High-Tech Weights for Space Workout

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

The rocket scientists at NASA have devised some high-tech “weights” for space workouts:

In the first-ever analysis of muscles from International Space Station astronauts, Trappe’s team found that six months in near zero-gravity had produced a 15 percent loss in muscle volume and 25 percent loss in strength.
[...]
However, the exercise of space station astronauts is limited to the machines they’re given. Though a treadmill and stationary bicycle work fine, they’re intended primarily for aerobic conditioning. Muscle strength is the responsibility of the Interim Resistance Exercise Device, or iRED — and, with a maximum resistance of just 300 pounds, it can’t do the job.

“Astronauts are working out hard, but the loading characteristics aren’t there,” said Trappe. “They’re losing more muscle mass than they should be.”

Simply maintaining muscle mass in space, said Trappe, requires a high-weight, low-repetition workout. The aRED is the first piece of NASA exercise equipment to meet this need. Providing resistance in each exercise are two piston-driven vacuum cylinders that are a bit like oversize bicycle pumps. Resistance increases as a piston is pulled in or out, so weights are set by adjusting the length of a mechanical arm that attaches pistons to lift bar.

Attached to the pistons is a flywheel, explained NASA astronaut strength conditioning and rehabilitation specialist Jim Loehr. Pushing the pistons out sets the flywheels spinning. That rotation, combined with vacuum pressure, provides a counter force against direction reversal so that a leg press in space requires effort as the weight is returned to its starting position, just as it does on Earth.

“ARED was designed to provide a constant force throughout the range of motion,” said Loehr, mimicking the physiological gold standard of free weight resistance. In contrast, the iRED was a 21st century version of a Bowflex machine, with unidirectional resistance provided by an ingenious arrangement of rubber bands that provide an “ascending force curve that doesn’t match traditional free weights,” and can lose strength over time.

For some exercises, like squats, a person needs to lift twice as much weight in space to get the same result as on Earth. So iRED’s maximum weight of 300 pounds translates to just 150 pounds squatted on Earth. Maintaining leg strength becomes extremely difficult with that amount of weight. And it’s the legs, accustomed to constantly supporting our bulks against Earth gravity, that weaken first in space. ARED’s maximum load of 600 pounds means astronauts can squat the equivalent of 300 pounds on Earth, which should be enough to keep their legs in shape.

Another problem with a Bowflex-style apparatus, said Trappe, is safety. “They have all these rubber cords and things attached to it that could snap,” he said, explaining that people fail to appreciate the extraordinary demands placed upon exercise machines in space.

Relying on pistons and fly wheels sounds less like a requirement and more like an interesting problem for the techies to solve.

I find it particularly amusing that the iRED is considered flawed because its ascending force curve doesn’t match free weights’ flat force curve, when earth-bound powerlifters now rely on elastic bands and metal chains attached to their barbells in order to attain just such an ascending force curve. The human body can handle more weight at the top of a squat or bench press than at the bottom. (And the specialized lifting suits allowed in powerlifting help more at the bottom than at the top.)

Anyway, with “just” 300 pounds of resistance and no body weight, a decent trainer would recommend some variation on split squats or true one-legged squats. But I don’t suppose they have a whole lot of trainers there at NASA.

Posted in Fitness, Technology | No Comments »

Tactical Internet Pants

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

The “tactical” pants worn by law enforcement officers have slowly evolved into Tactical Internet Pants, worn and loved by geeks:

There’s a whole background here that others have told better than I, but the short story is that these pants were originally designed for climbers. Then the FBI discovered them, and the company started selling to the police and fire departments hard core. Now, the same things that made them popular to the emergency services folks are getting them discovered elsewhere. They are really well-made clothes that are designed to fit a wide range of sizes, and will help you carry and use all the gadgets you need to take with you. Plus, you kind of look like Indiana Jones when you’re wearing them. Kinda.

