While I don’t like Thinkpads as much as I did, they still have the great advantage of being very tough.

An anonymous PHD was actually typing for two hours next to the heater, and the laptop screen was protecting her from the direct heat. Than she told me “something smells funny”.  To my horror the screen back cover was melted and burnt plastic was flowing around. Amazingly, it still works perfectly, if you ignore some disfiguration. There most be a lesson here.  The following Pictures are Rated PG-13.

Innocent Heater

Heater and Laptop on Fire

R60 Damage After Heater

R60 Laptop After Heater Session

Taken from http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/

It is easy to mistake a programming task to be simple. This is especially true in user interface.

The executive is looking at the “trivial” two fields login screen and innocently estimates it to be a two hours job.

This is a common mistake, similar to some extent to The Three Body Problem in physics. Taking a simple, solvable problem and changing one parameter can result in an exceptionally complex problem. While the two-body problem is integrable and its solutions completely understood, solutions of the three-body problem may be of an arbitrary complexity and are very far from being completely understood. See a nice graphic example.

Login screens are not that complex, but take a look at the next example and see how many open questions\bugs can you come up with ?

Simple Login

1. Is it “Log-in” “Login” or “Log in”?
2. Is it clear that email is equivalent to user name?
3. Do you need a “Cancel” button?
4. Should there be a visible mark for the mandatory fields? Which mark?
5. Seems like a “Forgot My Password” link and screen are missing.
6. Is a Captcha needed to fight bots?


Simple Login Form

7. Is validation done on the client side or the server-side ?
8. How is the feedback given to the user? Where?
9. Security demands that we don’t tell the user what’s the exact problem (missing email or password). Usability does.
10. Where is the sign-up page? Where does Log-Out go out to?
11. “Email” , “eMail” or “email”?


Nice Login Form

12. Do we use SSL for the login but move to clear HTTP for the rest of the application ?
13. Cross browser testing?
14. How shall we do unit testing for the screen?
15. It turns out that validating an email address can be a nightmare.
16. After the user made a mistake, which events clear the warning notification?
17. Shall we support Hebrew? How about the German umlaut?
18. Shouldn’t “email” and “password” be left aligned?
19. Is the colon required after “Login”?
20. Do we want to limit the length for any of the fields? Minimum password strength?

Notice how we got to twenty non trivial questions without discussing the actual user authentication or the graphic design, which can be huge topics on their own.

My simplistic recommendation is to use of the shelf components whenever possible and go through the annoying step we used to call “feature design” even in this agile world we live in.

Sample Login Screen

Not a big  surprise for readers of my previous appliances vs software posts . Developing code for Symbian kernel was even worst than developing code for Apple kernel.

Symbian is an incongruous business concept . The company is supposed to make money selling an operating system, while the owners of Symbian ( Nokia ) really need people to get the operating System for free. Talk about catch 22. It was supposed to be independent and vendor free , while Nokia actually controlled it. It was supposed to attract developers, but you could not get your app on the phone easily.

Which MBA Genius ever came up with this plan? Don’t even get me going on horrible certification, licensing, white rooms, reference boards and 3500 Euros for developer for the pleasure of working in this non standard OS. The only good thing about it was C++.

Go Linux

Here are a few quick facts to convince anyone that life is getting better.

Try this cool life expectancy tool from Google to see.

1. People are living longer. If you are born in Israel today you’ll live ten years longer than if you were born in 1960. 20 years if your are born in Haiti. 37 years in China !
2. Israel is one of the countries with longest life expectancy. 81 years. even better for women.
3. Life expectancy gaps between rich countries and poor countries are narrowing.
4. Hilary Swank won two Oscars for  “Million Dollar Baby” and “Boys Don’t Cry” after horrible failures in 90210 and “The next Karate Kid”
5. The number of traffic accidents in Israel has decreased by 35% in the last 12 years.

Life Expectancy is Getting Longer

Accidents Chart in Israel

The New Karate Kid - Swank

One of the worst plagues in society is hitting developers’ communities everywhere. It is not the swine flu. It is the CMAL syndrome. I think I might have caught it as well.

Cover My A**, Legally syndrome causes developers and managers  to start talking like lawyers or priests.

Allegedly, I will finish fixing the bug tomorrow.

I estimate the milestone will be completed in one hour.

The component is supposed to be ready in a week,unless something bad happens.

I hope this fix works, if not, let me know. (A real comment on a bug tracking system)

If all goes well, and no one gets sick, the plan should be realistic, allegedly.

The upgrade script is supposedly completed, on 8 out of 9 cases.

