It’s called Project 10 to the 100, and it’s like an open X-Prize for any idea that can help lots and lots of people.

A few posts ago, I identified what may be the root cause of our society’s ubiquitous problems. Reader jonathan quite rightly commented: “Flawless description of a problem…but no solution?” Now, with the help of several friends and colleagues, I am putting together a proposal for the solution, which we will be submitting to Project 10 to the 100. Wish me luck, and submit your own proposals. May the most beneficial win.

In the meantime, I’d just like to point out that how far ahead in the polls Senator Obama is, is not the most important story. If Obama thinks that all he has to do to become president is win the election, he’d better think again. The upcoming US election is rigged. Here’s the evidence that’s come up lately:

Diebold has admitted it’s e-voting machines are faulty.

Furthermore, GOP security expert Stephen Spoonamore has explained in blood-curling detail how his own party is going to steal the election using the problems in these machines.

A new Brennan Center report has found that the way states remove names from voter lists has become “vulnerable to manipulation.” (summary)

The Department of Justice is putting on the pressure for voter purging.

In Michigan and who knows where else, the GOP is trying to stop victims of foreclosures from voting – because the poor are obviously not real citizens. Right.

It appears Obama’s team is seeking an injunction to stop this undemocratic voter purging.

And that’s just the things they’ve been caught doing…

I’m short on time this week, so in lieu of a post, I give you Christopher Wright explaining the essence of End User License Agreements (through his mouthpiece, Viktor Schreck, the Vampire-lawyer). Click the pic for a larger version.

The obsession with architecture in software development is straining credibility to the extent of absurdity. There are serious problems with the notion of architecture as used in the software development community.

1. The Architecture Layer is Arbitrary.

The software design is the totality of design choices that have been made, where a design choice assigns a specific property to the design artifact. We can separate these choices into levels of abstraction to promote cognitive economy. When we chose to call one of these levels the architecture layer, we divide design decisions on an arbitrary, undefinable line, labeling some “high-level” and others “low-level.” Creating this false dichotomy can blind us to the true nature of the task and our solution, and hide the fact that…

2. All Design Levels are Interconnected

Whatever way you divide your design decisions into levels, these levels are all still interconnected. Decisions at one level can affect decisions at other levels. Therefore, if you ignore “low-level” considerations while designing at the Architecture level, your design may be horribly flawed.

For more on this point, see Steve Reeves’ essay, Code as Design.

3. Architecture Diagrams Are NOT the Spec

For reasons I do not understand, software developers talk about architecture diagrams as if they are the system specification. Drawing an analogy to engineering, they argue that their diagrams are the blueprints, and programmers are the construction workers who build the product from the blueprints.

Programmers = construction workers is a false analogy.

Construction workers don’t make design decisions. Programmers do. If the spec were so complete that it were machine executable, we wouldn’t need programmers at all. But it’s not, so we do. Programmers are designers. The code is the spec. The compiler is the construction worker. Architecture diagrams are just analytical models to assist the programmers.

4. Top-down Design is Idealistic

While not all architecture is derived from a top-down process, architecture is central to top-down design. In my own experience (obviously I can’t generalize, but take this as you will) the people who most advocate architecture are the same people who advocate top-down design, and the two ideas are closely linked for them.
Top down design can’t work, not even in principle, if you don’t fully understand the problem you’re trying to solve.

If you simultaneously understand the problem at hand, and the forces and variables you have to manipulate to solve that problem, and the relationship between the problem and those forces and variables, then you can derive a solution systematically from the top down. Unfortunately, this never really happens outside toy problems and math class. In the real world, we have to figure things out as we go, and this need for discovery undermines the validity of a top-down strategy.

Conclusion

In summary, the concept of software architecture is not wrong as much as divorced from the reality of development. At its core, architecture is an arbitrary, false dichotomy that obscures a multilayer design into two fuzzy, aggregate layers, obfuscating the complex network of interdependencies and encouraging a doomed top-down strategy, while masquerading as specification – a role for which it is manifestly inadequate.

Related articles: Service Oriented Architecture is your Ticket to Hell

Note: If you are a tech-savvy writer with a nose for B.S. and you’re interested in writing a column for The War on Bullshit, please leave a comment and we’ll get back to you.

Bell insists that throttling Internet services is necessary. More specifically, Bell engages in “deep packet inspection,” which means they figure out what kind of data your downloading, and slow down the stuff they don’t like, i.e., peer-2-peer traffic. They argue that this is all for their customers: before traffic throttling, 5% of users ate 33% of the bandwidth, so the other 95% of users were being victimized. Therefore, Bell has to inspect what you’re downloading to make everything fair, right? Bullshit.