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America has several structural advantages when it comes to entrepreneurship

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

America has several structural advantages when it comes to entrepreneurship:

The first is the world’s most mature venture-capital industry. America’s first venture fund, the American Research and Development Corporation, was founded in 1946; today the industry has an unrivalled mixture of resources, expertise and customers. Highland Capital Partners receives about 10,000 plausible business plans a year, conducts about 1,000 meetings followed by 400 company visits and ends up making 10-20 investments a year, all of which are guaranteed to receive an enormous amount of time and expertise. IHS Global Insight, a consultancy, calculates that in 2005 companies that were once backed by venture capitalists accounted for nearly 17% of America’s GDP and 9% of private-sector employment.

The second advantage is a tradition of close relations between universities and industry. America’s universities are economic engines rather than ivory towers, with proliferating science parks, technology offices, business incubators and venture funds. Stanford University gained around $200m in stock when Google went public. It is so keen on promoting entrepreneurship that it has created a monopoly-like game to teach its professors how to become entrepreneurs. About half of the start-ups in the Valley have their roots in the university.

The third advantage is an immigration policy that, historically, has been fairly open. Vivek Wadhwa, of Duke University, notes that 52% of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants, up from around a quarter ten years ago. In all, a quarter of America’s science and technology start-ups, generating $52 billion and employing 450,000 people, have had somebody born abroad as either their CEO or their chief technology officer. In 2006 foreign nationals were named as inventors or co-inventors in a quarter of American patent applications, up from 7.6% in 1998.

Amar Bhidé, of Columbia University, suggests a fourth reason for America’s entrepreneurial success—“venturesome consumers”. Americans are unusually willing to try new products of all sorts, even if it means teaching themselves new skills and eating into their savings; they are also unusually willing to pester manufacturers to improve their products. Apple sold half a million iPhones in its first weekend.

Europe is far less entrepreneurial:

Janez Potocnik, the EU commissioner for science and research, points out that only 5% of European companies created from scratch since 1980 have made it into the list of the 1,000 biggest EU companies by market capitalisation. The equivalent figure for America is 22%.

This reflects different cultural attitudes. Europeans have less to gain from taking business risks, thanks to higher tax rates, and more to lose, thanks to more punitive attitudes to bankruptcy (German law, for example, prevents anyone who has ever been bankrupt from becoming a CEO). When Denis Payre was thinking about leaving a safe job in Oracle to start a company in the late 1980s, his French friends gave him ten reasons to stay put whereas his American friends gave him ten reasons to get on his bike. In January last year Mr Payre’s start-up, Business Objects, was sold to Germany’s SAP for €4.8 billion.

European egalitarianism, too, militates against entrepreneurialism: the EU is much more interested in promoting small businesses in general than in fostering high-growth companies. The Europeans’ appetite for time off does not help. Workers are guaranteed a minimum of four weeks’ holidays a year whereas Americans’ vacations are much less certain. Europeans are also much more suspicious of business. According to a Eurobarometer poll, 42% of them think that entrepreneurs exploit other people’s work, compared with 26% of Americans.

Posted in Economics, Policy | No Comments »

Blood Falls

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Scientists have found life in an ecosystem trapped underneath a glacier in Antarctica for nearly 2 million years:

Geomicrobiologist Jill Mikucki, now at Dartmouth College, collected water samples from Blood Falls over 6 years. A battery of tests revealed that its waters contained almost no oxygen and hosted a community of at least 17 different types of microorganisms. But how could they have survived for so long, with no light or oxygen? Mikucki and her team uncovered three main clues. First, a genetic analysis of the microbes showed that they were closely related to other microorganisms that use sulfate instead of oxygen for respiration. Second, isotopic analysis of sulfate’s oxygen molecules revealed that the microbes were modifying sulfate in some form but not using it directly for respiration. Third, the water was enriched with soluble ferrous iron, which would happen only if the organisms had converted ferric iron, which is insoluble, to the soluble ferrous form. The best explanation, the team reports in tomorrow’s issue of Science, is that the organisms use sulfate as a catalyst to “breathe” with ferric iron and metabolize the limited amounts of organic matter trapped with them years ago. Lab experiments have suggested this might be possible, but it has never been observed in a natural environment.

