Take These Cliches, Please!

Here’s a partial list of stupid business cliches I wish would just go away. I’m thinking of devoting a whole page at MT.Net just to stupid business cliches that should go away.

Touch base: You touch my stuff … and I’ll kill ya.
On the same page: Who’s page? Don’t we have “paperless” offices now?
Gut check: This is business, not rugby, tough guy.
Heads-down: This one isn’t worn … yet.
Bottom-line everything: What, am I a spreadsheet now?
Going/moving forward: This one always makes me think of Dan Quayle. Bless his heart.
Reinvent the wheel: Come on! There are millions of inventions since the wheel. Can’t you think of something else to reinvent?
Skinny: On a slippery slope to being worn.
Slippery slope: Had to throw that in there. Heh.
Out of pocket: Keep away from my base and stay out of my pocket!
End user: What other kind of user is there? Try “user” instead.
Level set: Trendy is another name for becoming worn.
Skill set: Set this, set that. Just say “skills.”
Solution set: Ditto.
Put the cart before the horse: Long after horses and carts have been put out to pasture, this one’s still kicking.
Plant the seed: Not too annoying, if used sparingly.
Opening a can of worms: Acceptable if you alternate occasionally with “slippery slope.”
Ping: It has its place…if you’re a dweeb.
Add value: This one is soooo second millennium.
In this space: Spaces, bases, pockets. Oh my!
Bring to the table: Stop it before it kills again.
Mindshare: This is code for “I have no clue what I’m talking about.”
Leverage: A buzzword-bingo winner every time.
Interfaced: Nothing says “I’m a geek” than slipping this one into conversation. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Seamlessly: This one drives me nuts. Nothing, and I mean nothing in the computer industry is seamless. It’s a myth. Give it up.
Vision: The CEO of a dot-bomb I once worked for kept being called “visionary.” I was smart to head for the exits.
Cycle back: Acceptable in geek company, but overuse could put it on the Endangered Cliche list.
Arena: No one’s duking it out in the Roman Coliseum here. Time to hang up the gloves, champ!
Utilize: There’s a better, shorter word which means the same thing: “use.” Saying “utilize” makes you look like a puffed-up buffoon.
Greatest thing since sliced bread: Sliced bread was invented in the 1920’s. What was the greatest thing before sliced bread? Has nothing progressed since the 1920’s? Is there nothing greater?

That’s all for now, though I’m sure there’ll be more. If you or anyone you know spouts any of these, please: seek help immediately!

Cleared For Takeoff

I flew on a business trip yesterday. At the ticket counter, I gave the agent my driver license, as usual. She did the usual check-in process, then looked up.

“Mr. Turner, what is your date of birth?”

I gave her my birthdate and she continued typing.

Curiosity caught up with me. “So … I’ve never been asked for my birthdate before,” I said in a friendly tone. “What did you need that for?”

“Oh,” she replied casually, “just to clear you from the watch list.”

Very interesting, indeed.

Finger Pickin’

The kids gave me a happy wake-up this morning, so I thought I’d have some fun and play some guitar while we were lounging around in our pajamas. It was the first time I played guitar since I injured my finger. I’ll be happy to note that the injury didn’t affect my playing at all: I play just as badly as I did before!

The kids didn’t seem to mind, though. I drew the line at getting out the electric guitar. Cranking up an amp at 7 AM is not a good way to keep your neighbors happy!

The only sign left of my finger injury is a small scab. In a few weeks, it will be good as new.

One thing I do is heal quickly and well.

Music Renderer For Web Browsers?

I asked a programmer friend who’s also a musician if something existed to that would render a musical score in a web browser. Neither of us could find anything.

What I’d like is some sort of easy way to display sheet music in a browser. That way musicians could post their work and others could make clean (and correct) printouts of the music to play themselves. The format could be XML, or some HTML cousin, or perhaps the music could be in MIDI format and the browser could render that.

Does this sound useful to any musicians out there? Anyone good with Java?

Cap Popped?

Looks like hell has frozen, after all. At least hell has gotten as cool as a nice tall pint of speciality beer. The Pop The Cap initiave to bring high-alcohol speciality beers to North Carolina has gotten the bill through both legislatures. If the Gov has no objections, it will become law August 13th, or sooner.

The usual government-is-your-mommy crowd spoke up against the bill. New Government Mommies are Triangle representatives Fred Smith and former Raleigh city councilman Neal Hunt. Anyone arguing that teens wanting a buzz will somehow want to pay $6 a beer instead of drinking a 50 cent Beast is seriously fooling themselves.

Help top this one off by letting the governor know you want your high-end beer now!

Here’s to us!

Burr On The NWS Duties Act (a.k.a., the Accuweather giveaway)

I wrote our senators recently to ask that they not tie the hands of our wonderful, public weather source: the National Weather Service. I wrote an eloquent letter emphasizing the lifesaving importance of this information.

Today I got a letter from Richard Burr’s office (say what you want about the guy, but at least his staff responds to inquiries). Here’s his response:

Dear Mr. Turner:

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about the National Weather Service (NWS) Duties Act 2005 (S. 786). I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

I believe that the NWS provides an essential service to protect life and property. In North Carolina we rely on weather information, particularly along our coast. I am concerned about any legislation that undercuts the ability of NWS to provide essential information, such as hurricane and tornado warnings.

S. 786 was introduced in April 2005 by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for consideration. S. 786 allows all data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings received, collected, created, or prepared by the National Weather Service (NWS) to be issued in real time, without delay for internal use, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings.

