January 11, 2010 - Computer Fried

My home computer was off when I went to use it Saturday afternoon.  When I attempted to boot it, it immediately turned itself off.  While tinkering with it, I found that the fan on one of my graphics cards (an NVidia 8600) was totally gummed up (?).  I managed to power up the motherboard long enough for it spark up and catch fire.  I bought a new power supply, which is the most common hardware failure I experience, but that didn't solve my problem.

My other graphics card looks good, and my power supply seemed fine, so I bought another motherboard.  I spent an hour or so to disconnect and reconnect everything to the new motherboard, but it still wouldn't boot up.  Of the main components that could cause the problem, I could still replace the CPU and memory.  Tests with each of the memory modules faired no better, so I went out and bought a new CPU today.  That wasn't cheap, as I'm on a Core2Quad.  I sure hope this works out.

What really bothers me is that I've now bought almost all the components necessary to build a complete new system, and I've built an OLD system.  I might as well have bought cutting edge hardware, if I had known that I was going to buy all the main pieces anew.

January 7, 2010 - Theory - Definition vs the Colloquialisms

I was in a discussion with one of my coworkers about political affiliation and I was expressing my consternation that I am predominantly a conservative person, but find myself in an incompatible position with the republican party on many topics.  I am generally a political absentee -- skipping the entire political process most years.

As an example, I cited separation of church and state -- something that Republicans seem to disagree rather strongly with.  My coworker said that he thought the topic was blown completely out of proportion, which is something that I somewhat agree with.  He mentioned that in his conservative high school, they respectfully and equally discussed both "theories" of evolution and creationism.

This irked the crap out of me, because the ensuing conversation highlighted a number of things.  Firstly, the whole "separation of church and state" thing had broken down in his education.  Secondly, the consequence is that my friend doesn't understand what a theory is, at all.  And thirdly that his impression of scientific theories -- like the big bang and evolution -- is that they are just ideas, and not supported or supportable by evidence and experimentation.

In non-scientific and non-mathematical circles, a "theory" is colloquially defined as "an idea."  In this colloquialism, any idea can be a theory and there are no rules, constraints, or qualifications needed in order for the theory to exist.  This is the definition of the word "theory" as used in creationism.

In formal systems of logic, induction, and deduction -- the world where a word like "theory" was needed, created, and formalized -- the word has a far more specific meaning.  A theory is an idea that adheres to systems of logic and deduction.  It is predictive in nature.  It is falsifiable.  And it has already been tested by repeated experimentation.  In scientific parlance, a theory is as close to "fact" as any piece of inductive logic can ever aspire.

Sadly, many people -- under the influence of religion -- don't understand that a theory is scientifically equivalent to a fact for as long as it is considered valid.

January 6, 2010 - Business Requirements

I was in a conversation with a coworker about a business requirements document.  The document was 5 pages long, and consisted of a title page, a table of contents page, a document metadata page (who wrote it, date, audience, revision history), a brief introduction, literally three sentances describing the business requirements, and a page with a list of "calculations" -- a list of numbers that differentiated bad values from good ones.  He had not written the document, and his business analyst seems to be new to the role.  He felt that it didn't contain enough information and asked me what else should be in there.

It reminded me of a series of conversations that I had with developers at my previous company.  In Oxy, most of the developers were responsible for creating their own business requirements, and there was a time when we went through a lot of contractors who weren't used to doing such things for themselves.  After watching a few of them flounder and develop severely crippled applications, I put together the following rules for any data-enabled system:

1.  Each piece of data should have a tool that searches for it.
2.  Each type of data should have a tool that allows for adding new data.
3.  Each type of data should have a tool that allows for editing the data.
4.  Each type of data should have a tool that allows for deleting the data.
5.  Security should be considered for each tool (action) and considered on a record-by-record basis.
6.  Almost every system requires some level of reporting.  A "good enough" search tool sometimes replaces this.
7.  Consider how the user will navigate the application to find these tools.  (a reporting dashboard?  An admin section?)

All of these basic rules apply to almost every system, and when they don't explicitly apply, they should at least be considered.  Navigate, Add, Edit, Delete, Search, Report, & Security.

In my current coworker's case, the data comes from an external system in a feed, so he didn't feel that add/edit/delete applied to his system.  I asked him if the feed ever included new data.  Yes.  I asked him if the feed ever included old data that had been altered in some way.  Yes.  I asked him if the feed ever removed records.  Yes.  Are there any special considerations that need to be made when these three events occur?  Yes.  Admittedly, this isn't the same as developing add/edit/delete tools, and my rule is stretched quite a bit when I try to apply it here, but the exercise is similar:  How will the data change and what needs to be done to make everything work?

