The UN awarded Al Gore and UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the Nobel Peace Prize.
On the IPCC’s report, the Cato Institute’s article Live Earth’s Inconvenient Truths explains why it is completely junk science.
The Telegraph’s article Al Gore’s ‘nine Inconvenient Untruths’ punches a few holes in Al’s film.
Of course, the UN is a political body, so its motives are far removed from the principles of science.
(follow-up to 2003/07/27)
Scientists observe the following phenomena:
Based on these observations, scientists theorize that the universe has been expanding. Extrapolating back in time, the theory projects that in the distant past (13.7 billion years ago +/- 200 million years), the universe must have been very compact and incredibly hot and dense. This is the Big Bang theory.
They also conclude that the expansion of the universe has been accelerating.
I don’t understand how they can arrive at that conclusion.
If at greater distances, we observe greater red shift, this means that farther back in time we observe higher velocity of expansion. In other words, as time moves forward, the velocity of expansion decreases. Wouldn’t elementary physics tell us that the expansion of the universe is actually decelerating – NOT increasing in velocity?
Bernhard Haisch has an excellent writing style. Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Field is an excellent article.
There is no mass either.
Users want to express their desires to a computer and have the computer fulfill their wishes on demand. We frequently see this desire manifested as software “requirements” for configurability or customization without the need for programming. Users view programming as a highly technical, error prone, and cumbersome chore that should be left to professional software developers.
Users would like developers to produce software that is capable of intelligently adapting its structure and behavior to the needs of the day, as the environment and the business requirements change. They believe they should be able to inform the software of these requirements through intuitive visual techniques. Click on a tool and fill in some information. Drag and drop some icons across the screen. New computations, new algorithms, and new ways of doing business should be configurable with a few clicks by users, who know nearly nothing about how a computer executes instructions, the nature of such instructions, and how such instructions come into existence.
What users do not realize is that the act of expressing themselves through clicks and gestures to produce instructions for the computer is itself an act of programming. The complexity involved in formulating those instructions is proportional to the degree of intelligence intrinsic to the computation. The breadth of requirements that can be satisfied by those instructions is a function of how much can be expressed by the user. Narrow coverage of requirements implies an inflexible system that targets a niche problem domain. Broad coverage of requirements implies a general purpose system.
General purpose programming languages have traditionally been expressed as text. Like all languages, programming languages have a vocabulary, words formed from a character set, and a grammar, which governs how to organize those words in meaningful ways. Textual programming languages allow humans to express themselves concisely in a form that is both precise enough for a computer to comprehend and similar enough to natural language (e.g., English) to be intuitive.
General purpose programming languages have naturally evolved from primitive instructions close to the machine (e.g., assembly language) to abstractions that correspond to natural language. Text is a highly efficient and flexible method of communicating ideas. An alternative technique using graphical images may be applicable for expressing ideas that can be tangibly visualized, but images are wholly inappropriate for non-visual ideas. An image may be able to convey a thousand words, but to have control over exactly what words to formulate would not be easy by using visual techniques.
We can expect that programming languages will continue to advance to become more intuitive to humans and more efficient at expressing complex instructions to machines. Also, we can expect that graphical techniques will continue to evolve to make programming easier to both professional programmers and users, who don’t want to program. What we must accept is the fact that instructing a machine is programming, regardless of whether it is expressed as text or using visual techniques.
Babylon 5 is a story about two differing philosophies. The Vorlons promote a life of order, stability, and peace. The Shadows promote a life of chaos, destabilization, and conflict. There is a similar philosophical difference in software development.
Most commercial software projects lean toward a philosophy of order, stability, and peace. Optimism leads to anticipating stable requirements, which would allow for a stable design. This outlook influences management and developers to behave in a particular way. We gain an expectation for requirements and design to be orderly, stable, and for a peaceful progression of events to ensue. Successful methods and techniques are expected to continue to be viable. The products of past investments into research are expected to retain their value with the passage of time. Knowledge of the present incubates confidence in being able to anticipate future needs. This confidence is reinforced by the belief that momentum has longevity. This belief is correct, but not in the way that we would hope for a healthy technology business.
The technology market relies upon continuous innovation. Innovation is about disruptive change. A strategy based on incremental improvement bets on a steady pace of change, where one’s own product is the market leader. Trailing competitors are constantly seeking to impose revolutionary change upon the market to overtake the market leader. If one is not in the lead, then it makes sense to disrupt the market to put oneself in an advantageous position. New markets are created, where old ones are destroyed. Competitive innovation radically alters requirements, thereby invalidating entrenched designs. Disruptive change accelerates demand for technology through obsolescence.
The lure for the market to adopt innovative products is efficiency gain. Gains in efficiency increase productivity or reduce costs – or both. A methodology promoting the entrenchment of a status quo is unable to adapt to an environment of unrelenting disruptive change. In technology, the status quo is precisely what must be destroyed in order to sustain a healthy market. A strategy of maintaining an entrenched design is a strategy of certain failure in the technology market.
