Interesting opinion piece on the backlash against Smart Metering

In many parts of the US (and maybe in Canada, too) there seems to be significant backlash against the idea of utilities using smart meters in consumers’ homes.

The concerns seem based around paranoid beliefs in four areas:

Many of the meters use UHF radio to transmit their data, and some are concerned about the health risks (as opposed to their smart phones, satellite TV, microwave oven, etc.)
The meters transmit information about your usage (duh), which some see as an invasion of privacy (though they do not seem to object to their phone company monitoring usage in real-time)
There are fears that the utilities will use this as a way to charge consumers more for electricity if they use it during peak times
There are fears that the utility could unilaterally control some portion of your usage (heat, lights, etc.)

Here is a link to an opinion piece that talks about this (from the perspective of someone fighting the backlash). It is an interesting read – I had never even considered that there would be such a backlash against smart meters.

SharePoint Developer Survey: How do YOU do SharePoint development?

I am curious how many SharePoint Developers (individuals, IT groups, consultants, and ISVs) are making use of any or all of the Microsoft Patterns and Practices SharePoint Guidance.

So, Apple deserves a 30% slice of all content you buy?

I was having a discussion this week with an old colleague regarding Apple’s content purchasing policies, and about the crippling of the Kindle, Nook and Google Books apps, as described here.

I was told I was a “Windows Snob”, and that “You and Fortune are criticizing a company for not wanting to send customers to their competitors site in a capitalist society?”

On the one hand, I agree. In a free, capitalist society, Apple has the right to do any damn thing it wants on its platform, to its partners, and to its customers – in the interest of scraping in even more profits.

However, that does not make their actions admirable, or in the best interests of their customers. And it does not mean that consumers should blindly accept this behaviour (though most users of Apple users have drunk so much of the kool-aid that they can no longer even think of life without their Apple products).

The basic premise being argued here is this: does owner/developer/vendor of a platform have the right to only allow you to buy content through them, and the right to a slice of all revenues for content on that platform?

Lets look at a couple of analogies, first to desktop computers, and second to browsers.

Lets think first about computer OS vendors. Would it be acceptable for a computer vendor (Apple or Microsoft) to not let you buy anything on any web site on your computer without giving them a 30% slice? Say Microsoft (always seen as the greedy capitalist in the crowd) tried to make this happen in Windows. How long would it be before consumer groups and the DoJ cried foul, fined them, and made them change the practice?

Lets think now about browsers now. Would it be ok for your web browser to ONLY go to web sites the were registered with and “approved of” by the browser vendor? Or for every e-commerce transaction in your browser to belong to the vendor, and give that vendor a 30% slice? I am pretty sure most users would complain about this.

The fact is, Apple’s policies in this area are flat-out wrong, and are anti-competitive. Any other company would not be allowed to get away with limiting choice the way Apple does, but Apple has much of the world so completely brainwashed with marketing hype that no one even questions them anymore.

The Value of an Education, New Brunswick Style

UPDATE: To make this farce even better, it appears that for this year’s calculation rules have re-classified my two adult sons as dependents (including one who has not lived at home for 3 years). Neat how the government can on the one hand call them dependents for student loans, but not dependents on my taxes. Welcome to the era of DoubleThink!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about The Value of an Education talking about the debate that is going on as to whether post secondary education is worth the cost, especially given the debt load student loans put on new graduates.

Well, as I learned last week (I should have known it earlier, but was not paying attention when it happened), our new provincial government here in New Brunswick, led by Premier David Alward, has taken the decision out of our hands. It seems my children no longer have the choice as to whether or not student loans are a good investment in their future, since the province has already decided they are not.

I could explain the new rules that have me so annoyed, but I will link to someone else who explains them well.

I will likely be able to adapt to this change, for my youngest anyway. Unfortunately, there will be many who cannot.

Mr. Alward, this is not the way to build an educated workforce in this province.

Google+ and a Failure to Communicate

UPDATE: Well, I remembered a Google account I created a few years ago, and no longer user. With this, I was able to create a public profile and join Google+. But what is the point? That account is separate from the one I now use for all of my other activities. So I will have yet another disconnected social network. Yay.

I thought I would try out Google+ this week, since the press is marketing it so well and everyone else seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of the “game-changing” technology (how I hate that term!). After all, a significant part of my work is around web-based collaboration and I have been an early adopter of most social networking technologies (trying to remember my 5 digit ICQ number).

One of my Twitter connections was happy enough to send me an invite, to my Google hosted email address on the same domain as this blog.

I immediately see the following message:

(BTW, Google, lose the “Oops”. We are not in Grade 1.)

I proceed to spend the next hour trying to figure out how to create a Google Profile. I am pretty sure that I am at least as smart as the average Internet user, and probably smarter than some. It should not be this hard to register for a service.

I eventually came to the conclusion that I cannot do it for my fyeomans.com email address.

It appears that if I want to use Google+, I will have to create yet another account ~~email address (to go with the 5 or 6 I already use)~~ and get someone to invite me at THAT address.

