underpinnings of our current political system and some views of what it should be like. Reich sounded fundamentally backwards looking in approach, but was able to diagnose some malfunction, Clinton seems to be proud of some of the aspects of where we are today, but I'm not convinced that the new system works better.