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A Paladin against Palins

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Andrew Sullivan’s story is inherently implausible, Johann Hari notes:

How did an HIV-positive gay Catholic conservative from the poky English town of East Grinstead end up as one of the most powerful writers in America?

That’s a good question. Before blogging, he made his name at the New Republic:

He began interning in his summers for the New Republic, the leading liberal magazine in America, which was slowly shifting rightwards under a new owner, Marty Peretz. Sullivan was talent-spotted and mentored by Leon Wieseltier, the stern, vigorously heterosexual scholar of medieval Judaism who edited the books pages with an increasingly neoconservative eye. Sullivan became his deputy—and within a year Peretz made the startling decision to fire the left-leaning editor, Hendrik Hertzberg, and replace him with Sullivan.

“It was crazy,” he says now. “Daunted isn’t the word, I was terrified. I was 26 years old and overnight I was weekending in Hyannisport with Bobby Kennedy’s son and meeting Barbra Streisand and being photographed by Annie Leibovitz for a Gap advert.”

But he didn’t choose a cautious path. He instantly fired one of the liberal stalwarts of the magazine, Morton Kondracke, and made the magazine spikier. He drew in writers like Camille Paglia and Douglas Coupland. Advertising revenues soared by 76% during his editorship, but Sullivan’s innovations were itching powder to its traditional liberal readership. He championed welfare reform and helped destroy Hillary Clinton’s plans for universal health care.

At some point, the elders of the magazine turned on Sullivan, and Wieseltier’s support turned to hate.

The turning point came when he featured Charles Murray’s Bell Curve. That was unforgivable.

Posted in Policy | No Comments »

Somali Pirates vs. French Navy

Friday, April 17th, 2009

William Langewiesche tells a tale of Somali pirates vs. the French navy:

To assist the warship already on the scene, two additional French vessels were charging into the area — a 460-foot frigate equipped to fight World War III, and a 600-foot helicopter carrier that was getting old but was armed with naval artillery and anti-ship missiles, and could launch multiple helicopters at a time. In addition were the congregations of commandos and anti-terrorist police — every one of them over-trained, under-used, and eager for action. If you added up the assets already available, or soon to be, the display of French power was impressive indeed.

And it was arrayed against what? A band of barefoot natives, Fuzzy Wuzzies in rags, hip-firing their Kalashnikovs with poor aim, and worshipping some filthy G.P.S. as if it had fallen from the sky. They should have surrendered days before, even to the Canadians. But they hadn’t, and that was the problem. They were not particularly bellicose or arrogant, but they refused to be impressed when they should have been. A warship coming at you is supposed to present an intimidating sight. But it was as if the pirates inhabited a different dimension from that of the governments confronting them. With nothing but a group of French nationals as a shield, they were enjoying meals, going back and forth between ship and shore, and negotiating directly with the Saadés in Marseille, as if the French Navy did not even exist.

The pattern was unusually frustrating to French authorities, as more recent piracy cases have been to American, Russian, and Chinese authorities. It raised disturbing questions about the relevance of governments and the exercise of power. More specifically, a suspicion crept in that these pirates knew exactly what they were doing, and that they understood the forces at play with more sophistication than had been assumed. Fuzzy Wuzzies they were, but until Paris decided it could accept casualties among the Ponant’s crew, they had stymied the French national will.

Paying the ransom makes sense for an individual shipping firm, especially when it’s the insurance company paying, but it invites more piracy in general. Thus, the government doesn’t want ransoms paid, but it can’t do much:

This was private money, floating free of national constraints, and it could be spent quite legally on ransom. To be clear about the rules that apply: extortion is illegal everywhere, except when it is construed as taxation; the payment of extortion, however, is legal, unless it is construed as bribery.

Langewiesche makes the peculiar conclusion that, because military force didn’t end the hostage situation, and paying a ransom did, that military force is useless in dealing with piracy, period.

I suppose we should eliminate all police as well and hand any muggers our wallets to prevent any violence from breaking out.

