taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Work: I took a look over at Edd Dumbill’s weblog recently, and came across this posting on planning programming projects. He links to another article and mentions:

My recent return to managing a team of people has highlighted for me the difficulties of the arbitrary deadline approach to project management. Unfortunately, it’s also the default management approach applied by a lot of people, because the concept is easy to grasp.

The arbitrary deadline method is troublesome because of the difficulty of estimation. As John’s post elaborates, you can never foresee all of the problems you’ll meet along the way. The distressing inevitability of 90% of the effort being required by 2% of the deliverable is frequently inexplicable to developers themselves. Never mind the managers remote from the development!

I’ve been considering why my experience of working with open source seems generally preferable to commercial work, and this may be one of the key elements. Commercial software development is deadline-driven, whereas most open source development has not been, in my experience; ‘it’s ready when it’s ready’.

Edd suggests that using a trouble-ticket-based system for progress tracking and management is superior. I’m inclined to agree.

Tags: approach, deadline, development, dumbill, edd, experience, look, management, source, weblog, work

Web: Worth noting for the various sites in Ireland and the UK that I’ve heard of recently, who have been looking for ways to do shared, collaborative calendaring of upcoming public events: upcoming.org is your man.

Pros: Clean CSS/XHTML layout; no ads; decent management; already covers European metro areas; event calendars are easily syndicated to other sites using RSS.

Works for me!

Tags: clean, css, event, layout, man, management, metro, org, web, worth, xhtml

Spam: Well, this is just incredible. I’ve just been spammed by a .gov domain — myfloridahousemail.gov.

The irony of my first .gov spam coming from Florida is inescapable.

The message came from an IP address registered to State of Florida/Dept. of Management Services, bldg 4050 esplanade way suite 115d, Tallahassee, FL 32399-0950 US. That address looks genuine. It really does look like it came from the Florida House of Representatives.

And it was sent to a spamtrap which is on a few spammer address lists, but has never been a genuine user address. And, obviously, I don’t live in Florida ;)

Read the spam here.

Tags: address, dept, domain, gov, irony, management, message, myfloridahousemail, spam, state

Derek has an interesting suggestion for IBM:

Grab a controlling interest, tell the senior management to sod off, tell the employees to clear out their cubicles, and clear up any hint of IP confusion by selling to IBM for $1 all intellectual property, and then dissolve the corporation entirely with their 50.1% voting share.

IBM has to be careful not to actually buy the company, but strictly be a majority shareholder, making decisions that are in the majority of the shareholders’ interests, even if the other 49.9% of the shareholders vehemently oppose them. :-)

Golden parachutes for senior execs? Good luck getting them from that non-existent corporation, and since IBM never actually ‘bought’ the corporation, it’s not liable for any contracts/debts/etc. SCO may have incurred. It gets all the benefit of running SCO and none of the downside.

Gotta say, I like it. ;)

Tags: corporation, grab, hint, ibm, interest, majority, management, sco, sod, suggestion

Karlin posts a good story on the whole ‘rescue of Private Jessica Lynch’ story. Great quote:

Further, British military Group Captain Al Lockwood, the British Army spokesman at central command in Iraq, says that the British could not believe the pandering way in which the US military dealt with the US media, culminating in the Lynch episode, and the gushing, unquestioning acceptance of same by the US media. ‘In reality we had two different styles of news media management,’ said Lockwood. ‘I feel fortunate to have been part of the UK one.’

Guardian story here:

The American strategy was to concentrate on the visuals and to get a broad message out. Details - where helpful - followed behind. The key was to ensure the right television footage. The embedded reporters could do some of that. On other missions, the military used their own cameras, editing the film themselves and presenting it to broadcasters as ready-to-go packages. The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies.

One interesting result is that, while the US media (or TV at least) is happy to spew this pabulum, for some reason, these days, most other media outlets world-wide are a bit more likely to apply a critical eye, suspecting spin.

No matter whether it’s true or not, excessive media management (or filming of action movies ;) over flimsy stories is quickly exposed. This promulgates the impression world-wide that the wool is being pulled over the viewers’ eyes, and that the source of the news is fundamentally telling fibs.

