From the Associated Press:

Reports of Internet-based crime jumped 33 percent in 2008, according to a group that monitors web-based fraud.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center said in its annual report released Monday that it received more than 275,000 complaints last year, up from about 207,000 the year before.

The total reported dollar loss from such scams was $265 million, or about $25 million more than the year before.

Posted: March 30th, 2009 under development.
Comments: none

The New York Times describes what happened to United Airlines stock value on September 8th, How a Series of Mistakes Hurt Shares of United

Investors wiped out $1 billion of the market value of UAL, United’s parent, within minutes of an erroneous news flash on Bloomberg screens about a United bankruptcy. Google and the Tribune Company, the owner of The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, whose Web site was the source of the article that led to the headline, soon blamed each other for causing the fiasco.

A chain of mistakes and vulnerabilities led to United Airlines six year old bankruptcy being reported as fresh news. Investors reacted, destroying value to the point that trading of UA stock had to be stopped until the situation could be cleared up.

Two features on a Tribune run website started the chain. One allowed an old article to appear in the most viewed box. The implementation apparently doesn’t prevent obscure articles from filtering to the top in off hours.

The second displayed the old article on the Sun-Sentinel site with today’s date but no original publish date.

Google crawled the article. It’s age and lack of original publish date confused the automated news search into interpreting the article as current.

Then a private analyst published it without independent verification. Then Bloomberg included that analyst’s report in their feed.

This led to the panic selling. Trading was resumed and the stock recovered much of its value but don’t mistake that many people lost alot of money.

The Times focuses on the relationship between newspapers and search engines. You can also focus on the pressure of news agencies to keep up with “breaking news” on various platforms. You can focus on a loss of discipline among editors.

I’d like to highlight how two casually implemented features on a website indirectly led to serious harm. I can’t imagine a print editor allowing an old article to appear without an original publish date. So how was it acceptable to allow online content to appear that way?

Given the relevancy algorithms Google is known to use, how much was the behavior of Tribune’s “most viewed” area intended to create exactly the behavior that backfired in this case, i.e. to create referential links back to Tribune for old content.

There’s plenty of blame to go around but how much sits with those who defined, accepted and implemented this behavior?

Posted: September 20th, 2008 under development.
Comments: none

From the Washington Post, Days Before Scandal, Interior Got Ethics Award:

The inspector general said Wednesday that federal officials in the Mineral Management Service’s royalty-in-kind program allegedly were plied with alcohol and expensive gifts from industry representatives, and in some cases had sex and did drugs with them. The Denver-area office takes in roughly $4 billion each year in oil and natural gas reserves from companies drilling on federal and Indian land and offshore.

But, on Monday, the Interior Department was praised for “developing a dynamic laminated Ethics Guide for employees” that was a “polished, professional guide” with “colorful pictures and prints which demand employees’ attention.” The guide, the award noted, was small enough for employees to carry. Interior also was lauded for having held a four-day seminar for its ethics advisors nationwide.

Written policy, mandatory training and a whistle blowing mechanism simply insulate organizations from legal liability. They are the surface show of reform not reform itself.

What did the management of the Interior Department think it was accomplishing with a formal ethics guide and why did it matter to them that it was laminated and “small enough for employees to carry.”

I keep the best part of myself on small pages sheathed in plastic in my back pocket, like a condom, in the event I have cause to use it.

Posted: September 14th, 2008 under personal.
Comments: none

NYC settle a lawsuit to compensate poor families for food stamps they were denied by mistake beginning in 1999…

…as many as 34,000 families could have been affected, with the settlement ranging from $8 million to $71 million depending on how many people were involved. The city has said that it corrected the computer problem several years ago — NY Times

• Make mistake effecting food for poor families.
• Correct mistake approx. 5 years later.
• Acknowledge mistake 8 years later.
• Blame others but retain liability.

WNYC story

Posted: September 28th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

I laughed out loud when I saw Ken Schwaber titled a passage of his book, The Enterprise and Scrum, “Just Do It”.

Ken describes how a customer can sacrifice quality and sustainable pace in the short term but pay it back at a premium, “$4 to remediate every $1 drop in quality.”

Clearly there are pressing bugs, misses and serendipitous opportunities. There are times to inject work into a sprint backlog. There are even times to “stop the line” and reset a sprint.

But when you manage a self-directed team, “just do it” — and I’ve heard that very phrase — is bullshit.

Just characterizes another person’s work as easy. It is the people performing work that need to estimate it. They are on the hook to execute and are incented to think critically in detail about what they are taking on. The worker grasps the actual effort better than the executive.

Do characterizes the work as physical action. Software development is problem solving and abstract modeling, i.e. knowledge work. “I’m typing as fast as I can?!” Even industrial lean practice relies on workers engaging beyond the boundaries of the immediate task to improve the product and the process of manufacture.

It characterizes the work as a single, clearly defined task. Again, the person doing the work determines whether they clearly understand assignment. Otherwise, you’re not admitting to any ambiguity of language, hidden complexity, or potential misunderstandings.

Just do it is a one way directive that splits responsibility from authority, i.e. YOU just do it. It signals a leader is not willing to do their part to remove obstacles for their team.

Just do it hides inefficiency under a veneer of necessity. Is it a surprise that “just do it” finds companionship with “just the way things are done” and “just the nature of the business”?

