Andy's Mind

When you are about to start building something the first question to ask is, of course: couldn’t we buy it somewhere. In project management theory there is a seriously-sounding name for this consideration – “make or buy analysis”. It is described in books as a process of considering, weighting benefits and costs of both options to arrive finally to a final conclusion. All that looks pretty impartial, scientific almost . (more…)

When I was doing my first project management course I was a bit surprised how simple and ordinary all the presented techniques and methods seemed. I promptly shared my observation with our trainer, saying that this whole project management thing appears to me to be just common sense. She replied “Yes, this is mostly common sense, but it’s not common practice”. Even though I don’t even remember her name this sentence stuck in my head… and finally I reached the stage when I can appreciate it fully. (more…)

A few days ago media reported about the closure of ThePiarateBay.org, a Swedish torrent site. It was not only one of the biggest torrent sites on the net, but also one known for ridiculing law threats received from American companies. Its operators believed that their site is legal under the Swedish law and laughed openly at letters coming from US lawyers. So, when the Swedish police raided their hosting center and removed all servers found there (including some belonging to other businesses and organizations) media articles were full of gleeful statements [PDF] from MPAA and RIAA. (more…)

I took part in the last days in two discussions on Slashdot. One spurred by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer behavior when he reacted to the news that an employee is leaving to Google by screaming profanities and throwing a chair across his office. The other by Microsoft’s official, but still nervous reaction to Massachusetts state government plan to get rid of MS’s Office and its proprietary, locked formats and move to OpenDocument.

It so happens that just recently I finally saw the notorious documentary, “The Triumph of the Nerds”, in which Steve Jobs summarized Microsoft by saying that they just don’t have taste. Interestingly, I remembered the quote a bit differently – they have no class – and so I used it in the debate. Slight difference, but yet lacking class is, in my opinion, something deeper than just lacking taste. This led to various debates about Steve Jobs’ outbursts at Apple workers, which everybody knows about – it’s a part of industry’s legend.

(more…)