Tags: action, army, british, karlin, management, news, quote, reality, rescue, story

(ish!): The management of Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has mooted “manual stimulation” of Kibabu the gorilla, in order to grab some monkey semen for artificial insemination.

“I believe it’s done in Europe”, they say (maybe they’re harking back to the days of Weimar Berlin). Zookeepers, being the ones who’d get their hands dirty (so to speak), are — understandably — not too keen.

It now looks like something called “electro-ejaculation” will be used instead… sounds painful. (Link from forteana.)

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:04:12 +1000
From: Peter Darben (spam-protected)
Subject: Gorilla Wankers

—– (from The Age (Melbourne) 31.10.02)

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/30/1035683478852.html

Gorilla tactics rejected

October 31 2002 By Phillip Cornford

Kibabu the gorilla’s inability to produce offspring has become an embarrassing industrial issue for Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

The zoo management’s proposal for an artificial insemination program using manual stimulation of the sedated gorilla was vetoed by zookeepers.

“It was too bloody dangerous,” a zookeeper said last night. “What if he woke up?”

Red-faced Taronga officials last night confirmed the masturbation program was proposed last May, but said there had been no further attempt to employ it. “I believe it’s done in Europe,” a spokesman said. “There’s been a lot of discussion on how to get semen from Kibabu for artificial insemination.”

Instead, Kibabu - whose harem numbers five females - will probably be stimulated by an electrical device, a process called electro-ejaculation. Kibabu’s failure emerged yesterday as about 350 zoo staff planned to stop work at 2pm tomorrow to discuss workplace agreement issues, including wages, working hours, stress and job-related risks.

—–

peter

Tags: gorilla, insemination, kibabu, management, night, program, semen, stimulation, taronga, zoo

Why Finns are sick of illnesses named after them.

From: “Martin Adamson” (spam-protected)
Organization: Management School
To: (spam-protected)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 12:00:05 +0000
Subject: Why Finns are sick of illnesses named after them

The Times

MONDAY APRIL 30 2001

Why Finns are sick of illnesses named after them

BY DAVID CHARTER, HEALTH CORRESPONDENT

GERMAN measles, the Ebola virus and Lassa fever may be a blight on the regions that are forever linked with the illnesses. Even conditions such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever West Nile encephalitis or even Malibu disease (a nasty skin complaint suffered by surfers) add insult to injury. Political correctness has spread to diseases. Doctors are to discuss ending the practice of naming them after places in case it has a “negative impact”.

Doctors from 70 countries meeting in France this week at the World Medical Association will hear calls for change raised by the Finnish delegation, upset that Salla disease, a genetic disorder, was named after a small town of 10,000 souls in the north of their country. It is not Finland’s only place in the lexicon of illness. Kumlinge disease, a viral encephalitis, took its name from a Finnish island and Pogosta disease recalls a small village in eastern Finland.

The Finns want an end to the practice of naming new diseases after “persons, communities or regions”, pointing out that diseases are “very seldom restricted to a certain area”. The Finns conclude: “Germs and infectious agents can usually be found anywhere in the world. When giving names to diseases or pathological conditions, no names should be used, which could insult or have negative impact on persons, communities or regions.”

The naming of diseases is regarded as something of a privilege for scientists making the discovery, as reflected by conditions named after researchers such as Huntington’s, Down’s and Hughes Syndrome — a blood-clotting disorder described in 1983 by Graham Hughes, a British doctor.

But there are also countless examples of places forever linked to the first recognition of rare and distressing illnesses, such as Marburg’s disease (an acute haemorrhagic fever, with some of first reported cases in Marburg, Germany, in 1967). Peter Lackman, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said: “The naming of diseases is something which has grown up in a quite unorganised way and this is probably inevitable. What is important is that a consistent name is always given. Otherwise this causes confusion.

“For example, the English Disease is what the French used to call syphilis while the English called it the French Disease.”

Tags: disease, disorder, fever, finns, impact, management, organization, practice, school, world