Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I review a requirements-management scheme that indicates no requirements management.

I once worked in an organization that built systems. Everyone worked very hard and very long hours. There was one problem:

We never delivered a single system

Why not? The problem was with managing requirements. Each month we held a requirements meeting. Someone would state a requirement for a new system. That new system was more important than any system ever requested. Hence, work on all other systems must cease, and all resources must go towards the new requirement.

This was a simple scheme:

The last requirement stated was to be implemented first.

Ah, nothing ever finished. The entire situation was a failure to manage the requirements. No one wanted to decide what requirement was truly the most important and hence should be implemented first. Decisions implied thought and responsibility. Yikes. We didn’t want any of that.

People were given awards for stating important requirements. People were given awards for working hard on building systems. No one ever delivered anything; no one ever accomplished anything. Appearance of effort and intention was everything.

by Dwayne Phillips

We all say that we are people of integrity. But are we?

I hate to write this blog post. I know I hate to do it because I have been meaning to write it for seven or eight years, but still haven’t done it. Well, here goes.

We like to say that we have integrity. Of course we do because if we are not people of integrity we are people of duplicity. Yikes! Who wants to be duplicitous?

Consider the following situation:

A “manager” sits in a meeting with his subordinates. A “subordinate” mentions some bad news that should be sent up the chain to the manager’s “superior.” (I use the quotation marks as your organization probably uses different job titles.) The manager states, “Don’t worry. We won’t tell that fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-derogatory-adjective superior.”

The manager has just told the subordinates:

Tell me (your superior) the truth. I won’t tell my superiors the truth.

This is duplicity; this is the complete lack of integrity.

Consider this similar situation:

A manager and several subordinates meet with some customers. During the meeting, the manager praises the customers for their work and ability. When the meeting ends and the customers leave the room, the manager says, “What a bunch of fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-derogatory-noun.”

The manager has just told the subordinates:

I call people one thing when they are here and something else when they are gone.

Once again, this is duplicity; this is the complete lack of integrity.

Hey managers and the rest of us:

People observe what we do. Do we show integrity or duplicity?

by Dwayne Phillips

A recent experience with a customer-service organization illustrates how much of today’s “can’t” is merely “I don’t want to.”

The topic of this blog is nothing new. That is one of my frustrations as this is an old habit that I wish and wish had gone away in today’s world of inter-networked everything and limitless choice and all those we-are-nearly-at-nirvana promises I often hear.

I have been working with a customer-service organization to get a simple form. I worked on this for six weeks. The customer servers routinely told me, “I will do this, but I cannot do it now.” The customer servers followed this with ten minutes of detailed explanation of how the greater world processes made it impossible for them to do anything now. It would take days.

I immediately called someone else in the greater customer-service organization where I spoke with someone who could—lo and behold—do that impossible-for-today task immediately.

Hmmm. If I could find someone in that organization who could do it now, why couldn’t the first person find that miraculously empowered person? Person the first person had a case of “I don’t want to” vice “I can’t.”

Yes, even in today’s all networked, all empowered, all mobile, all is possible now world…we still find the “I don’t want to and you can’t make me” customer (non)servers.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

by Dwayne Phillips

The digital divide grows wider as the almost plutocrats are educating their kids in a way that will make the kids the true plutocrats of tomorrow.

It appears that many who have become rich in today’s technical world are educating their kids at home. They have every right to do so, and if I were in their position I would certainly consider the same.

This is taking us back to the 1700s and prior centuries where the rich educated their children themselves. Well, they paid for a teacher to come live with them and educate their children. The children of the not-so-fabulously rich weren’t educated. They worked on farms or in factories. Perhaps they learned enough arithmetic to  be paid and buy staples of life.

I wish the new technical rich would donate their money to educating the children of other people. That is merely a wish, but I think it to be a good one.

So what are we to do? Our schools are failing, but experts have said so for decades. Our schools our failing, but experts have argued for decades about what to do. Our schools are failing, so the rich are educating their children like the rich did centuries ago.

Let us not be surprised if we have technical plutocrats in the year 2035.

by Dwayne Phillips

Is this person who and what they claim? Is this person authentic?

