I've recently finished reading The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder, "the astonishing true story of the 'Hardy Boys' and 'Microkids' of Data General Corporation - dedicated technological wizards who envisioned the impossible... then battled time, corporate intrigue and the odds to bring their dream to breathtaking life." The blurb on the back is a bit out of their but it captures the feel of it. I read this for my Computers in Society class, but I was planning on reading it before hand anyways, so it was pretty fun.#

The book is about this incredibly underfunded project at Data General to build a 32-bit minicomputer (this was 1981) as a backup to the main project to build one. Because of their tiny budget and need to keep a low corporate profile, they hired a lot of college kids right out of college. With a few veteran engineers as managers and a team of thirty 'Hardy Boys' (who worked on the HARDware) and 'Microkids' (who worked on the MICROcode), the Eagle group played an essential role in continuing the company and delivering something useful.#

The book opens with a short story of the main character of the book, Tom West, going on a small boat trip in New England. At the end one of the other passengers reflects on him,#

The people who shared the journey remembered West. The following winter, describing the nasty northeaster over dinner, the captain remarked, "That fellow West is a good man in a storm." The psychologist did not see West again, but remained curious about him. "He didn't sleep for four nights! Four whole nights." And if that trip had been his idea of a vacation, where, the psychologist wanted to know, did he work? [pg. 7]

When the book talks about the secretary of the group it has this wonderful note,#

She was assigned to the Eclipse Group, which was tiny then and had never had a secretary.. The engineers "found" her a desk, as she put it. She opened the team's lone filing cabinet and found nothing in it, except for a couple of rolls of toilet paper. No list of the group's members existed. She went from one engineer to another, asking, "Do you have any idea who you work for?" It was the beginning of a long romance. [pg. 57]

One the managers of the Eagle project was insane in his early days as an engineer on the Eclipse project...#

The Eclipse contained 195 assembly-language instructions, which in the end Alsing encoded in some 390 microinstructions, many of which performed multiple duties. He said he wrote most of those microinstructions in two weeks at the library. Perhaps it really took him less; West believed that Alsin did it all in two days and nights. "Without question he did," West insisted.

One of the people in the book makes this interesting comment about computers,#

"It's funny," Rasala said, "I feel very comfortable talking in nanoseconds. I sit at one of these analyzers and nanoseconds are wide. I mean, you can see them go by. 'Jesus,' I say, 'that signal takes twelve nanoseconds to get from there to there.' Those are real big things to me when I'm building a computer. Yet when I think about it, how much longer it takes to snap your fingers. I've lost track of what a nanosecond really means." He looked at me. "Time in a computer is an interesting concept." [pg. 137]

When one person left the team, they left this note:

I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season. [pg. 220]

That same person talks about the ideal 'Hardy Boy'...#

For most of their time together, most of the Hardy Boys got along well with Rasala. He teased them and he prodded them, and they did the same, both to him and each other. One evening just before going home, Holberger made a minor, careless mistake. Discovering it, Rasala told the rest of the crew, "I hope you're gonna leave Holberge a nasty note. He'd leave you one." Rasala liked a contentious atmosphere, a vigorous, virile give-and-take among himself and his crew. "Smart, opinionated and nonsensitive, that's a Hardy Boy," he declared. [pg. 150]

Another habit of many of the engineers...#

He doesn't waste time listening to people who aren't making good, relevant sense to him, just in order to be polite. If he's working on a problem with several other engineers and feels that too many are involved, he'll simply ignore what one or two of them have to say and eventually they'll get angry and go elsewhere. [pg. 190]

I listened to some Christopher Lydon interviews today. So great.#

The Doc Searls Interview is very interesting. He says some interesting things about blogging. He says he likes blogging because it is "Things I'm thinking about versus things I've concluded", it is very easy to just have an idea and start a conversation. This leads into the connection between democracy and blogging. Doc quotes someone as saying that 'Democracy is about participation, not popularity' and what's great about blogging is that it creates a common ground where anyone can participate: a true meritocracy of ideas based on value where everyone can vote, not just your local expert. And finally, on the conversation about blogging and editing, Doc is reminded of something Ken Layne said, "We Can Fact Check Your Ass", of the main media. And this causes him to think that in the blogosphere everyone is editing each other and there's no real coherent direction, like a large OpEd section that leans different ways at different times.

Elaine Scarry was also great to listen to. Here's a great quote...

Elaine Scarry has become a prolific expert on the fate of TWA Flight 800 and other mysterious plane crashes. And now she is speaking out--not as an expert but as a citizen who senses that there is no security in our security policy. "One key fact, " she writes, "needs to be held on to and stated in a clear sentence: on September 11, the Pentagon could not defend the Pentagon, let alone the rest of the country." The passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, who stormed their hijackers and brought their plane down in a field in Pennsylvania, managed by contrast in only 23 minutes to "gather information, deliberate, vote and act"--knowingly, selflessly, in the public interest, after many loving farewells by cell phone. So Elaine Scarry's not entirely rhetorical question, late in the age of nuclear terror, is whether and how we might agree to "restore within our own country a democratic form of self-defense."

Steve Kinzer talked about Iran and Americans are insistent on not learning any lessons from past foreign experiences. He said that it's very interesting that so many Americans don't realize that "Actions have consequences," both immediate and in the future, Iran is a fine example. And he says that Americans have a very "diluted" view of American values and how they are applied. Specifically, they don't realize that the governments we support around the world do not share the same values and in many circumstances hate them and everything else America stands for. That we would support these governments is beyond the grasp of many Americans and the main media doesn't care to point them out. This contradiction of American values seems impossible to true believers of political lies.