While a life of order, stability, and peace breeds comfort, it also leads to stagnation and complacency. Creative individuals will recognize where the status quo is not good enough. A culture that institutionalizes the status quo cripples creativity, ensuring a disadvantage in relation to the competition, who seeks disruptive change.
Innovation is nurtured by an entrepreneurial spirit. There are several factors that are required to facilitate creative thinking: freedom, motivation, inspiration, and courage. Creativity needs a culture that promotes creative ideas by nurturing independent thinking, not obedience to instructions delivered by management or designated “thought leaders”; individuals will be willing to think if they are entrusted to do so. Motivation comes from achievable goals, incentives, and the rewards of a job well done. Inspiration comes from the growth and enjoyment of working with peers, who demonstrate competencies, which become a source of knowledge. Finally, courage is provided by the willingness to incur risk to achieve the rewards that come from unconventional thought; people who are confident enough in their ability to attempt great things should be encouraged to do so, because overcoming technical problems is daunting enough without the burden of an unsupportive culture.
The key characteristic of a technology business that is prepared for innovation is agility. It must be adaptable quickly to change. It must embrace disruptive change, and use change to its advantage, rather than being resistant or vulnerable to it. This includes a high degree of tolerance for risk, because change is inherently risky, and the more disruptive the greater the risk (and potentially the reward). Innovation opens opportunities, but a business must be able to pounce on an opportunity to benefit.
Until Moore’s Law no longer holds, we can expect innovative growth to continue. Technology innovation and obsolescence is the dominant trend. A technology business that does not institutionalize a culture that embraces disruptive change will not be a business for long.
Regarding today’s current events surrounding Marine general: It’s ‘fun to shoot people’:
Many people are trying to defuse the situation by saying that Lt. Gen. James Mattis’ statements were a “poor choice of words” or “flippant”. They are spinning it, because they want to portray Mattis’ statement as either not reflecting the man’s (or the Marine Corp’s) convictions or not intellectually or morally significant. They are conceding the superficial impression that Mattis’ statements are morally reprehensible, which can occur when the reader deliberately interprets the words out of context.
The spirit and true meaning behind Mattis’ statements were naked and explicit. His words were unsophisticated but not a poor choice. His choice of words should make a rationally moral man proud. However, for those who are offended by Mattis’ “poor choice of words” or “flippant” remarks, allow me to restate using words that bring clarity to the moral basis underlying Mattis’ intent.
Afghanistan has been plagued by those, who believe in oppressive practices, such as violently punishing women for such ridiculous transgressions as being seen in public not wearing a veil. I have a strong moral conviction to condemn those who support such inhuman practices. As a proud member of the Marine Corps, I can speak for all men who uphold justice as a moral principle, when I say, it is our honor and pleasure to be the agents for delivering just consequences in open combat on the battlefield upon the forces of evil. Those who believe that brutality and force are tools for proper human behavior are now learning, as they deserve, the logical consequences of living according to — and dying by — the principles, in which they so strongly believe.
New Scientist published an article with the headline Dinosaurs’ ‘bulletproof’ armour revealed.
Apparently the massive herbivore, ankylosaur, developed armor plating for protection from its enemies. In contrast, rival species began deploying rudimentary ballistic weapons. Responding to provocation, ankylosaurs needed a defensive adaptation during the late Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Consequently, gun violence became a widespread social problem among dinosaur clans. Fossil evidence has revealed that predatory practices became more sophisticated. Depleted uranium penetrators and shaped charge warheads rendered the ankylosaur’s defensive systems combat ineffective.
Rapid advances in delivery systems and energy yield ultimately led to the mass extinction of ankylosaurs and many other species. Enemy forces launched a multi-gigaton payload from long range. It detonated near the Yucatan Peninsula. That was the end of the ankylosaur.
In my previous article, innovation as the enemy of maturity, I describe some organizational and technical patterns that can help to empower innovation, as a software development firm grows. Removing internal impediments to innovation does not alleviate the commercial impediments.
Commercial off the shelf (COTS) software aims to provide generalized capabilities, in order to be attractive to a broad market. Enterprise applications are sensitive to business processes and business policies, which are highly specialized to each organization. One size does not fit all organizations. Each deployment will have its own idiosyncrasies. Some will demand features that are not generally useful to others. Others will demand customizations that are exclusive, not made available to the general market. The former pollutes an application, so that each deployment utilizes a shrinking subset of the features, while having to endure the growing footprint of unwanted baggage. The latter burdens the software with the growing complexity of a diverse set of customizations. Both are symptoms of a chronic bloat.
COTS software is normally structured so that there is a license fee to purchase an application for a particular use, followed by a recurring annual maintenance fee for support and bug fixes. The customizations often associated with enterprise software incur additional fees for professional services. This business model influences the software in the following ways.