1. What you download and how much you download are different issues.

You don’t need to snoop on what people are downloading to even out traffic. You just cap users’ bandwidths or total downloads. I have no problem having to pay more to download 100 gigs per month than someone who downloads 10 gigs a month. I don’t think anyone has a reasonable complaint against paying more for a faster connection than a slower one. This has nothing to do with net neutrality, it’s just about charging people based on usage. (Which is a topic for another post.)

HOWEVER, charging people more for 1 gig of torrent videos than for 1 gig of streaming video, on the other hand, is precisely the kind of online-freedom-destroying-shenanigans that should be punishable by public beating.

2. Throttling screws over independent ISPs.

See, Bell owns the fiber network. It doesn’t make sense to have 25 competing ISPs, all with their own fiber networks. So the little ISPs rent the bandwidth from Bell, thus providing a kind of confounded, screwed-up, pseudo-competitive environment. But Ma Bell doesn’t like competitors, and wants to go back to being a big ol’ fashion monopoly. So Bell invents throttling practices that drastically decrease the bandwidth of these little ISPs while holding prices constant to run them out of business, all the while claiming it’s in their customers best interests. Yeah, right.

3. It’s none of their damn business.

When did telecoms become the thought police? Or in this case, the data police? It’s none of Bell’s goddamn business what I choose to download. If they can’t be held, legally, as accessory to crimes committed by their users, then they have no business inspecting their users’ browsing habits. You wouldn’t stand for the UPS opening all of your packages, would you?

4. They’re infringing consumer choice.

When you pay for 5 mb/s interenet service, you should expect to get 5 mb/s, regardless of what you decide to download or when you decide to do it. I understand that speeds may decrease when the network gets overloaded, and that things slow down if you download from a slow server. But what Bell’s doing is more like: if Bell doesn’t like what you’re downloading or when you’re doing it, they impose their bullshit morals on you by slowing down your connection. If I wanted moral guidance from a monopoly I’d…. well, I don’t know what I’d do. Perhaps shoot myself for being such a fucking retard.

5. Bell’s in bed with the RIAA/MPAA

Bell is certainly coming under pressure from the recording and movie industries to help curtail unauthorized downloading. Internet throttling is a clear manifestation of Bell’s siding with these big industries over the preferences of their customers.

6. Bell didn’t ask their customers what they wanted.

Anybody who says they are doing something for their customers without asking their customers what they want is a lying sack of shit. Bell didn’t ask me what I think of their plan. Did they ask you? Didn’t think so.

Conclusion

Bell’s Bullshit Claim: We’re slowing down your downloads to improve your service.

Bell’s Hidden Agenda: We’re throttling traffic to quietly strangle our competitors so we can regain our monopoly, leach our customers for every cent we can and tighten our grip on media by decimating net neutrality. We want to control everything you see and hear so we can tell you how to think and act, and make the internet a one-way medium like TV and radio.

Edit: It’s not P2P traffic that eats all the bandwidth anyhow, it’s streaming video.

I have been around business schools a fair bit and have noticed a few disturbing trends. For one, it seems that the majority of undergraduate business programs include at least one core course involving Microsoft Access. Sometimes Access is taught in labs or tutorials outside regular class, but the question remains, why?

I have received two answers to this question:

These answers are bullshit.

First, “fundamentals of database” includes at least two things. The first is database design. The second is SQL. If the B-Schools are teaching fundamentals of database, why in the hell are their students using Access’s proprietary query builder instead of writing SQL, and what is this bullshit about Access’s “forms” and “reports.” You won’t see this crap in Oracle, DB2 or MySQL. Furthermore, I haven’t seen much education on database design in these intro classes, and assignments rarely include design activities because they can’t be graded quickly.

Second, I can’t find a shred of evidence that Access is heavily used. I don’t know anyone who uses Access professionally. A quick search on Craigslist (Vancouver) brought up 95 jobs requiring Oracle, 122 jobs involving SQL Server, 157 jobs involving MySQL and 7 jobs involving MS Access.

So, my question remains… why does it seem like most schools are teaching not only Access, but also the proprietary wizards and features of Access?

iListen is bullshit. There, I said it. The accuracy rate isn’t nearly as good as Dragon NaturallySpeaking. So, I was determined to get Dragon working under OSx, and not just in virtualization. I wanted Dragon to dictate into Camino, Pages, Adium, etc. This how-to explains how I did it. Please bear with me, this is my first how-to.

Warnings

1. If you are a newbie, you may need help for this. A lot of things can go wrong, and this is not the most detailed how-to.
2. I have tested this on exactly 1 hardware setup: mine. I have an Intel-based Macbook connected via ethernet cable to a router. I am using a USB Logitech headset.
3. I admit, the resulting set up is a little buggy.