Business requirements -- and the skill of Business Analysis -- encompasses a lot more than just thinking through these few questions, and I don't mean to censor or trivialize the skill.  But for a person new to the role, and especially a person who is performing several roles and isn't specialized in this one, these points should be a good place to start.

December 23, 2009 - Redneck Shenanigans

December 21, 2009 - Birthday

December 11, 2009 - Savannah's Birthday

November 23, 2009 - Time's 50 Best Inventions of 2009

November 13, 2009 - Copyright, again

Another cross-pose on Copyright from Internet Evolution:

Copyright was not designed to be an economic tool.  It is meant to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries." (Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution clearly defines the purpose of any law regarding copyright)

The exclusive nature of the publisher/distributor/retailer networks make it nearly impossible for a creator to sell his work -- forcing him to give up his rights for an ancillary contract that offers a tiny fragment of the profits.  I've read that an author who writes a $7 paperback novel will receive a maximum of $0.35 in royalties from each sale.  Look at the copyright on virtually any book you own and you'll see that the writer does not own his work.  Royalties range 5 - 10 on the unbundled wholesale price of a book.  Much, much less for other types of creative work.

Secondly, Copyright allows a monopoly -- something which is widely known to be a hostile economic behavior -- only under certain balances in the form of public rights.  These balances include:  Limits on copyright duration (commonly referred to as public domain), "First Sale" which states that any creative work can be resold or loaned and protects the establishment of libraries, and "Fair Use" which cites numerous cases in which the work can be reproduced in whole or in part without profit.

The "limited monopoly" that copyright guarantees has changed in the last few decades, primarily by powerful media companies who exerted pressure (in the form of money) on lawmakers.  Instead of 28 years as prescribed by our law through 1976, it is now 95 years (for a corporation) or life + 70 years for an individual -- an addendum that the Disney corporation bought to protect Mickey Mouse -- a character which should have been in the public domain 30 years ago, now.  The public's interests weren't protected at all in this move.

The remaining rights -- "First Sale" and "Fair Use" appear to be more-or-less eliminated in every version of digital copyright law that I've seen anyone propose.

I totally agree that copyright law needs to exist and be enforced, I just don't like how every tweak of copyright advantages a corporation and disadvantages the public.  Law is meant to promote common welfare, not to enforce economic rules that give advantages to corporations.

November 12, 2009 - DLink DSM320RD

November 12, 2009 - Windows 7

November 12, 2009 - Copyright issues

Copy of a post that I made on another site:

Copyright is always an interesting topic to me, because of the ethical ambiguity inherent in the idea.  Unfortunately, it's both shocking and annoying to discuss it on Internet Evolution, because so few people here appreciate that there is anything morally ambiguous about it.  On here, too many people take for granted the concept that content must always be paid for, and that any consumption of content that occurs without payment is equivalent to theft.  While I recognize that this is one valid perspective in the range of possible perspectives, it is certainly not a perspective that has achieved anything resembling consensus.

The vast majority of people have no ethical problem with sharing books, DVDs, magazines, CDs, photographs, video games, etc, so long as its attached to a physical thing.  Further, people have no ethical issues taping broadcast tv or radio programming and sharing that.  Indeed, all of these actions are perfectly legal and also perfectly ethical.  When people try to evaluate the moral issues related to digital piracy, they don't intuit an abstraction of piracy -- they rely on a physical-world analog.  The fundamental problem with the copyright discussion at large is that physical media operates under radically different ethical rules than electronic media.  When I loan a person my DVD, they get to watch the movie without paying for it, and that's just fine.  When I let them rip my DVD to their portable device, they get to watch it without paying for it, and that's a crime.  Perhaps the biggest secondary problem is that a hundred million people are generating and publishing content online every day with zero interest in protecting that content legally or financially -- that's basically what social media is.  Copyright protection is something that concerns a very tiny percentage of content creators.

The worst possible people to pursue legislation, judgment and enforcement on any issue are the people who take-for-granted a moral position that has reached nothing resembling consensus.  It's like trying to build the "top" of a structure before pouring a foundation or any supports.  It's impossible to create a proper solution when you start with the last step, and ignore all the thought and activity that necessarily precedes it.  This conversation always seems to start at the very end, usually making too many assumptions that quite frankly aren't accurate.