Desultor links to Neo-Luddism.#

The Amish, Saffo said, are perhaps the most conspicuous example of the process of negotiation between humans and their hardware. If mainstream American consumers have prohibitions, the restrictions tend to be milder, and they make decisions that are more individual. "The Amish stand out because they make their decisions as an entire community," Saffo said. "The rest of us make similar decisions every day, but we make them as individuals or at most as a single family."

I'm about to read the book Divorce Your Car, that is about freeing yourself from certain types of technology.

Krispy Kreme Wedding Cake#

Naked Pictures of Britney Spears...#

Richard thinks about an article about the Subtle Implications of Social Software.#

The article:

Making relationships explicit, available to any virtual passerby, creates subtle complications. Long ago, when SixDegrees was in full swing, I wrote its CEO, Andrew Weinreich, that people like me were unlikely to enter their important first-degree contacts, because those contacts would be exposed to solicitations from strangers pinging them, saying, "I'm five degrees from Andrew, so we should talk." I take care when I recommend people to one another; SixDegrees disrupts that process and devalues it completely.

Richard:

I have that same pragmatic problem with "social software". It feels weird for me to explicitely mix circles of friends, but to have it done for me without my permission is even weirder.

Richard quotes Book V of the younger Pliny's letters...#

"Right and wrong intentions are praised and blamed only insofar as their results are good or bad — that is generally accepted practice, though it is none the less unfair. Hence it generally happens that the self-same actions are variously ascribed to zeal, conceit, independence, or folly."

DECAFBAD links to a few interesting things. One such thing is this presentation entitled, "Why Threads are a bad idea (for most purposes)." It talks about how in most cases you really want events, when you choose threads for "logical ease of programming," as opposed to for CPU scalability.#

Geoffrey Allen has stupid customers:#

Today he scheduled a meeting for 8:30am. I do most of my work right from home. I RARELY schedule meetings on Friday, let alone early in the morning. I'm a fucking lazy bastard. I get up in the morning, and go to work in my office with my coffee, right next to my living room. I may take a shower later in the morning. I have no fucking idea why I made an exception.

I show up at 8:15. No one is there. The office is locked. I wait. I go get coffee and come back. No one is there. I wait. 9:15 someone shows up. I go inside with her, she says he should have been in by now. She listens to her messages on speaker phone, while I'm standing there. One message is from Mr. I'm-So-Important. "This is *****, I'm going up to do some work on my cottage this weekend. Mr. Allen is due in this morning, when he gets there tell him I've called in sick, I'm really sorry, and reschedule for Tuesday or Wednesday, whichever is convenient for him. I'll be back in the office Monday afternoon, call me on my cell if you need me."

She turns to me, and as if I didn't just listen to the fucking message says "he's sick today, can we reschedule for Tuesday or Wednesday?". I tell her no thanks, and when you see him, let him know I no longer have time to work on his account. He'll have to find someone else.

Slashdot links to The Fanimatrix, whose trailers is actually very neat.#

Godless writes a gem...#

In my opinion, there is a definite ranking of difficulty among academic fields, and this degree of difficulty is strongly correlated with mathematical ability.

In my view, most "transitions of field" happen from a higher category to a lower category. You might be able to go up a few, but those on top are generally smarter than those below. I.e., if you're in category X and another is in category Y with X above Y, then you could do their work but not vice versa. Here's the list:

1. Math
2. Physics
3. More mathematical engineering disciplines (EE, ChemE, CS, fluid & thermo in ME, Nuclear)
4. Less mathematical engineering disciplines (Industrial E, Civil E, Materials Science, classical mechanical ME)
5. Econ (maybe around the same level as Industrial, sometimes), mathematical Psychology
6. Non-mathematical Biology, Geology, Entomology (stamp-collecting sciences)
7. non-politicized humanities
8. Gym
9. Ethnic/feminist/gay/etc. studies (yes, below Gym)

I keep Gym above Asian-American studies because there are standards in Gym.

Michael Feldman proposes Action Hero Governors.#

Joi Ito linked to Lisa Rein who posted a movie of Nazis on Trampolines.#

Don Park wonders what Longhorn would be like as an RPG villain.#

A user-friendly Minotaur named Longhorn. He drops Longhorn discount coupons up to 50% off. Longhorn is a tough mob though. He'll stun you with Longhorn marketing mumbo-jumbo and power-hack with a double-headed axe named Scobleizer. Best way to get him is to lure him into narrow corridors so his swollen head will get stuck.

Mitch Kapor links a Linus Torvalds interview.#

People position you as the nemesis to Bill Gates. He started Microsoft and you started Linux, the big competition to Microsoft's dominance of operating systems. Is that an unfair or inaccurate characterization?

The thing is, at least to me personally, Microsoft just isn't relevant to what I do. That might sound strange, since they are clearly the dominant player in the market that Linux is in, but the thing is: I'm not in the ''market.'' I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the ''evil Microsoft empire.'' Quite the reverse, in fact: from a technology angle, Microsoft really has been one of the least interesting companies. So I've never seen it as a ''Linus versus Bill'' thing. I just can't see myself in the position of the nemesis, since I just don't care enough. To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

Tony Pierce gives advice.#

what else have i learned over the years? always bet on black. never send a woman flowers unless shes your mother. and wear condoms every, single, time.

ive also learned that grammar and spelling are over-rated. always ask for exactly what you want. be super polite at all times. pray every day. be grateful for everything because in an instant it can go away. if some lame ass wants to blog war you, state your case, dont link them, and then move on.

and by all means, never bore your readers. ever.

reward people for reading your shit, and if you cant do it with your words, do it with your links.

Kim, please go.#

Lisa Williams is a good read.#