What you will need

1. OSx Leopard (this may work in other versions, but I have not tried it)
2. VMware Fusion (I use the full version, not the demo)
3. Windows XP installation disk
4. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 (Again, may work with other versions)
5. Win2VNC
6. At least one gig of RAM

Part one: installing Dragon

0. Turn off Time Machine (under system preferences –> Time Machine)
1. Install VMware Fusion (this should be pretty simple)
2. Create a Windows XP virtual machine inside VMware fusion, and install Windows XP in it. This should be pretty straightforward
3. When the installation is over, shut down the Windows XP OS, but don’t close VMware
4. go to Virtual Machine-> settings-> memory and set the memory allocated to the virtual machine to at least 512 MB. If you only have one gig of RAM, don’t go any higher.
5. Restart the Windows XP virtual machine
6. Plug in your headset. If it is a USB headset, it will show up at the bottom of the VMware window as a little USB connection symbol. Click on the symbol to assign the headset to the VMware window. When the symbol turns blue, the headset is connected.
7. Put the Dragon CD in the drive. (If you have the CD as an ISO, you can mount it in OS X and then access it from within the virtual machine, as long as it’s shared.)
8. double-click ISScript1050.MSI. you need to install this before you install Dragon. When it’s done,
9. double-click Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.MSI (it took me a couple tries to install Dragon, as the installation crashed; however, it picked up where it left off and installed without issue the second time.)
10. go through the Dragon set up. If you have audio quality problems, and you have a USB microphone, make sure it’s plugged directly into the computer. Plugging a USB microphone into a USB hub can increase distortion. If you still have audio quality problems, look around the web for pointers. You’re not the first person, and you won’t be the last.
11. You’ll have to read at least one train story (I think) to get started.
12. Once Dragon is configured, open up WordPad and give it a whirl — if it doesn’t work within the virtual machine, it won’t work outside, so make sure you can dictate within VMware before going on.

Part two: dictating into OSx applications

1. In OSx, go to system preferences –> sharing, and turn on screen sharing
2. Click computer settings, and make sure both boxes are checked – don’t forget to enter a VNC password. Leave the screen sharing panel open
3. In VMware, click on the network icon on the bottom right-hand server, and select the bridge option. This connects your virtual machine directly to your home network, and is necessary to get into Win2VNC working.
4. Install Win2VNC.
5. Start Win2VNC, and copy the server info from the OSx Sharing Panel. Only enter the numbers. E.g., mine read vnc://192.168.0.52/, so I entered 192.168.0.52 into Win2VNC. Press enter
6. It should ask for a password. Enter the password you used in the os x sharing panel.
7. If it connects, a little symbol will appear in the task bar. You can change the settings of Win2VNC by right-clicking this symbol.
8. Start Dragon and turn the mic on (the virtual taskbar mic that is)
9. Move your mouse slowly to the right edge of the screen. When the mouse gets to the edge, it will jump to somewhere on the OS X screen (don’t run VMWare in fullscreen mode)
10. Open your favorite OSX editor and start talking.
11. Turn Time Machine back on, if you must.

Known Bugs

1. While using this setup, I find that the Apple VNC Server is very processor intensive, which I suspect indicates some kind of infinite loop going on.
2. Once you’ve started Win2VNC and moved your mouse back to OSx, you’ll have to disconnect the VNC client (by clicking the icon in the OSx menu bar) to get back to the VMWare window.

Conclusion

If you try this, please let me know (in the comments) how it goes. If you figure out what’s causing the above bugs, or how to fix it, by all means share it with the rest of us.

I dictated this entire tutorial into Camino using Dragon NaturallySpeaking configured as described. Good luck.

I don’t blog for the money, but for those who do, purported online marketing gurus provide a proliferation of epistemically baseless, if not bogus, advice. I prefer recommendations with some data behind them.

Recent research presented at the International Conference on Information Systems may be of interest. Researchers June Zhu and Bernard Tan of the National University of Singapore reported on three factors that determine the effectiveness of blog advertising: blogger expertise, advertising intent and product involvement. Here is a summary of their results.

Blogger expertise refers to how much the bloggers knows about the item being advertised. Advertising intent refers to whether the recommendation of a product is explicit or implicit, for ex., “You should buy my book” is explicit; “Recently my several of my friends read the last George R. R. Martin book and really like it” is implicit. Product involvement refers to how much consideration one gives a purchase, e.g., buying popcorn at the theater is usually a low-involvement purchase, while buying a car is usually a high-involvement purchase.

