Friday, March 24, 2006

80% of votes favor Joni-albums from the 70s (MrPol .... 80% of votes favor Joni-albums from the 70s (MrPoll-so-far) [robot wisdom weblog] 8:36:56 PM    comment []

Windows Vista: no escape from software time. Last September the Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating lead article about Microsoft's Vista development effort. Robert Guth chronicled how the Vista project had initially ballooned as Bill Gates and others piled on their dream features, like the advanced, metadata-rich WinFS file system. When Vista hit trouble, Windows czar Jim Allchin brought in two software development experts, Brian Valentine and Amitabh Srivastava, to whip the project into shape by introducing rigorous new testing methodologies. Still, by mid-2004 the whole project was in danger of collapsing. Microsoft decided to postpone Vista till "the second half of 2006" and cut back lots of promised features (including WinFS). As Guth's article had it, the result, finally, was a development process Microsoft could begin to be proud of:   On July 27 [2005], Microsoft shipped the beta of Longhorn -- now named Windows Vista -- to 500,000 customers for testing. Experience had told the Windows team to expect tens of thousands of reported problems from customers. Instead, there were a couple thousand problem reports, says Mr. Rana, the team member. When I read the article at the time, I took it as a kind of victory-lap valedictory for Allchin, who'd announced he was retiring once Vista was done. Unless you're certain of prevailing, though, victory laps are dangerous (just think of the phrase "Mission Accomplished"). With this week's news of a another slip in the Vista schedule -- the software won't be out until January 2007, after the crucial holiday buying season -- we're left wondering, what happened to that vaunted new process? Certainly, this widely linked story that claims Microsoft is now going to rewrite 60 percent of the operating system between now and release seems hard to credit (something tells me rewriting that much code would take a lot more than 8 months). But between this embarrassing delay and the recently announced "reorg" of Windows leadership, it's clear that this turn of the Windows cycle is going to be no smoother or predictable than any of its predecessors. My book, Dreaming in Code, is all about what I call "software time" -- the peculiar spell that software projects so often cast on the people involved, turning schedules into Mobius strips and stretching time like taffy. I imagine that, as Valentine and Srivastava described the beauty of their testing systems to Guth last year, they honestly believed that they'd meet their deadlines. They thought they'd cheated software time. That confidence doesn't look too smart today. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] 8:36:26 PM    comment []

Serving two masters is sometimes impossible.. The last two meetings of my ethics in science class have focused on some of the history of research with human subjects and on the changing statements of ethical principles or rules governing such experimentation. Looking at these statements (the Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report especially) against the backdrop of some very serious missteps (Nazi medical experiments and the Public Health Service's Tuskegee syphilis experiment), it's painfully clear how much regulation is scandal-driven -- a reaction to a screw-up, rather than something that researchers took the time to think about before they embarked on their research. Worse, it's clear that researchers are perfectly capable of ignoring existing moral codes or standards to get the job done. What some of these researchers may not have understood (but my students seem pretty well attuned to) is that in ignoring the norms that one ought, as a physician or a scientist, to be committed to, one comes perilously close to choosing not to be a physician or a scientist. Read the entire post [Adventures in Ethics and Science] 8:36:22 PM    comment []

The Smoking Gun has added to its collection of concert riders (Kid Rock gets a white tank top, Britney Spears demands red Altoids, for Penn & Teller no eggplant, beef jerky for Creed, Barenaked Ladies require a bottle of single malt scotch, and so on) the rider for Vice President Dick Cheney's 'downtime suite' demands. 1:29:21 PM    comment []

BNA News: FOUR MEN CHARGED IN NIGERIA E-MAIL SCAM A quartet of suspected e-mail scammers, three of them Nigerian citizens, could face scores of years in prison if convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges for their role in a familiar Nigerian scam. A grand jury in Brooklyn, NY, charged them with one count of conspiracy, eight counts of wire fraud, and one count of mail fraud. One of them also faces one count of bank fraud. BRITTANICA HITS BACK AGAINST WIKIPEDIA COMPARISON Encyclopedia Brittanica has fired back at an article in the science journal Nature that likened its accuracy to that of Wikipedia, the Internet site that lets anyone contribute. Britannica said in a 20-page statement this week that "almost everything about the journal's investigation...was wrong and misleading." It has demanded a retraction. Britannica response Nature response Coverage 12:29:16 PM    comment []

The Smoking Gun has added to its collection of concert riders (Kid Rock gets a white tank top, Britney Spears demands red Altoids, for Penn & Teller no eggplant, beef jerky for Creed, Barenaked Ladies require a bottle of single malt scotch, and so on) the rider for Vice President Dick Cheney's 'downtime suite' demands. 12:29:12 PM    comment []

openDRM. Sun has made recent announcements about their openDRM project. In my view, they've made some commitments that are important for any DRM project. E.g., as I've seen it described, it would be implemented to allow individuals to assert "fair use," and unlock DRM'd content, with a tag to trace misuse. And they've described a platform upon which authors keep the freedom to turn the DRM off, and more the content from the secured platform. These are good things. But some confuse praise for better DRM with praise for DRM. So let me be as clear as possible here (though saying the same thing I've always said): We should be building a DRM-free world. We should have laws that encouraged a DRM-free world. We should demonstrate practices that make compelling a DRM-free world. All of that should, I thought, be clear. But just as one can hate the Sonny Bono Act, but think, if there's a Sonny Bono Act, there should also be a Public Domain Enhancement Act, so too can one hate DRM, but think that if there's DRM, it should be at least as Sun is saying it should be. [Lessig Blog] 5:56:26 AM    comment []

The Revell Method of Assembling Aircraft Updated. WORTH EVER SECOND: How to build an Airbus A380 in about 7 Mins [AMERICAN DIGEST] 5:56:17 AM    comment []

Xeni: Oglala Lakhota president: we'll host abortion clinic on reservation. Responding to South Dakota's statewide abortion ban, the Oglala Lakhota president on the Pine Ridge reservation -- a former nurse -- says she'll provide access to sovereign tribal land for clinics. Snip: "To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," [Cecilia Fire Thunder] said to [Lakhota Times editor Tim Giago] last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction." Link to Native Times article (subscription required), or read excerpt on indybay website here. (Thanks, drogheda, Ryan and others!) Reader comment: For those wishing to donate cash for the project, or extend messages of support, BoingBoing reader Lampbane says, " Contact info for president Fire Thunder can be found here." [Boing Boing] 5:56:05 AM    comment []

Good Nintendog!. Roll over, Rover. A new breed of games builds deep emotional bonds that rival the best puppy love. By David Kushner from Wired magazine. [Wired News: Top Stories] 5:56:01 AM    comment []