As a manager, I don’t need a constant reminder of human kind inability to control its destiny. My cat reminds me of that every morning.

A Cat Called Sushi

If there is a concrete problem  that needs handling, it  is worth a mention.Otherwise, let’s get the job done.

Moreover, if one estimates a task as one day long , in the morning, in most cases, it has to be finished by the end of the day.Estimating long projects is complex, but approximation of tasks that are less than eight hours long is part of profession.

The words create the mindset. Compare the passive  “will be completed” with the active  “I will complete”.

Does it mean that developers have to shut up and just please their managers ? Of course not. On the contrary. The relationship and language should be open and honest , not legally binding. As a manager I want to know if my decisions are stupid or not realistic. CMAL syndrome is not helping any of us.

If the manager is an idiot who is looking for a scapegoat, the legal disclaimer would not save your behind anyway.

If the manger is smart he does not need these legal and spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Hope and faith are better left to other important areas in life. I hope Dexter’s season four is as good as season two.

Hope and Faith, White Dove

I just read that some people think it is unfair that women tennis players finally get the same prizes as men. That helped Serena Williams set a new revenue record.

They claim that because women play three sets, they should get smaller prizes.

While I think the argument is quite stupid, I tried to look at it from a completely different angle.

Is there any reason that men play five sets ?

In other words, in how many cases was the match winner different than the “winner” after three sets ?

According to Wimbledon 2009 statistics , only in 6% (8 out of 127) of the cases the winner  of the match was able to reverse the score.

One could argue that these 6%  are the most interesting ones, but I’m not sure this is true.

To me , it seems that it might be better to have three sets for both men and women. It is hard to watch Tennis for so long anyway

And here are the numbers, just in case….

Day   Leader-Won Turn-Around

1     27      2

2     33      0

3    14        3

4     16       1

5     6         0

6     10      0

7     7        1

9      3        1

11    2        0

13    1        0

California Church

It was available about five years ago ,but the old service was not economical. This one works quite well.

It is always interesting to get back to the states. although it my birth place , I’m always surprised about the small differences.

• Californians can’t drive in the rain. I have brought on them the worst storm in 50 years.Eight inches in a day.
• The bigger surprise was that the Seattle drivers can’t drive in the rain either. Really. And they have rain all year-long.
• A sign in the second floor of an office building  - “the ADA approved restrooms are in the first floor“. That does not really help the blind, does it ?
• The hotel breakfast has orange juice, cranberry juice, apple juice, but no H2O in sight.Except for that eight inches of rain.
• There are Hebrew(s) and Jews everywhere. The San Mateo Korean laundry guy studied three years in Tel Aviv university. The barber next door is a Russian Jew named Sasha with relatives in Sderot. The Seattle newsstand actually has a Yiddish newspaper next to the fisherman bulletin. Don’t even get me started on our numbers in Hi-Tech.



Yiddish Newspaper in Seattle

• The socialist corner. Seems like nothing was learned from the banks’ crisis.  It is “good” for “everyone” that the bankers make millions in bonuses. If the CEO makes 180 Million , than the CIO makes five Million and he can buy IT for 20 Million. Then the vendor sales person wants to make 500K$. That’s all fine, but the base of the pyramid just went bankrupt. Maybe that’s why pyramids are built by slaves
• Capitalist corner. Why would I want to hire someone who starts on talking about his IPO rights ? There were almost no tech IPO for the last two years anyway.Shouldn’t we just focus on creating a great company first?
• Garmin GPS confuses Van Ness and Mission streets all the time.Just when getting out of the 101 highway. It is at a problem for at least a year now. Can anyone fix it ?
• Texas confuses the GPS even more.When the exit itself is one mile long and split into to highways,one should only trust the signs.
• I haven’t been to Texas for 19 years, since I taught wilderness survival in camp Constantin. Still, there is 3:1 ratio of Texas Flags to American flags.


Texas Flags Outnumber American Flags - Click for Details

• Green in Texas? It is GM Trucks month in Texas


Texas Green Truck ?

• I saw more uniformed American soldiers in Dallas airport in one day than in two months in San Francisco. Just saying.
• Green in Texas hotel room. Why would anyone need two queen size beds with seven  pillows in each bad?
• In Texas medium rare is medium rare.In California it is rare that  medium rare is medium rare.It is usually well done. Which is not well. Done.

Rare Squid in Seattle
To prevent DUI, Texas has a mechanism in cars to prevent the car to start when the drivers’ breath contains alcohol. Strange.
In California age discrimination at work is defined,by default, as firing anyone who is 40+. In Israel it is up to judge to decide on the merit of the case. Seems to make more sense. Discrimination can start at 39 and might not exist on 42.
Downloading films in the Airport is a cool idea. for three dollars you can download any film to the laptop. Only problem is the ActiveX crashes.