The study found that almost opposite between high and low involvement products. For low-involvement products, low-expertise bloggers should be explicit and high-expertise bloggers should be implicit. In contrast, for high-involvement products, low-expertise bloggers should be implicit and it doesn’t matter if high-expertise communicators are explicit or implicit.

The full citation of the paper is as follows. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an online version to link to.

J. Zhu and B. Tan, “Effectiveness of blog advertising: Impact of communicator expertise, advertising intent, and product involvement,” International Conference on Information Systems, Montreal, Canada, December 2007

It turns out that Facebook’s idea of security is bullshit. Besides all the recent problems with 3rd party apps, you can also bypass photo security be simply deleting one of the URL parameters. Basically, if you look at a picture in an album, and you want to see the other pics in that album, but don’t have permission, you just delete the “&Subj=#########” parameter from the URL. Then you can see the whole album.

I’m not posting this to help all the Facebook stalkers out there. The point is that if everyone finds out about something, Facebook is more likely to fix it. This is not exactly nuanced, expert hacking we’re talking about. It shouldn’t be this easy.

Here is a more comprehensive discussion on the subject.

I’ve often read lists like this one, that suggest the skills IT employers want. Well, today at the Agile Vancouver conference, a room full of agile development employers was asked what they look for. I was expecting “machine learning,” “security,” “mobile applications,” and maybe “artificial intelligence.” Nope.

Here is the list they gave:

I’m not making any claims about the generalizability of this list. I’m just throwing it out there to let you know that maybe some of those popular lists floating about the web are not consistent with what one room full of presidents, CEOs and team leaders spent an hour and a half discussing.

A Software License Agreement is a contract between a software producer and a software user that grants the user a license; an End-User License Agreement (EULA) is a Software License Agreement that indicates terms of use. EULAs are fine in principle, but the way many EULAs are written makes them legally meaningless, unenforceable nonsense. This article explores five reasons why EULAs are bogus: the first three are based on legal and commonsense principles, the last two are specific to US laws.

1. One Way Contract

In common law systems, for a contract to be legally binding, both sides must provide “consideration.” When you buy an apple, you give money and you get an apple. The money and the apple are consideration. Many EULAs have a clause to the effect that the Software Provider can change the terms of the contract at any time, without notice. In other words, after you have agreed to the contract, the Provider can remove all of its obligations from the contract, and change your obligations to whatever it wants. I call this a one way contract because you are bound by the contract, but the Provider is not, because the Provider can just change it. This means the Provider has not given consideration, and the contract is invalid.

2. False Advertising

Often times, the advertising for a software packages makes promises that the software does not keep. Voice recognition software is a prime example. If you buy software that doesn’t work as promised, any contract you may have entered into is null and void. It’s like ordering a car off Ebay and finding out when you get it that it won’t start. If the ad said the car was in working order, the sale is invalid.

3. Agreement Unavailability

When you buy software at a store, you don’t see the agreement. Usually, you don’t see the agreement until you’ve opened the box and tried to install it. Some EULA’s say, if you don’t agree to this contract, return the software to the vendor for a full refund. Except, the vendor won’t take it back because it’s open. Does this make sense to anyone?

4. Adhesion Contracts

In some countries, such as the USA, a Contract of Adhesion or Standard Form Contract is a take-it-or-leave-it contract with no negotiation and unequal bargaining power between parties. If a term in an Adhesion Contract is outside the normal expectations of the weaker party, it is not enforceable. For instance, terms that say ‘the Provider is never liable for anything, ever,’ or ‘the Povider can change the terms of the contract whenever we damn-well please and to whatever our lawyers can dream up’ would be considered unreasonable and not enforceable.

5. Unconscionability

In same countries, a contract is unconscionable if the consideration from one side is so dismal as to make the contract unfair to one party. For instance, if you buy software that crashes every five minutes or produces the wrong outputs, it’s not worth the money you spent on it, and therefore the contract is unconscionable. Unconscionable contracts are not enforceable as-is and courts have a fair bit of leeway in dealing with them.

On Liability

In closing, not everyone can exempt themselves for the damage done by their crappy software. An open source programmer who makes no claims and takes no money for his or her work is perfectly safe in declaiming responsibility. Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, IBM, etc. are not. The difference is in their advertising. Lying to customers about one’s products is generally illegal. If GE makes a hot water boiler that explodes and ruins someone’s basement, GE is responsible. Similarly, if Oracle claimed that its database software safeguards information, but an actual Oracle database spontaneously emptied itself, Oracle would be responsible: not because it broke the contract but because it lied in the advertising.

Now if everybody would please stop accepting these bullshit EULAs, we might foster some responsibility in the software community.