Posted in War | No Comments »

Everybody Else is Stealing Petrified Wood

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Ian Ayres notes that people conform, and — as Robert Cialdini emphasizes in Yes! — they like to conform to what they think other people are doing:

One of my favorite examples of the powerful urge to conform with the majority comes from an experiment he ran at Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. Conformity theory suggests the park service was sending exactly the wrong message when it posted signs saying:

Here’s how his paper describes the experiment:

We gained permission from Petrified Forest National Park officials to place secretly marked pieces of petrified wood along visitor pathways.

Over five consecutive weekends, Cialdini and coauthors varied the signs seen at the entrance to each path. Some weekends, visitors saw a sign that, like the original park-service sign, emphasized the wrong norm:

Many past visitors have removed petrified wood from the park, changing the natural state of the Petrified Forest.

This wording was accompanied by pictures of three visitors taking wood.

Other weekends, visitors saw:

Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest.

This wording was accompanied by a picture of a lone visitor stealing a piece of wood, with a red circle-and-bar symbol superimposed over his hand.

Sure enough the “many past visitors” framing lead to more than four times the amount of pilfering of petrified wood (7.92 percent vs. 1.67 percent). But what’s truly amazing is that putting up no sign at all did a better job than putting up a sign suggesting that “everybody does it”:

In a finding that should petrify the National Park’s management, compared with a no-sign control condition in which 2.92 percent of the pieces were stolen, the social-proof message resulted in more theft (7.92 percent). In essence, it almost tripled theft. Thus, theirs was not a crime prevention strategy; it was a crime promotion strategy. (Yes!, p. 22)

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Economic survivalists take root

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Judy Keen of USA Today reports that economic survivalism is taking root as more families take steps toward self-sufficiency:

  • Stockpiling. When the stock market drops, orders surge for freeze-dried food, survival kits and emergency supplies, says Nitro-Pak president Harry Weyandt. One best seller: a $3,375 food reserve that feeds four people for three months.

  • Gardening. Sales of vegetable seeds and transplants are up 30% from 2008 at W. Atlee Burpee, the USA’s largest seed company. The National Gardening Association says 7 million more households will grow food this year than in 2008 — a 19% rise. A book on building root cellars is the top seller at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Winslow, Maine, supervisor Joann Matuzas says.

  • Canning. Jarden Corp. says sales of its Ball and Kerr canning and preserving products are up more than 30% from 2008. Sonya Staffan, owner of The Jam and Jelly Lady commercial cannery in Lebanon, Ohio, is offering twice as many classes this year.

  • Sewing. More people are learning to sew so they can mend clothes and make home décor, says Rachel Cohen, spokeswoman for SVP Worldwide, owner of sewing-products makers Singer and Husqvarna Viking.

  • Relocating. Steve Saltman, general manager of LandAndFarm.com, a national real estate company, says more customers want to “live simply in a less-expensive place.” Jonathan Rawles of SurvivalRealty.com says more people moving to rural areas “are specifically worried about economic and social instability.”

Posted in Business | No Comments »

Buying Utopia

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Buying Utopia is expensive — and it rarely turns out as promised:

I read an article today about a gang called Global Wind Systems, Inc that is bringing a “ray of hope” to Michigan where the unemployment rate is the nation’s highest and the economy is something out of a Marx Brothers comedy. These guys are “creating” 250 jobs and the big boss — a guy named Chris Long — thinks being in Michigan is great because “unions are fantastic for us”. I put the word ‘create’ in quotes because the idea that these guys have created jobs would be like saying I went to the grocery store and ‘created’ the gallon of milk I walked out with. Nothing was created — Michigan paid this guy $7.3 million. It would be more accurate to say that the woeful economy of Michigan spent $7.3 million to buy 250 jobs.

Let’s set the job debacle and often insane leadership of the state of Michigan aside, however, and take a look at the bigger picture — and the picture is very, very big indeed. 7.3 million is a lot of bucks by any measure, but it is a drop in the bucket for environmental improvement these days. The bankrupt state is ready to plow another half billion into this and similar ventures. And Mr. Long is just getting started — he is going to turn all that cash into 2,000 jobs. And he is going to sell his wind generators for $2.5–3 million a pop. Creating jobs and saving the plant is happening on an epic scale in Michigan, apparently. No small measures in the Great Lakes State.