Download Movies in Airport

Oh, man! We killed Mr. Burns! Mr. Burns is gonna be so mad! – Homer Simpson

Giant Stepping On A Small Company

One of the most annoying questions I had to answer in last couple of years was “Why can’t Cisco\IBM\Microsoft\VMWARE\HP easily copy what you do?”

To some extent, it is another variation of the annoying “What’s your intellectual property?”

Both of the questions are studied in first year MBA courses  .They seem to make sense at a first glance, but I would try to show they are highly overrated questions.

The underlying assumption is that BBG (Big Big Giant) can use its amazing resources, huge capital , loyal customer base and brand to kill any small company if the small company does not have a great barrier to entry, which is typically a technological one.

Having worked in few BBG’s and couple of Start-Up I beg to differ. The giants tend to fail themselves.

StartUp Beats Big Big Giant Corporate

Lets start with some questions:

• Why was Sun unable to succeed with its own firewall (SunScreen?) when it tried to stop OEM’ing Check Point’s?
• Why was Check Point repeatedly unable  to take the SOHO firewall market  (FireWall-First, Small-Office, Safe@Home,Secure-1) ? NetScreen took if from CP. Then Fortinet did the same thing for NetScreen.
• Why does Microsoft still lack  significant footprint in the Firewall business?
• Why does Microsoft  ten billion dollars research budget fails to copy Google’s search algorithm for ten years?
• How come Google Video lost to YouTube?
• Why is VMWARE leading over Microsoft in virtualization?  Microsoft acquired Connectix in 2003. Connectix virtualization technology was almost as good as VMWARE’s at the time. Today there is a big gap in market share.
• How come IBM , with years of building super computers does not have an elastic cloud solution?
• How does small Riverbed perform  so well among the networking giants?
• What was the huge intellectual property in Windows that OS2 lacked?

Here is a hint to my proposed answer to why giants fail, details to follow on part II :

1. Time.
2. Focus.
3. Execution.
4. Constraints.
5. Culture.
6. Investors.
7. Golden Cage Syndrome.

As much as I like president Obama, it seems that he got a Nobel prize  for his great presentational skills, rather than his current contribution to world peace.

To contrast , the Israeli Professor Ada Yonat, who won the Nobel chemistry prize, was quoted saying “As you can see I did not go to the hair saloon”.

Yesterday  I attended a great presentation skills workshop on Power Presentations with Jerry Weissman.

Although I have done hundreds of presentations it was a wonderful insightful day.

Key Takeaways :

• I should talk less and listen more. My wife tells me it is a good idea in other situations as well.
• It is not about me. It is about the audience.
• Saying less has much stronger overall impact on the audience.
• Yoga principles work well . Good stand, open chest, and natural breathing improve the effect dramatically.
• Pause.Slow.Engage. I moved my eyes fourteen times in two minutes ! that was painful to watch.Went down to four times by the end of the day.
• Intuition is often wrong. Reaching out looks stupid when you do it, but looks great when you watch someone else.
• If you nod at someone he will nod back instinctively.
• Bill Clinton was a horrible speaker in 1988 and an amazing one in 2000. Practice makes perfect.
• The word “You” is the most persuasive word in the English language (proven in research).
• Powerpoint animations are not evil. They are just tricky and need to be used intelligently.
• Testing is the key. Once you see yourself on video, everything becomes much clearer and stronger.

I’ll share some takeaways on American life style in the next post ( less is more ).

Here is a nice collection of 80’s vinyl singles I bought in Amsterdam.

Scanned for your amusement.The images are quite large, so click for details.

“Video Killed The Radio Star”  is the song MTV aired with. Now should be renamed to “YouTube Killed the Video Star”.

Shout by Tears for fears was symbolic of the dark Reagan and Shamir days on the early 80′0.

And Road to Nowhere was an optimistic(?) version of the same situation. This is a great album with a very cool (80’s word) cover.

I’m Still not sure I figured this one out, but I used to play it repeatedly back then.

Did you know Rod Stewart performed in Tel Aviv ? Luckily, I was too young to be there.

This video was censored at the time. Is it because of the Banana on 1:07 ?

Today we have CSI Miami with much harder picture to watch (mostly David Caruso whispering annoyingly).

The artist formerly known as Prince does not allow his songs youtube, you’ll have to suffer this version.

One night in Bangkok. First white hip hop ? Rap Musical ? “One town is very like the other”.

And the only one still around. Not my cup of tea , but can’t really resist.