Powder puff programming

Today being Ada Lovelace Day, I pledged to write about a woman in technology who inspires admiration. I immediately seized on Admiral Grace Hopper as the ideal subject, particularly as Ada Lovelace, only legitimate child of Lord Byron, is often described as the “first programmer” of computational devices, since she developed programs for Charles Babbage’s early mechanical computers.

Hopper is indeed the spiritual heir to Lovelace—a woman who was able to apply focus and drive to a variety of problems. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College with a degree in mathematics and physics in 1928—an era when this was considerably rarer than it is now. Her graduate work was at Yale and she was teaching math at Vassar when the US entered World War II.

She volunteered for the Navy Reserve in 1943 and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at the Harvard Computation Lab. Here she began her career in computing, working with Howard H. Aiken on the Mark I computer. She wanted to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war, but was refused because she was 38, so she remained at Harvard &and in the reserves.

In 1949 Hopper joined the company eventually to be known as Remington Rand and was key to the development of the UNIVAC I. She focused on compiler work; COBOL being the eventual output. She believed that computer programs could be written in a language more like English than the machine languages then being used—imagine what a huge leap forward that was.

She went on to pioneer the implementation of standards for testing systems and components. In the 1980s her tests were assumed by what’s now the National institute of Standards & Technology (NIST).

Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve as a Commander in 1966, but was recalled to active duty—this process occurred twice. She finally retired permanently (and involuntarily) in 1986, with a ceremony held in Boston on the USS Constitution. At that time she was the oldest officer in the USN.

DEC then hired her as senior consultant, a position she held until her death in 1992. Her focus there was lecturing on the early days of computers and methods computer hardware and software companies could use to make life easier on users.

You can pretty well bet that—whatever your frustrations with your PC, your mobile phone, or any piece of equipment that has computer components—it works a lot better that it would have had Grace Hopper not been the computing pioneer she was, and for so many decades.

Working on a Mark II computer at Harvard, a moth stuck in a relay was interfering with operation. Hopper referred to its removal as “debugging”, a term that is vital to any software development project. That moth is in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, if you care to check it out.

Also, if you’ve ever followed the aphorism that it’s better to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission, that’s been attributed to Hopper.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is an annual conference focused on the research and career interests of women in the field. This year’s will be held in Tucson in September. I’ve put it on my calendar because—although not a programmer or analyst—I think my career has been shaped by Hopper’s philosophy, so it’s worthwhile.

I think my favorite quote from her is, “I believe in having an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.”

You go, girl!

Spring is sprung

I’ve found something that does adhere to schedule here in the PNW—it’s a rare enough occurrence that I feel obliged to remark upon it.

It’s been so long since I’ve heard the dawn chorus of birds around here, I’d forgot that there were birds. Even though I see them around, especially after putting out food for them.

However, first thing Saturday morning—yes, the day after the vernal equinox—they chirped in the sunrise, wet though it was. Although there’s been no change in temperature, evidently the bird community knows its duty & takes pride in discharging it.

It’s heartening to find that, in the midst of service providers who can’t be bothered, at least the beaked & feathered set is right on time.

Nest feathering

A friend emailed me this story about a Frederick, MD, car wash getting hit by thieves, to the tune of several thousand dollars.

I pretty much automatically run such amusements through Snopes, & this one checks out clean.

Take it as a diversion from the steady stream of AIG downers.

AIG's right thing?

You’ve no doubt heard that Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG, has gone before Congress to perform a—well, not heart-felt; maybe head-felt—nostra culpa over the $165M in bonuses he paid last week to employees of the Financial Products division.

That would be the very unit that cratered the company & caused Congress to lavish $170B in bailout funds because AIG is “too big to fail”. Those “retention bonuses”—meant to ensure that the stellar performers (who evidently have the financial acumen of a plate of yesterday's ravioli) remain with the company to drain the swamp they created—ranged from $1000 to $6.4M.

& many of the recipients have already departed the swamp. (Dunno about you, but any place I’ve ever worked, if you leave a nanosecond before the bonus payout date, you’re out of the money. How is it that these guys not only destroy half the western world’s financial systems but get a performance bonus after they’ve left the swamp?)

Liddy’s appearance has been sparked by Congress waking up belatedly, realizing that the American public is mad as hell & not going to take it any more, & starting the process of passing legislation that will tax said bonuses (above $250K) at a rate of up to 90%. He announced, “We’ve heard the American people loudly & clearly these past few days,” & said the company’s asked recipients of more than $100K to “step up”, “do the right thing” & return at least half of the bonuses they haven’t really, you know, earned.