You can read the results of similar investments in Spain where they came to the conclusion that “for every green job that’s created with government funding, 2.2 regular jobs are lost and that only one in 10 green jobs wind up being permanent”.

The planet is going to be saved — if it needs saving — by kaizen, not by such grandiose schemes.

Posted in Business, Economics, Policy | No Comments »

Not So Silent

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Silent mutations, which do not change the encoded protein product of the gene, are not so silent, it turns out:

The silent mutations changed the amount of fluorescent protein by as much as 250-fold, without changing the properties of the protein.
[...]
“At first we were stumped,” Plotkin said. “How were the silent mutations influencing protein levels? Eventually, we looked at mRNA structure and discovered that this was the underlying mechanism.”

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Lessons In Survival

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

In the lab, Ben Sherwood (The Survivors Club) notes, it’s hard to study how people react to incredible stress. At Fort Bragg, it’s not so hard:

This is where the Army’s renowned survival school is located. It’s also where they believe in something called stress inoculation. Like vaccines, a small challenge or dose of a virus in your system prepares and defends you against a bigger challenge. In other words, they expose you to pressure and suffering in training so you’ll build up your immunity. It’s a kind of classic psychological conditioning: the more shocks to your system, the more you’re able to withstand.

Dr. Andy Morgan of Yale Medical School went there to learn who survives best under acute stress:

If you think it’s just training and the soldiers know they’re not really in serious danger, consider what Morgan discovered. During mock interrogations, the prisoners’ heart rates skyrocket to more than 170 beats per minute for more than half an hour, even though they aren’t engaging in any physical activity. Meanwhile, their bodies pump more stress hormones than the amounts actually measured in aviators landing on aircraft carriers, troops awaiting ambushes in Vietnam, skydivers taking the plunge or patients awaiting major surgery. The levels of stress hormones are sufficient to turn off the immune system and to produce a catabolic state, in which the body begins to break down and feed on itself. The average weight loss in three days is 22 pounds.

Morgan compared regular soldiers and Special Forces soldiers:

At the start or base line, the two groups were essentially the same, but once the stress began, and afterward, there were significant differences. Specifically, the two groups released very different amounts of a chemical in the brain called neuropeptide Y. NPY is an abundant amino acid in our bodies that helps regulate our blood pressure, appetite, learning and memory. It also works as a natural tranquilizer, controlling anxiety and buffering the effects of stress hormones like norepenephrine, one of the chemicals that most of us simply call adrenaline. In essence, NPY is one of the fire hoses that your brain uses to extinguish your alarm and fear responses by keeping the frontal-lobe parts of your brain working longer under stress.

Morgan found one very specific reason that Special Forces are superior survivors: they produce significantly greater levels of NPY compared with regular troops. In addition, 24 hours after completing survival training, Special Forces soldiers returned to their original levels of NPY while regular soldiers were significantly below normal.

With so much more NPY in their systems, the Special Forces soldiers were much more clearheaded under interrogation stress and performed better according to the trainers. Special Forces soldiers really are special and different from the rest of the Army. They stay more focused and engaged in a crisis and bounce back faster afterward because their bodies produce massive amounts of natural anti-anxiety chemicals. In the fog of war — and everyday life for that matter — that’s a major advantage.

I’ve discussed neuropeptide Y and survival before. Morgan found that DHEA also plays a role:

In another arduous test, sailors are taken three miles off the Gulf Coast at night and are given a target destination on the beach. Dumped in the water, the students submerge and are not allowed to surface until they reach their objective. To make the challenge even more stressful, a clock is running and the divers aren’t allowed to go deeper than 25 feet. Despite the tides and currents, they’re also forbidden to swim parallel to the beach looking for their target. The penalty for breaking any of the rules is immediate expulsion from the course. Speed, efficiency and accuracy are a critical part of their grade.