Not something I am going to be bothered doing.

While I realize that supposedly 10 million people have already signed up for Google+, remember that that is a drop in the bucket of internet users.

And if you create barriers to people using the technology, it fail at badly as Buzz did.

Just my 2 cents. I would love to comment on the service itself, but well, I can’t.

Microsoft is evil, lame, and sucks, right?

WRONG!

Give me a freaking break!

I was just reading a post over on TechCrunch. I do not know why I allow myself to get drawn into reading this drivel, but I always seem to.

When are the anti-Microsoft crowd going to grow up and realize that this is a business, and we are all in it to make money and increase the value of that business.

(including, of course, Google and Apple – but it is somehow ok for them)

For those who do not want to waste time and bandwidth reading the actual post, I will summarize a bit:

Microsoft participated in the consortium which purchased the “Nortel Patents”, even though MS apparently did not need to
Microsoft is pursuing licensing agreements with Android phone vendors based on other IP which MS already had
Microsoft stands to make a lot of money from these agreements
Microsoft is obviously “lame” for doing this (seriously, who actually uses the term “lame” anymore?)
Microsoft is doing this (obviously) because they cannot compete with Android by being innovative.
It would be OK if Apple were doing this, since Apple can do no wrong

So lets take a look at this from a more realistic point of view.

Microsoft is a business. It is in business to make money, and increase shareholder value. Period.
Microsoft owns certain patents. A lot of them. It owned this IP before participating in the Nortel deal.
Microsoft felt that participating in the consortium to buy the Nortel patents was valuable in terms of protecting its IP position.

So far so good. Lets look at the Android situation.

Android (apparently) infringes upon a number of patents which Microsoft owns. I am not in a position to assess this, but I would suspect there is some validity to the claim or Android phone vendors would not be signing agreements with MS without fighting.
If this is the case, Google is making money selling something for which they do not have clear intellectual property rights. And this is somehow Microsoft’s fault?

The statement is made that Android is winning because Google “out-innovates” Microsoft. Lets compare the two:

Google has a mobile phone OS named Android, based on an existing open-source OS, using a programming model which some believe they do not have valid IP rights to, and using a UI paradigm which clearly borrows heavily from another famous mobile phone (though I do think Android improves on it).
Microsoft, after lagging for a long time, has introduced a new mobile phone OS, written from the ground up, using a unique UI model which is clearly theirs, and with a development environment to which they own the IP, and which is also highly innovative.

Whether WP7 succeeds or fails, and whether you happen to like it or not, from an innovation perspective it is clearly well beyond Android.

So what is Microsoft’s strategy? Well, it appears to be two-pronged.

Having invested heavily in innovation, they are clearly focused on the future of WP7. They intend it to be a success. Whether or not they are successful is more a question of their timing and marketing ability than their level of innovation.

At the same time, Microsoft has quite rightly taken action to preserve the value of its intellectual property. They have also leveraged their ownership of this IP to make money and increase shareholder value.

It seems to me like Microsoft is doing exactly what a business is supposed to do, and doing it well in this case.

Finally, I just have to comment on this little snippet form the post:

“When Apple takes these agressive (sic) approaches on patents, it’s no more right, but at least they can argue that they have a winning product (the iPhone) that they’re trying to protect. Their goal isn’t to get other companies licensing their patents, it’s to run those guys out of the market”

At least he acknowledges that Apple is “no more right” than anyone else in this process. It is the final statement that gets me. So, it is more admirable to crush your competitors and drive them out of business than to license technology to them, allowing both parties to survive and make money?

Of course it is, since we all know it is better to only have one choice in the market, as long as that choice is Apple!

(in case that was too subtle for any of you, that was sarcasm )

Microsoft: Get Your Shit Together on Touch Development

Image by John Bristowe via Flickr

I have been playing with multi-touch development for a while, both on Windows 7 with my 2740p and on the Microsoft Surface table (version 1, not the new one).

I have consistently had challenges using WPF4 multi-touch events on the 2740p, or using the Microsoft Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch Beta, and now with the newly released Surface 2 SDK.

With any of these tools, I have challenges getting the software to recognize touch events, and even more trouble getting the software to recognize 2 simultaneous touch points (the 2740p supports 2 touch points). A second touch point always cancels the first touch point.

What is funny (to me, anyway) is that the samples included with the machine in the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 work just fine on the 2740p. This indicates that it is something in the managed drivers used with WPF that is not working.

I am fairly certain that this is a driver issue. I had it working at one point after a lot of hacking and installing drivers different from the default updates. I guess an update somewhere (Windows Update, or HP Tools) has overwritten the driver I had setup to make it work.

Can I fix the drivers to make this work again? Absolutely! But that is not the point here.

This should just work!

How am I as a software developer, or as an ISV, supposed to recommend this platform to my customers, or build applications for it, when even getting it to run on different machines requires significant hacking of drivers?

If Microsoft wants to stop being seen as a joke in the multi-touch and/or tablet market, they really better find a way to get their shit together on this.

The EMail Charter?

Proof that just because people from TED are involved, does not mean it makes sense!

