Matthew's Weblog

referenced in a Slashdot book review:

[I]f you have responsibility for security but have no authority to set
rules or punish violators, your own role in the organization is to take
the blame when something big goes wrong.

This is not just a security principle.  It’s equally applicable to other fields.  The corollary given in the review?

Any security group or security manager placed in such a situation should likely start working on their resume.

An interesting point.

Technorati Tags: security, authority, responsibility, resume

From an interview with Kent Beck and Tom DeMarco:

Kent: … I think of managers as people with more experience, a broader perspective, perhaps more wisdom about what’s going on and good people skills. And looking at the connections between if a manager has nothing better to do than to come and tell me I haven’t written enough tests that day — to me, that’s not a lot of value to be added there. That’s not about me and my relationships to other people or the team and its relationships to its customers and suppliers. I mean to me that’s where the value of having somebody with a step back with broader perspective is.

Tom: I think the key phrase here is, if the manager has nothing better to do. I think if you replace that with, if the manager has nothing easier to do, then that would lead you a slightly different direction. Because coordination is the relatively easy thing, what Cindy was talking about is managers could manage, that’s hard stuff, that means involves motivation, it involves interpersonal relationships. So I think that is the distinction between real managers and imposters who find themselves pushed into that position and end up looking for the easy stuff to do. And the easy stuff is what people will do on their own if you don’t do it.

That’s what it’s all about.
Technorati Tags: software+development, management, xp

Automated monitoring to increase reliability and scalability of online services

Operations, internet services, and how to think about them.

F So you’re thinking about everything down to the iron and the wire in order to do QA accurately?

PS Yes.

BF That’s something a lot of us don’t think about.
We think about a computer as a computer and a network as a network and
don’t want to worry about any of that.

PS If you talk to my operations buddies, they will
tell you the way they think of the stack, too, goes all the way down to
the floor—to the electricity, to cooling, to bandwidth. We have to be
efficient at laying out the entire stack, repeatably, and verifying
that it’s built correctly.

The OSD looks cool and, presuming that it rips to a non-DRMd file format, could be a really neat way to deal with the current lack of a content-creation method in the Apple iTV.  Of course, I’d rather that it had a great interface or that Apple worked on the ripping side as well and then, either way, I could stick with one format/vendor.

Technorati Tags: dvr, itv

If true (sorry to be the cynic) replacing the gasoline engine could be really wonderful… my concern is that it simply doesn’t sound like enough energy to go the distances (500 mi.) they claim.  It would appear to require efficiencies far above current car technology… not that there’s anything wrong with capturing those, just hard to do.  If they really have this kind of capacitor, it could make solar home or business sense as well. 

Let’s hope it is for real.

Technorati Tags: battery, electric+car, solar

An interesting slashdot discussion on strategies for test databases… some ideas to use in the future.

Very cool extremely small PC… now, what to do with it?

A very cool insight into MSN and their monitoring methods… tracking multiple layers of the application and the behaviors, with the monitoring cooked into the application so it can be tremendously granular in the items measured.  Lots of stuff inspired by manufacturing processes, which really shows the Henry Ford repeatability mantra.

Technorati Tags: web+application, monitoring

A great essay talking about the US Government’s proclivity to create terror through its warnings instead of preventing terror with its actions – and an interesting observation of who is benefiting the most.

Technorati Tags: terrorism, airlines, airline+security