Hearings and additional study will help show us if any changes are needed to ensure the essential mission of NWS is being carried out, while not creating a mission-creep into areas that the private sector can provide information.

Again, thank you for contacting me. If you have any additional questions or comments on this issue, please feel free to contact me or visit my website at http://burr.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

(signature)

Richard Burr
United States Senator

RB: asn

So, let’s pick this apart, shall we?

“I believe that the NWS provides an essential service to protect life and property. In North Carolina we rely on weather information, particularly along our coast. I am concerned about any legislation that undercuts the ability of NWS to provide essential information, such as hurricane and tornado warnings.”

Okay, so I connected with this one. The value of the data is unquestioned. He’s with me here.

“S. 786 was introduced in April 2005 by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for consideration. S. 786 allows all data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings received, collected, created, or prepared by the National Weather Service (NWS) to be issued in real time, without delay for internal use, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings.”

This paragraph is generally in agreement, too. I’ve highlighted a few key points. One of them is “all members of the public.” This is code for “businesses, too,” though generally I don’t consider a business to be a member of the public. Perhaps Certain Commercial Forecasting Companies Based In Pennsylvania (CCFCBIP), in particular. I believe the crux of the bill is that a CCFBIP didn’t think NWS was being free enough with its information. Thus, the “equal access” part. None of the sites I’ve found seem to say exactly what that information is. Thus, the “equal access” part. I seems to be some private beef which has now been taken to Congress. Anyone with further information is welcome to share.

“Hearings and additional study will help show us if any changes are needed to ensure the essential mission of NWS is being carried out, while not creating a mission-creep into areas that the private sector can provide information.”

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Anytime someone says “it will take more study,” they mean “I’ve made up my mind and you lose.” I’m not buying for a minute that Burr’s on the fence here.

Now for the coup de grace:
“while not creating a mission-creep into areas that the private sector can provide information.”

Burr’s saying “I don’t want to tie the hands of the NWS, but … I’m going to tie the hands of the NWS!” There you go. Big business wins. We the people lose.

I’ve got nothing against commercial forecasting companies. Indeed, some of my best friends are commercial forecasting companies. If you want to compete with a free service, knock yourself out. But if your product sucks to the point that you resort to hobbling the public service, particularly one which has been around for almost one hundred and fifty years, good luck. Maybe you should fix your business plan instead, hmmm?

This should be a wake-up call to open-source advocates as well. The NWS uses a ton of open-source tools to create its forecasts. If this bill becomes law, would the NWS be prohibited from sharing these open-source tools with the public, especially if the “private sector” sells one? Or would they be prohibited from developing tools in-house to create the forecasts of commercial ones exist?

The whole thing smells fishy. Burr’s response only confirms it.

WRAL Serves Up Podcasts

Raleigh’s Capitol Broadcasting loves to get ahead of the crowd when it comes to cool new stuff. Capitol’s WRAL-TV was the first television station in the country to broadcast in high-definition. WRAL-FM is one of the first to broadcast in digital stereo. Now Capitol is in the leading edge again: offering podcasts of its programming.

Get WRAL’s podcasts here:
WRAL News
WRAL News specials
WRAL’s Headline Saturday
N.C. Spin
WRAL’s Spiritual Awakening

If there’s a more innovative broadcaster around, I haven’t found it.

New: Metric Computer Unit: The Moore

Computers make plenty of use of the metric system. Memory, disk space, and processor speed are all measured in metric units. How come we don’t have a metric unit for computer power? We can call it a Moore, after Intel’s Gordon Moore’s famous “law” that computer power would double every two years.

I spent part of this weekend working with older, surplus PCs. An old IBM desktop machine with a 166 MHz processor and 16 MB of RAM ran Windows 95 with amazing speed, considering its age. The application response was snappy on this old hardware. I can only imagine how it would run on a modern, gigahertz system.

A Moore would be used to define a set type of performance. For instance, a Moore could refer to application performance by a system with W operating system, with X processor, Y memory, and Z I/O. Performance would be measured relative to this standard, in Moores.

That way one could properly account for the effect of bloatware on the performance of a modern computer. What do you think?

Solid Rocket Booster Video

Here’s a bittorrent I created of the space shuttle solid rocket booster video from the STS-114 mission I mentioned yesterday. It was shown on NASA TV Saturday.

I learned from this excellent Wikipedia article that the SRBs ascend to about 42 miles before they begin their tumble back to earth. Thus in five minutes, the boosters thunder back to earth from an altitude of 220,000 feet. Its impressive to think that these boosters go through such incredible stresses during launch and recovery and then get reused again. Watching the video gives me a new appreciation for the ingenuity of our space program.

NASA Solid Rocket Booster Video

I’ve been following the current STS-114 space shuttle mission on NASA TV. This mission, being the first since Columbia disintegrated upon reentry, is one of the most photographed in the history of the shuttle program.

Tuesday’s launch showed some stunning video taken from a camera onboard the shuttle. While it was impressive, what I saw today was truly breathtaking. Today NASA rolled video taken from cameras on the solid rocket boosters during launch. In the span of ten minutes, these rockets go from rest to 18,000 MPH and back again.

The ride up isn’t interesting to watch, as all you can see is the side of the external fuel tank. Then the boosters exhaust themselves, the explosive bolts fire, and the silent rockets float away from the shuttle and tank. From then on, the boosters take an eerie ride back into the clutches of gravity.

I’ll resample this video and post it this weekend. It is awesome to watch.

Update: Download the video here.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31