All this to say “just do it” in knowledge work is bullshit. The value lies not in the truth or falsity of the statement but the effect it has on the hearer. It dismisses workers’ concerns and excuses management from accountability.

Moving from bulls to birds, if self-directed teams are the goose that lays golden eggs, “just do it” is a pellet blast in the ole’ egg layer.

Posted: September 16th, 2007 under scrum.
Comments: 4

Handoff
Creative problem solving as rote mechanical construction. Twist the wrench and pass it on.

• forces sequential phases, “first we determine what it looks like then we figure out what it does.”
• forces development in horizontal rather than vertical layers, i.e. “we’ve spent weeks coding but none of it does anything yet. We’re almost done though”
• forces thinking in schedules instead of priorities, “I’ll have my part done in two weeks. What is it again?”
• silos workers from each other, “What are you working on? Well, anyway, goodnight.”
• ensures workers don’t have big picture, “Her copy doesn’t fit in my div based on his mockup. It’s not my fault.”
• encourages hierarchies and coordination overhead (chicken husbandry), “My manager will get with your manager”
• enourages narrow specialties instead of versatility and craftsmanship, “He does jpegs and gifs. She does html, css, and javascript. She does C# and Java. None of us actually build applications. By the way, did I already say it’s not my fault.”

Approval

Distill complex interactions into a pretty picture. Take authoritative guidance from someone who’s only spent 15 minutes thinking about the problem.
• encourages passive, diffuse product ownership, “you’re on the hook but they’re the deciders”
• locks in premature commitments, “I put aside $10K for database integration”
• invites arbitrary changes. “make this bit here blue”
• creates low-value artifacts that lie, “sure it will work just like the wireframe.”
• rewards promises over performance, “it will do everything I say, cost $40K, and be done in one month.”
• bakes failure in, “how did we end up with this late, expensive hunk of junk?”

Getwith

offensive getwith: “you need to getwith Joe on this.”
• forces input from people with authority, no accountability and no direct contribution — like being made to run around with a target on your back

defensive getwith: “Does Joe agree with this decision?” “I gotwith him on it.”
• ask someone to attend one meeting, characterize them as agreeing with anything you do after that — like pulling a target of your back and sticking it on someone else’s

Any additions?

Posted: August 29th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

I met my wife, Kathie, eleven years ago. I was stage managing The Yellow Kid by Brian Faker and Bliss Kolb at Annex Theatre. Kathie was in the cast.

The Yellow Kid had 27 actors, 200 slide projections, film, rolling scenery, a cat, two dogs, and a goat named Julia. The second act was so tightly choreographed that I couldn’t call cues from the script but had to mark them off elapsed time in the music. Twenty second light fades timed to images, sound, scene changes and stage action. Moments as beautiful as any I’ve ever seen. All this on a production budget of $1100 for a non-profit fringe theater with a $100K annual budget. Big cheap theater.

Sometime later, Kathie’s sister was visiting. We decided to drive the twelve hours and three mountain passes to their parent’s home in Montana.

My wife’s career evokes the phrase “odd jobs”: deck hand, national park employee, clown in a Japanese, Dutch theme park, congressional staffer and temp. Two days before we left, Kathie had a telemarketing injury. I don’t know if she was gesturing with the handset or so bored she was trying to escape through the mic holes. In any case, the receiver slipped and hit her eye so hard it bruised.

I was about to meet my future wife’s parents for the first time and it looked like I’d punched her in the face.

© 2004. Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust.

We headed off towards Snoqualmie Pass. Kathie’s car was a ten year old hatchback that had made the trip from Seattle to Montana many times. At the top of the pass (3022 ft) the car just stopped. I don’t know what an electronic control module is but when it fails a car turns into statue.

It was a spring afternoon and the weather was mild. I had a cell phone (a bit of a luxury in 1996 for a fringe theater dude with a day job) and a AAA membership. I called for help. I hear at this point my future sister-in-law decided I was a keeper. AAA warned me that the tow truck was only allowed to carry two passengers. I was polite, rule obeying, and conflict avoiding so I called my dad for a pickup.

The tow truck arrived. Of course the driver said he could squeeze me in but I’d already called my father. Seattle is 52 miles from the summit. Assuming I’d see my own ride within the hour, I sent my future wife, my future sister in-law, the dead car and my potential rescuer on their way.

I didn’t know it but I had interrupted my father while he was painting his porch. Afraid that stopping would wreck the paint job, he had decided to finish and clean up before heading up for me. As the tow truck pulled away, he was probably still on a ladder doing edge work.

So there I was. I waited. I waited some more. After a while I began to feel a little vulnerable. Sure, some crazy could pull over and use me for fixin’s. What really began to grind me was that I looked so stupid standing there that people would start pulling over out of pity. I looked like one of those people who just wander off. Like I’d gotten so fed up with my desk job that I’d just stood up and started walking East to – I don’t know – Walla Walla.

Embarrassment became the better part of valor. I noticed that if I crouched down at the side of the road I could see the cars with less chance that they’d see me. A great way for a thirty year old man to pass the time — hiding from traffic in a ditch at 3000 feet above sea level.

I waited there for over two hours before finally seeing my father’s car.

I rode back to Seattle relieved. Relieved Kathie and her sister were safe, relieved my father had finally picked me up and most of all relieved that the trip was canceled and I didn’t have to explain to my future in-laws why their daughter had a black eye.

Posted: March 4th, 2007 under personal.
Comments: none