In this underwater navigation test as well as the exercise in the pool, Morgan found again that brain chemistry makes a big difference. The amount of NPY you pump is closely connected to your success—the more, the better. Morgan also found that the best underwater navigators release a lot of a natural steroid called DHEA, which buffers the effects of the stress hormone cortisol and helps the brain’s hippocampus with spatial relationships and memory. Divers with the most NPY and DHEA graduated at the top of the class. Those with the lowest amounts did poorly.

You don’t have to test obscure hormone levels to predict stress tolerance though; you can test for healthy heart-rate variation — or its absence:

Morgan analyzed the heartbeats of soldiers and sailors before they experienced major stress. Sure enough, the ones with metronomic heartbeats performed the best in survival school and underwater navigation testing. They also did the best in what’s called close-quarters combat training. Morgan analyzed their heart rates right before they went into mock battle. They were all suited up in combat gear, waiting for a buzzer to ring that would send them running into a building to “kill” the enemy and rescue hostages. (They use “simunitions,” simulated ammunition that hurts but doesn’t cause real harm.) The ones with metronomic heartbeats, Morgan says, shoot more bad guys and kill fewer hostages. Unfortunately, this metronomic effect is usually associated with early heart disease and even sudden death. Morgan wonders whether the same thing that makes you really good at surviving under high stress may not translate into excellent heart health when you’re 50. Without it, though, these elite forces might never even make it that far.

Posted in Science, War | No Comments »

Tweenbots

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

I was prepared to hate the Tweenbots project after reading this pretentious introduction:

In New York City, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

But the li’l Tweenbot is adorable — which was the bot’s key to success:

Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged.

Behold:

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The Tax Capital

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

California raised its top income tax rate to 10.55% last month, but New York can’t resist having the nation’s highest taxes:

In New York, Assembly Speaker (and de facto Governor) Sheldon Silver and other Democrats will impose a two percentage point “millionaire tax” on New Yorkers who earn more than $200,000 a year ($300,000 for couples). This will lift the top state tax rate to 8.97% and the New York City rate to 12.62%. Since capital gains and dividends are taxed as ordinary income, New York will impose the nation’s highest taxes on investment income — at a time when Wall Street is in jeopardy of losing its status as the world’s financial capital.

But who and where are all these millionaires to pluck? More than any other state, New York has been hurt by the financial meltdown, and its $132 billion budget is now $17.7 billion in deficit. The days of high-roller Wall Street bonuses that finance 20% of the New York budget are long gone. The richest 1% of New Yorkers already pay almost 40% of the income tax, and the top 0.5% pay 30%.

Posted in Economics, Policy | No Comments »

7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Alexis Madrigal lists what he calls 7 (crazy) civilian uses for nuclear bombs. I’m not sure they’re crazy so much as they’re optimistic:

  • Creating a harbor
  • Creating a new Panama Canal
  • Exploring for natural gas
  • Mining oil shale
  • Disposing of nuclear waste
  • Human space flight
  • Defending Earth from an asteroid

A modern audience seems to assume that a controlled nuclear blast will poison the land forever. Even an accident like the meltdown at Chernobyl has had little discernible long-term impact.

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Classic Mistakes Enumerated

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Steve McConnell (Rapid Development) notes that some ineffective software development practices have been chosen so often, by so many people, with such predictable, bad results that they deserve to be called classic mistakes:

Most of the mistakes have a seductive appeal. Do you need to rescue a project that’s behind schedule? Add more people! Do you want to reduce your schedule? Schedule more aggressively! Is one of your key contributors aggravating the rest of the team? Wait until the end of the project to fire him! Do you have a rush project to complete? Take whatever developers are available right now and get started as soon as possible!

Developers, managers, and customers usually have good reasons for making the decisions they do, and the seductive appeal of the classic mistakes is part of the reason these mistakes have been made so often. But because they have been made so many times, their consequences have become easy to predict, and they rarely produce the results that people hope for.

He goes on to enumerate three dozen classic mistakes.

Posted in Business, Technology | No Comments »

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