The COTS software business is modeled to maximize the software vendor’s revenue by seeking out the highest value subset of generalized features that are widely in demand by the greatest number of customers. By attempting to satisfy a few needs for all customers, no single customer can be wholly satisfied. Usually a generalized solution to a problem with many specialized variations can only partially solve the problem for any particular circumstance.
Enterprise software requires a business model that can adequately satisfy the demand for specialized solutions to specialized problems, while leveraging generalized solutions to generalized problems. A customer with a need for features to be developed according to a schedule should be able to fund and resource that development without being constrained by a single source and the lack of design authority.
Customers can be better served by a business model, where an annual fee is paid for a subscription to the software source code, development infrastructure, customer support, and community resources. The market for innovative designs expands to include contributors, who are much more familiar with the problem space (the user community). Competition helps to seek out the best solution, and it benefits the whole community. Each customer selectively builds the application to include only the desired features with their specialized extensions and customizations on their own schedule. Enterprise customers tend to contract professional services to implement extensions and customizations. This community source model empowers consultants, and attracts systems integrators and channel partners to improve sales instead of compete. A subscription based community source model is good for customers and good for the software vendor.
In my previous article, maturity as the enemy of innovation, I identified the destructive forces of organizational maturity. As an engineer, I cannot allow a problem to go unsolved.
To stem the tide of chronic risk aversion, we must imprint the entrepreneurial spirit into the culture as a core value. The courage to initiate calculated risk-taking needs to be admired and rewarded. The stigma associated with failure must be removed by appreciating the knowledge gained through lessons learned.
The cost of research and experimentation must be reduced. The pace of development must be rapid. These are achieved by keeping the team size small. The most risky and unproven ideas should be attacked by an individual, not a team. Functional teams need alignment on direction and a degree of agreement. Revolutionary advancement is frequently the result of radical thinking. New directions, different techniques, and breaking well-established rules are unpopular, especially to those with emotional investments in past innovations. There are fewer disagreements in a small team, and none at all in a team of one.
Uniformity of thinking leads to stagnation. Diversity must be encouraged, and this is promoted through a free market for ideas. Organizations that rely on a command-and-control style of management to set direction eliminate the competition that nurtures a diversity of ideas. Management should empower technical decision-making to be done bottom-up rather than top-down.
Once new ideas have been adequately proven, there must be ways of teaching them to others and incorporating them into product. Product development is often done sequentially, one release at a time. The immediate release focuses on short term commitments, and the delivery is usually constrained by schedules and costs that can ill afford risk. Riskier development must be allowed to proceed concurrently on longer-term schedules, without overly constraining the process. Developments from the unstable branch should be merged into the main product release, as they become ready. This provides an environment to accommodate both risky development and risk-averse development.
The above techniques can be effective in remedying the organizational impediments to innovation. However, there are also commercial impediments that must be overcome. That will be the topic of my next article.
As a software development organization matures, its culture institutionalizes practices that promote quality. Maturity is for quality. The most obvious measures of quality are in terms of defects. The quest for lower defect counts is a noble one.
At the same time, complexity grows as the weight of larger feature sets and lofty requirements are incorporated into the software. With increasing complexity comes a larger development team. A larger team means more division of labor, higher cost of management overhead, and more careful planning to be able to utilize those resources. Division of labor requires the delegation of distinct responsibilities to specialized roles. Decision-making becomes more dispersed and distributed, and a decision will have wider impacts on team members, so good communication becomes a critical success factor.
Unfortunately, decision-making, communication, and the distribution of responsibility are never perfect. The more complex the software, the larger the team, the more distributed the responsibilities, the more specialized the roles, the higher the cost of development. This is not a scalable organizational model. Once a software organization has reached this stage of maturity, it is doomed by inefficiency. Creative individuals are no longer empowered to quickly realize their ideas. Two key requirements to motivate and nurture a creative mind are independence and freedom. The degree to which these environmental factors are blunted is the degree to which innovation is impeded.
Because decision-making is distributed among many people, it becomes impossible for innovative ideas to be realized without winning consensus. Innovative ideas are unconventional ideas. A novel approach often needs to break well-established rules and go against practices that have worked in the past. Innovation is destructive to the status quo. It must be disruptive in order to rise and overtake older practices. Innovation is the product of experimentation and risk-taking, usually resulting in failure and rework. Without an environment that encourages this, there will be no innovation.
The quest for quality through institutionalized practices and disciplined management are in many ways counter to the independence and freedom that motivate a creative mind. Careful project management and planning discourages experimentation with risky new ideas (technical, organizational, and commercial), where many unknowns make results difficult to predict. Risky ideas need experimentation so that many failed attempts can be discarded quickly, allowing successful ideas to be taken to production. Mature organizations respond to higher risk by applying stronger management practices for mitigation, thereby increasing the cost and slowing the pace of failure towards success. In fact, once management smells failure, they immediately work to eliminate it, thereby destroying its very value as a vehicle to learn what will be needed to succeed. This is how many mature organizations have killed off the entrepreneurial spirit. This is the reason why most innovative ideas come from small groups of individuals working in a garage or a small start-up company.