The term “authenticity” is being tossed about much recently. I once worked in a job where determining the authenticity of a person was important. I struggled to understand what that meant. Here is some of what I learned.

Is this person who they claim to be?

Is this person as “caring” as they claim to be? (Substitute any attribute for “caring”)

Is a person authentic? Do they stand up and say,

This is who I am

or

This is who I want to be

Failure to be authentic can be quite humbling. See, e.g., NBC’s Brian Williams.

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems the world has redefined what it means to be an engineer.

A recent story on the web discussed how Twitter will change the appearance of its home page. Involved in the story is Twitter’s Vice President of Engineering.

I am an engineer; I have been an engineer for several decades. I don’t understand why the VP of Engineering is involved in a change in how a home page looks. I understand how graphics designers and such would be involved, but really, the engineers?

Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this one.

by Dwayne Phillips

I read the FCC’s document on Net Neutrality (“Report and order,” 2015) and provide my comments.

The FCC recently released the full text of their document on the Open Internet (the full document is available in PDF here). I read all 400 pages of document and assenting and dissenting views of the five commissioners. Here are a few things I noticed while reading the 400 pages. The order of items below is per the order that I read them in the document.

0. The English Language

Government bodies are infamous for butchering the English language. This document continues that tradition. Did anyone at the FCC take English in high school? Perhaps they can hire a few retired high school English teachers part time to proof read these documents. This is just plain awful.

1. Broadband Leaps from the Past

A paraphrase that is repeated often:

We reread the Communications Act of 1934 and found that we have the authority to regulate Broadband Internet access service (BIAS) providers.

2. The Public Good

Another paraphrase:

We believe that the Open Internet is good for the public. Therefore, we declare that we have the authority to prohibit anything that we believe hurts the Open Internet.

3. Clear, Bright-Line Rules

I am not sure what “bright-line” means, but the phrase is used often. Anyways, the meat of the document is:

1. No blocking
2. No throttling
3. No paid prioritization
4. No unreasonable interference or unreasonable disadvantage to consumers or edge providers

If we don’t think about these much, there is nothing to argue. I like these as general goals. As always, the details tend to make a mess of this.

4. Accurate and Precise

This one astounds me. These two words are loaded in the science and technology world. Educated S&T persons don’t use these words unless the are sure what they are doing. The FCC, however, uses them several times in the document. Yikes.

5. Light-Touch Title II

This is a major point in the document as the FCC claims to use Title II (BIAS is a telecommunications service) but only lightly. At lease they don’t call it “Agile Title II.”

6. We Take Credit for the Internet

Several times the document claims that all this great investment and innovation in the Internet is a result of previous FCC regulation. Never do they mention the possibility that the past occurred despite FCC regulation.

7. We are Here to Protect You (from yourself)

The FCC see itself as the grand protector keeping companies from harming the public. The FCC does not see companies as part of the public. I guess this is a part of the “business is evil” concept.

8. Communities of Color

This phrase refers to persons. This phrase is actually in the document in an attempt to represent poor(er) persons. I’m not making this up.

9. Mobile and Fixed Broadband

The FCC believes that these two fall under the same topic, and the FCC has the authority to regulate them both equally.

10. Past Mistakes, Future Infallibility

The FCC admits to past mistakes in classifying Comcast as a provider of information services. Now, Comcast is a provider of telecommunications services. My paraphrase:

We made mistakes in the past, but henceforth, we are infallible.

11. Virtuous Cycle

The document uses this phrase over and over to describe how the Internet has come to be and how the FCC will guide it in the future.

12. Guilty by Ability

The FCC explains how broadband providers have the technical ability to hurt consumers. Hence, the FCC must protect consumers from providers. The first part is true. The second part denies the existence of the marketplace (if I hate Comcast enough, I will switch to Verizon). The second part also assumes future guilt before any action is taken. And all this time I thought we were innocent until proven guilty.

13. Telecommunications

The FCC declares, despite history, that broadband Internet access service is a telecommunications service. That declaration brings with hit some 80 years of declarations, laws, and court decisions. Everyone should be worried about what is buried in those eight decades.

