Mr T's rants and ravings

These were some comments I left on an other blog where a discussion was taking place. I thought I would post it here as well to help me save these thoughts.

I am very much the outsider in the the open source discussion. I have spent the better part of my 35+ year career working for companies that make and sell proprietary software. While I have worked on projects that more or less follow the open source model of development these projects have been pretty small and not in the LINUX world at all.

So how do I judge the welcoming ways of the open source world? By the way the people who self identify with it interact with me. Those experiences have been overwhelmingly negative. It is as if they see me as irredeemably tainted and the enemy of all that is good and right in software. This is of course not a good way to win me over. 🙂

People in this thread see open source as more welcoming of people than proprietary software projects. I had one big dream after college and that was to one day be a developer on the RSTS/E (a proprietary) operating system. I did get the chance and it wasn’t all that hard for me. Dang, I am batting 1 for 1. Home run the first time. So my personal experience has been that people are much more welcoming in proprietary software. Send in a resume, get an interview, people offer to pay you money to write code. How is that not welcoming?

What is the model for open source? It appears (remember I am on the outside looking in) that one can get the code and start working but that it often takes quite a long time and lots of hard work before people are willing to take and use your code. And then they still take it for free. You get a pat on the head and people use your code and that is about it. This is encouraging to people who need to make a living? Really?

It seems as though the process to work on open source as a company employee is pretty much the same as for working on proprietary software though. In any job having a portfolio of work to show people is an edge – open or proprietary. And frankly my observation is that makers of proprietary software are way a head in realizing the importance of a diverse population of contributors. They are well out in front trying to recruit women, minorities and all sorts of different people into the development process. Diversity is a core value where I work. Is it in open source? I don’t see it.

So apparently Tiger Woods may or may not have been cheating on his wife. How in the world is that my business? How is it your business? Is it interesting? I suppose so in a sort of train wreck sort of way. But not everything that is interesting is any body else’s business.

Angelina and Brad may or may not be having family troubles. Likewise Tom and Katie according to differing tabloids. How is that my business?

Right to know or right to privacy? When in doubt I lean towards privacy. The news media is probably the most hypocritical society in the world. According to them you have a right to know everything. Well except you have no right to know their sources. Or how they work things internally. Or their private affairs.They protect their own usually.

But getting back to Tiger, Brad and Tom. Sure they are public people with a very public job. That gives me a right (probably) to know what golf tournaments they play in, what movies they star in, and what public appearances they are making. It doesn’t give me any rights into their bedrooms.

I wish the media would let people have private lives. I can’t imagine but that a lot of this tabloid media so-called journalism is really more about making news (or making up news) than reporting news. The added stress caused by speculative and imaginative “reporting” probably kills as many relationships as any other outside influence.

And it benefits no one but the media who makes money selling sensationalism. There is little doubt in my mind that much of it is harmful to the reader as well as to the victims of the “reporting.” It shatters illusions, encourages others to emulate bad behavior, and encourages people to try to take advantage of others for fame and attention. Bah!

The other day someone posted a link to an image with a number of mock derogatory racial/cultural sports icons plus the logo of the Redskins football team. Quilt by association I guess. OK I get how someone might be offended by naming a team something like the Redskins. But really if they are not also offended and upset by the Vikings, the 49ers, the Patriots, the Rangers, or Buccaneers I have to wonder.

Should I as someone of Scandinavian heritage be offended by a team naming itself after the Vikings? Not exactly the proudest era in history. If the people who are upset about the Redskins are not also protesting the Vikings why not? Why are American Indians good enough to fight for and Norwegians not?

So seriously I can’t take people who complain about American Indian mascots if  they are not also against the teams I named above as serious. Well perhaps they are serious but they are also hypocrites.

One of the problems with knowing something about programming, computers and user interface design is that when you run into a poor design in the real world it really makes you wonder. I get this every time I use an ATM. Some of the commands require you to press buttons on the side of the screen and some on the keypad. Not all of these make sense. For example, given there is an enter key on the key pad why do they often have you push a button on the side of the screen? Why not use that enter button?

And data entry. The instructions say that the amount must be in a multiple of $20. Fine so why does the user interface even allow you to enter data in the ones column and the cents columns? Shouldn’t what ever first number you press show up in the tens digit column? I haven’t tried to enter invalid data though. The way things are I am just too afraid of the possible consequences. I haven’t been burned by these poor interfaces so maybe there are enough fail safes and data checking to prevent most errors. But still a poor interface should be a concern for everyone who uses a system.

I’ve been thinking I’d like to mock up my idea of how an ATM interface should work. I think it would make an interesting classroom project. But I want to also think about other common ways people interact with computers. Point of sale machines possibly? I remember an interesting soda (pop for some of you, Coke for you in Atlanta, tonic for New Englanders) dispensing machine interface project. That might be interesting. And pizza orders are common.

But real existing interfaces that are redesigned and imagined by students seem to me to be the best idea. What sort of examples should I be looking at?

Somehow I thought of the people who regularly visit this blog site when I saw this shirt. You know who you are. 🙂