Saturday - April 25, 2009
They Took Our Jobs -- The FOSS Edition
This comes up from time to time: Free and Open Source Software takes our jobs. And we should "do something" about it. Including "work together to increase the value of our hard-earned knowledge" -- whatever that might mean.
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Steven Lott
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Thursday - March 05, 2009
Microsoft and Marketing
Anyway I thought it was funny.
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Steven Lott
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Tuesday - February 17, 2009
Open Source Business Opportunities
This has been in my in-box for a while. It's still good.
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Steven Lott
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Tuesday - February 10, 2009
The Future of Windows -- And the Future WIthout WIndows
The reason for Windows used to be MS-Office. Now, the reason for Windows is Windows. Large parts of Corporate IT can't afford to do anything other than pay Microsoft whatever it wants. With the failure of Vista, those days may be winding to a close.
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Steven Lott
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Tuesday - September 09, 2008
I didn't get the memo -- apparently, I'm not on the distribution list -- in fact, there may be no list
Things change. It's hard to keep up. Sometimes the changes surprise me. Other times I get a flat spot from banging my head against the wall.
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Steven Lott
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Thursday - August 21, 2008
Universal Truths
A few links to universal truths of software development.
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Steven Lott
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Wednesday - May 14, 2008
Keeping the Customer Satisfied
One of the standard lies is the "Cone of Uncertainty". At inception, we don't know the total cost; but we'll get better at projecting the cost. At some point in the future, we'll predict with perfect accuracy. Bunk. Total Bunk. But, customers love to hear it, so we repeat it. With charts.
Posted at 06:53 PM Read More
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Steven Lott
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Estimating Uncertainty
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Wednesday - April 16, 2008
Innovation Pushed to Vendors
If 80% to 90% of the IT budget is spent keeping the lights on, where does that leave technology innovation? In the hands of vendors.
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Steven Lott
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Wednesday - April 09, 2008
Innovation includes Failure (some organizations call it "Learning", however)
A common problem with corporate IT is that "Learning" is given the pejorative label "Failure" and reviled. Go ahead, have a good idea. Now, fabricate some ROI numbers to justify it. The next step is usually an enterprise-scale effort which involves so much effort that course changes are impossible. Any lesson learned will require canceling a huge project, and calling your fabricated ROI numbers into question. Your good idea will now be described as "We tried that before and it didn't work."
Perhaps there are alternatives.
Posted at 09:20 AM Read More
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Steven Lott
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Wednesday - April 02, 2008
Technology and New Business Models
For decades, I've been trying to position technology to support a business model. It's what we're told to do. Consultants help customers support their business with appropriate technology. I just realized how fundamentally wrong that is.
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Steven Lott
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Saturday - March 08, 2008
Technical Debt, the Cost of Cheap and "Get This Done ACAP"
Recently had a fight with a manager on the Technical Debt issue. The conversation has shifted focus, so I may have made my point. There's a certain amount of "As Cheap As Possible" still floating about, though.
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Steven Lott
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Friday - February 15, 2008
Open Source and Corporate IT (again)
My experience is wholly bad. Open source has the "taint" -- it ain't Microsoft or Oracle or Java, so we can't use it.
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Steven Lott
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Saturday - December 15, 2007
Database Design and UML - What was the question again?
I was asked about using UML to depict an relational database. Superficially, the question is senseless. The answer would be the two syllable "Du-uh." However, when someone asks, it means there is confusion or politics concealing the real problem.
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Steven Lott
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Sunday - November 11, 2007
Estimating, and the Unknown Unknowns
See Joel on Software, Evidence Based Scheduling. Interesting points, in some respects. Rehashes of old advice from another point of view. In particular, the question of having to do design before estimating was raised as a possible problem with Joel's approach.
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Steven Lott
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Saturday - September 08, 2007
ROI, NPV and Shermer's column in the July Scientific American, on Homo economicus (revised)
This is a real "aha!" moment that reveals The Big Issue with management decision-making. This explains the endless CYA management, and it gives some hints at how to put rationality into the process.
Posted at 03:11 PM Read More
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Steven Lott
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Thursday - June 14, 2007
Maintenance and New Development
It's not surprising that new development feels more productive than maintenance. I wonder if it really is?
Posted at 09:23 AM Read More
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Steven Lott
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Wednesday - May 23, 2007
"As the software industry shifts away from selling shrink-wrapped software..."
Cool quote from Charles Babcock in "Three Scenarios For How Microsoft's Open Source Threat Could End" in the May 21st Information Week. Is it really true? Are services overtaking software?
I think that the analysis is flawed, and that leads me to a fourth, and more likely, scenario.
Posted at 01:31 PM Read More
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Steven Lott
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Monday - April 30, 2007
Python and Reverse Engineering, Part 5
Test Data Generation is a tangential part of
reverse engineering. Reverse engineering is the first step in building enhanced
application functionality. After reverse engineering comes the forward
engineering and the new database
design.
As part of every database
design, you must have a specific performance model, and you must do performance
testing early and often to meet the performance objectives. This means doing
performance analysis and tuning before the application software is written.
You'll need a Mock Application and
Mock Data to explore your database design. For this, you need
Python.
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Wednesday - April 18, 2007
Python and Reverse Engineering, Part 4
In part 3, we started looking at SQL embedded in C.
We wrestled with typedef, the CPP and the SQL precompiler. Having put that into
some kind of order, we can now look at parsing C source, and building a function
cross-reference.
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Tuesday - April 17, 2007
Python and Reverse Engineering, Part 3
The SQL embedded in C edition. In this posting,
we'll work through the preliminaries of parsing Embedded SQL, the C Preprocessor
and C itself. In another posting, we'll move on to gathering cross-reference
information from the C source.
Posted at 10:26 AM Read More
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