Paul M. Jones

The underlying problem here is that most software is not very good. Writing good software is hard. There are thousands of opportunities to make mistakes. More importantly, it's difficult if not impossible to anticipate all the situations that a software program will be faced with, especially when--as was the case for both UBS and Knight--it is interacting with other software programs that are not under your control. It's difficult to test software properly if you don't know all the use cases that it's going to have to support.

There are solutions to these problems, but they are neither easy nor cheap. You need to start with very good, very motivated developers. You need to have development processes that are oriented toward quality, not some arbitrary measure of output. You need to have a culture where people can review each other's work often and honestly. You need to have comprehensive testing processes -- with a large dose of automation -- to make sure that the thousands of pieces of code that make up a complex application are all working properly, all the time, on all the hardware you need to support. You need to have management that understands that it's better to ship a good product late than to ship a bad product on time. Few software companies do this well, and even fewer of the large companies that write much of their software.

This is why there is so much bad software out there. In most cases we learn to live with it. Remember the blue screen of death? Ever stood at an airline counter waiting interminably for the agent to make what should be a simple switch from one flight to another? Ever been on the phone with a customer service representative who says his computer is slow or not working? That's what living with bad software looks like.

But in our increasingly complex and interconnected financial system, it's not clear we can live with it.

Read the whole thing. Via Software Runs the World: How Scared Should We Be That So Much of It Is So Bad? - James Kwak - The Atlantic.

In 2001, a then 11-year-old Cassandra Ann Kennedy accused her dad of rape. Her father, Thomas Edward Kennedy denied the allegations, but was still found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Nine years later, Cassandra admitted that she lied about the rape. And just last week, her dad was finally released from prison, after serving a wrongful 9-year sentence.

“I did a horrible thing,” Cassandra told the police. “It’s not OK to sit and be locked in this horrible place for something you didn’t do. It’s just not right.”

“I just want him to be out and freed,” she added. “I will be free on the inside.”

Cassandra confessed that she was angry after her parent’s divorce and was determined to set her father up, after learning of a friend’s stepdad who went to prison for a sex crime.

via Girl Changes Rape Story; Dad Finally Freed from Jail After 9 Years.

A few weeks ago, Auld had enough, and his impatience led him to create a fake Craigslist ad to see where he stood in the job market. He posted a basic ad in order to attract a wide spectrum of job seekers.

His ad read:

"Administrative Assistant needed for busy Midtown office. Hours are Monday through Friday, nine to five. Job duties include: filing, copying, answering phones, sending e-mails, greeting clients, scheduling appointments. Previous experience in an office setting preferred, but will train the right candidate. This is a full-time position with health benefits. Please e-mail résumé if interested. Compensation: $12-$13 per hour."

In 24 hours, Auld received 653 responses. After sorting through every application, he found that 76 percent of applicants had previous true experience. Even 10 percent of applicants had more than 10 years of experience.

via Sussing the Competition | Transparency Revolution.

The federal government may spy on Americans’ communications without warrants and without fear of being sued, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a decision reversing the first and only case that successfully challenged President George W. Bush’s once-secret Terrorist Surveillance Program.

“This case effectively brings to an end the plaintiffs’ ongoing attempts to hold the executive branch responsible for intercepting telephone conversations without judicial authorization,” a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.

That's a problem. Via Appeals Court OKs Warrantless Wiretapping | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Why is management a craft?

It’s a craft for the same reasons engineering is a craft.  You can read all the books you want on something but crafts are learned by getting your hands in it and getting them dirty.  Crafts have rough edges, and shortcuts, and rules of thumb, and things that are held together with duct tape.  The product of craft is something useful and pleasing.

via tech ramblings » Blog Archive » The dark craft of engineering management.

Also, have a gun. It will make you more effective if you have to fight.

His courage might have been more effective if he'd had a gun.

One victim, Satwant Singh Kaleka, died valiantly trying to fight off the gunman. He put his life on the line to try to save others.

via The 6 Sikh temple shooting victims identified; Satwant Singh Kaleka died trying to fight off shooter | Twitchy.

It’s so technical. It looks so effortless when you do it right, and when you do it wrong it looks like it’s really, really heavy. There’s this thing called weightlessness. When you get a good lift the bar is literally weightless. It’s off your body and you don’t feel it until it’s over your head. You get that with maybe one in 100 lifts, but when you get it you’ll chase it for the rest of your life.

Did I mention it's a woman? Great article. Via An Olympic Weightlifter on Football, Breaking Windows and the Perfect Lift | Playbook | Wired.com.

YOU’RE WORKING UP AN APPETITE

Part of the problem is what scientists refer to as ‘compensation’.

There is no doubt exercise burns calories, but at the kind of level most of us work out, it also stimulates hunger.

The more moderate activity we do, the more we eat, effectively cancelling out the weight loss benefits.

Linia Patel, a sports dietician with the British Dietetic Association, says it’s a misnomer that exercise is a green light to increase the calories.

‘Appetite often soars when you exercise a lot,’ Patel says. ‘You need to make sure you  eat enough, but stop before you get to the point where you aren’t burning excess energy off.’

Your body is not a machine; it has complex feedback loops. This is why the "calories-in calories-out" hypothesis is naive, at best. Via Why going to the gym can make you FAT | Mail Online.

The clash between the township of Mount Holly and the working-class, mostly minority residents of this neighborhood of rowhouses has dragged on for 10 years. The township wants to give the land to a private developer. The residents want to remain in the homes they've owned for decades.

...

Beginning in 2008, Mount Holly engaged in increasingly harsh tactics to encourage the holdout residents to leave. The township ripped up hunks of sidewalks, then left them unrepaired; it issued a round of warnings for trifling code violations; it cut off electricity to neighborhood street lights at night; it shut down a playground and a community center; and it reduced public services like policing, trash collection, transportation and school busing. But the demolitions hit residents hardest. The township has been tearing down rowhomes that still have occupants living in the homes connected to them. When bulldozers rip away individual houses, adjacent homes suffer collateral damage. There are holes in walls of the remaining homes, as well as a loss of insulation.

"Demolition would happen especially before holidays," Cruz says. "They'd do their work before Labor Day, Memorial Day, and Christmas Eve, and then leave the bulldozers out and about over the holidays, just to intimidate you."

via New Jersey Town Rips Up Working-Class Neighborhood For Private Developers.