14. (No) Service Level Agreement

The FCC will hear complaints from anyone who has a complaint. They, however, give no fixed time for responding to complaints. They will work as fast as they can or want (whichever they choose). Wow! What a service level agreement.

15. Disagreement Implies Incorrectness

The FCC declares that they are correct. If you disagree with the FCC, you are incorrect.

16. Here Come the Taxes

The FCC reserves the ability to slap taxes on our ISP bills. Remember all those fees on your old phone bill. We will see them again.

17. Justifications

Large portions of the document contain justifications for the rulings. This always makes me suspicious. If the rulings were so simple and good, why would anyone write so many justifications?

18. Dissenting Opinions

Of the 400 pages, 80 of them are dissenting opinions from the two commissioners who voted “no.” Much of the dissenting opinions are that the FCC is bound by law as to how it goes about making such declarative documents. The dissenters contend that the FCC violated many of these laws.

Then there are technical matters. Namely, broadband Internet access service providers fall under information services not telecommunications services.

Then there is the White House, a.k.a., our President and his staff members. The dissenters contend that this declarative document was written at the White House with minor edits at the FCC. Again, this type of thing is illegal.

19. Summary

The report itself is about 320 pages long. That sure seems like a lot of pages to give four bright-line rules. The FCC didn’t issue a draft of the report for public comment; that seems odd. The FCC declarations are amazingly similar to statements made by our President. The similarity leads me to believe that there is no coincidence.

Several people have summarized the document as (paraphrase):

This creates a national jobs program for communications lawyers.

Federal Communications Commission, (2015). Report and order on remand, declaratory ruling, and order (FCC 15-24)

by Dwayne Phillips

We try to relearn this again: people have to use technology in some “smart” way.

Money goes to big data projects, but not much comes back.

Where have I heard this before? Oh yes, it was with fill-in-the-blank-with-one-of-those-new-technologies-that-was-going-to-change-the-world-by-itself. People use technology. Well, sometimes we use it, and sometimes we use it in clever, well-thought-out ways. And then there are all those other times.

Big data is just like all other technologies in that it won’t save my world all by itself. I have to do something. I must have an idea or a purpose or a goal or something other than a desire to put a technology on my resume.

Here is a rule of thumb:

If someone does not show the before and after of their technology use, they proceeded without thought.

Proceeding without thought can be dangerous.

by Dwayne Phillips

Mankind is searching for that self-applying information so we can life the good life. Perhaps this is a silly fantasy, perhaps it is a dystopian future.

Is this the singularity? Is this beyond the singularity?

Consider this future. The computer mines information and doesn’t present it to a person, but uses it immediately (like in a few nanoseconds because that is how long it takes a computer to “think”).

I think this is beyond the singularity because, as I understand “singularity,” that is what a person can do. The self-applying information goes far beyond what a person can do.

For example, a computer search finds that four researchers around the globe have written papers on a similar ground-breaking topic. These four have no connections (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). The software scans their four calendars, finds an open time, schedules a video chat room, and opens their applications at the right time, etc. The software also arranges funding from venture capitalists, files incorporation papers, and arranges an IPO, and so on.

Perhaps a person has to define the ground-breaking topic so the computer can do its part. Perhaps the computer understands ground-breaking topics.

Still, we search for that magic self-applying information so that we can sit on the beach, sip a cool drink, watch the waves, and enjoy the good life. We will pay for this recreation with the money earned by the corporation that was started by a computer applying information all but itself.

But who will serve us those cool drinks?

by Dwayne Phillips

Tech companies use photo recognition algorithms to learn about you. They sell this information to advertisers, and the rest is history.

It is with humble apologies to the professors who ushered me into research in computer vision and image processing that I present this post.

Google and others are constantly improving their algorithms that recognize the people and things in photographs. They are becoming pretty darn good at it. They can recognize emotion, gender, age, and other attributes of people. They can recognize if you are next to food or cars or tourists attractions.

Pass these recognitions to advertisers who put 1 and 1 together to make 27. Viola, you start receiving ads that fit you and your lifestyle.

What happened? How did that travel agent know about my trip to Alaska and my love for chocolate ice cream?