I have had this link come to my attention several times now, and each time I see it, I am struck by how naïve it is (though I am sure there are those who will argue that its naïvety is its beauty). While I agree with some of the points, I think others are out of line. Lets look at each of the points:

1) “Respect Recipients’ Time” While this is obviously a good idea, it is hardly unique to email. And I would argue that in many cases, email is more respectful than a phone call, or dropping by in person. First of all, phone calls and face-to-face interactions frequently involve significantly more extraneous communications of little to no value. In addition, calling or dropping-in interrupts what a person is doing. Unless the issue is urgent enough to require immediate resolution, an email (which can be handled asynchronously when it is convenient) is far more respectful of my time than other modes of communication.

2) “Short or Slow is not Rude” Short is not rude. The response should be long enough to address the issue, and no longer. Slow may not be rude, and may be unavoidable, but it is better to set expectations as to when you will respond to emails. If people know what to expect, then they are less likely to take issue. Not responding at all is a whole other problem.

3) “Celebrate Clarity” I wholeheartedly agree – but not just for email.

4) “Quash Open-Ended Questions” BS. Within the proper context, this is an appropriate way to collect information from a number of people on the way to building consensus, without calling an unnecessary meeting (or interrupting the work of several different people using a “more personal” approach).

5) “Slash Surplus cc’s” Absolutely! This seems to be a trend from larger companies with a CYA mentality.

6) “Tighten the Thread” more BS, with an arbitrary number thrown in for good measure. The thread should be as long as required, and no longer. When in doubt, do what makes sense.

7) “Attack Attachments” Absolutely. I would do away with all attachments, especially internally.
8) “Give these Gifts: EOM NNTR” Good idea in principle. Most of the times I have used them, they have generated a bunch more email explaining them.

9) “Cut Contentless Responses” Agreed.

10) “Disconnect!” This is just good time management. Manage your email in whatever way fits in to your overall time management process. Some people only process email during certain small time periods during the day. I know some that only process email on Monday mornings, or Friday afternoons. Whatever works for you.

The biggest point of contention I have with the whole “email is evil” trend is this idea that synchronous modes of communication such as phone, f2f, or IM are more respectful of another person’s time than email. If the response does not have to be synchronous, then async is more respectful of my time.

SharePoint Governance a bad Idea?

Wow! Just wow! I was reading this post by Paul J. Swider, and I kept waiting for the punch line that never came.

I have a great deal of respect for Paul – I have seen him speak, and follow his posts and tweets regularly. While this presents an interesting counterpoint to conventional thinking around governance, I am afraid he lost me on this one.

First off, lets look at the comparison to Y2K. Is he saying that no one should have invested in fixing Y2K issues, and that no systems would have failed if nothing had been fix? That seems to be what he is saying, since he is comparing Governance to that, and obviously governance is only good if it does not cost anything.

Then there is this statement:

“Many companies haven’t had governance and compliance features in place for there information systems for years. This has been true since I started working with software in the early 90’s”

This is like saying “for many years, most companies did not have software development processes”, and using this as justification that no investment should be made in such processes. Ditto for QA, or project management. We survived without much investment in any of these silly processes.

Just because lots of organizations are using SharePoint and do not have governance, does not mean that they are doing so effectively or the best way they can. It is also still too early in SharePoint’s lifetime to truly assess the long term costs of doing it wrong.

Finally, lets look at

“Most CIO’s and managers I speak with are tired of hearing about soft dollar calculations and want hard dollar cost savings immediately, after all these are complex and challenging fiscal situations they are managing.”

It is true that most CIOs and managers are being pressured into short-sighted approaches to many things. That does not mean that they should abandon meaningful and appropriate processes just because times are tough.

(would you suggest abandoning corporate governance and controls because money was tight? oh wait, I think many on Wall Street did)

Paul’s example needing a new purchase process to respond to funding cutbacks is a good one, and provides a good segue to what I see as a more positive takeaway from this discussion, which is the appropriate use of process.

Through much of my career, I have been involved heavily in process – whether software development, QA, test engineering, innovation, or otherwise. For many years, I worked on military and aerospace projects, which are noted for extremely heavy processes. What I learned from all of that was that you can invest in all the process in the world, and still fail miserably. And even when you succeed, the overhead involved in such processes makes them untenable.

This has led me to what I have referred to previously as just enough process (I know I am not the first to use the term). The software development process must match the context – the type of organization, the type of solution, the potential impact of failures of the system, the potential lifetime of the system, etc. A software development process appropriate for a social networking web app is hardly acceptable for medical devices.

The same is true of SharePoint governance. Cookie cutter approaches will not do. Off-the-shelf consulting processes will not do. This is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.

Rather than encouraging the total abandonment of governance processes, or treating governance as a “nice to have” luxury that you do away with in favour of short-term perceived cost savings, it is far more appropriate to encourage clients to find the level and type of governance process which suits their situation.

After all, isn’t that what a good consultant does? Helps the client find the solution that is right for them, rather than applying the same solution to all clients?

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