The company had been defending the payouts a variety of ways—the agreements were put in place a year ago, they were set based on 2007’s success rate & were necessary to retain these valuable staff members. Plus—this was a contractual obligation, you know, & AIG was just unable to do anything other than pay out the dosh.

Well, except for the fact that they did dick around with the arrangements—so they actually did have some wiggle room. When it suited their purposes.

Really—ignore the man behind the curtain.

It’s interesting, then, that only now, after Congress is threatening to take some actual, you know, action & tax the hell out of bonuses (which could affect all their other bailout buddies & sour the single malt down at the yacht club), does it become “the right thing” to return, grudgingly, a portion of the bogus bonuses.

Oh—there’s also the spate of death threats. That might have had something to do with Liddy’s crocodile contrition. (Not sure whether the threateners realize that they’d have to fly to Britain to get their garrotes around the throats of the guilty; this division is headquartered in the backwater of Wiltshire. But I’m sure that if someone went on Craig’s List to take up a collection, they’d get enough for the air fares.)

So we’ll have to see if these masters of an imploding universe know what “the right thing” is—even when someone draws them a picture.

I’m not holding my breath.

The other March saint

Unless you’re Italian or trying to sell a house, you may not be aware that today is Saint Joseph’s Day.

You remember Joseph? Husband of Mary? Taught Jesus everything he knew about carpentry and joinery?

Joseph is the patron of, among others, the Church Universal, workers, families, engineers, the dying, Canada, confectioners, travelers, those in doubt, cabinetmakers, Korea and Vatican II. Also of house sellers and hunters, which should make him a pretty busy fellow these days.

Today is his official feast day—celebrated widely in Italian communities around the world with altars decorated with flowers, limes, candles, wine, breads, cookies, pastries and other symbols of the good life. This is of particular importance when you consider that Saint Joseph’s Day usually falls in Lent, when consumption is constricted.

(There’s another day, 1 May, dedicated to Saint Joseph the Worker; but that was invented in 1955 by Pope Pius XII to counter the godless communist/union/laborer May Day holiday, so you can fuggedaboutit.)

What I remember about Saint Joseph’s Day is that it’s when the swallows come back to Capistrano—that’s the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, in the eponymous town in Orange County, California. Turns out that the swallows usually show up a couple of days on one side or another of 19 March, but everyone turns a blind eye to those little discrepancies and enjoys the hell out of the miracle of the swallows.

There are decades of stories about how Saint Joe helps the desperate sell their homes: you bury a (plastic/stone/wooden) statue of the saint (head up/head/down/horizontal) in your (front/back/side) yard and Bob’s your uncle—the house is sold.

You can buy purpose-made statues for precisely this use from a variety of sources both on and off line, including from some realtors.

No clue as to how the saint may help home buyers, unless there’s some karmic connection that his statue in your yard attracts exactly the right buyers for this house.

At any rate—Saint Patrick gets all the good press for saints in March. You might want to expand your hagiology with the holy father.

Assuming you've sobered up by now.

Drinking green

Yesterday being Saint Patrick’s Day, and myself being Irish, the natural supposition might be that I was out celebrating until the wee hours.

However, that supposition would be wrong.

New Year’s Eve and Saint Patrick’s Day are when all the amateurs come out to drink, and I don’t particularly relish being puked on in any event. So I usually go private for any imbibing I choose to do to mark the occasions.

My office mate, being of an age and gender where it’s viewed as a character defect if you don’t overindulge, did go out to various faux-Irish establishments at the weekend to drink copious amounts of various substances.

One potation in particular caught my attention, an “Irish car bomb”. It starts with Guinness, which puts it beyond the beyond for starters as far as I’m concerned. (I’m not into drinking industrial sludge.) Into a pint of Guinness you’re meant to drop a shot glass with Bailey’s Irish Cream and a float of Irish whisky.

Then you’re supposed to actually swallow it.

According to my colleague, the trick is to get it down fast, “before the Bailey’s starts to curdle”. (He wasn’t completely kosher about the bibulous methodology: he poured the Bailey’s/whiskey into the Guinness, as, “I figured a lot of people had handled the shot glass.”)

The drink does have one benefit, he adds: “it kind of feels like you already threw up”, what with the Bailey’s curdling like cottage cheese in your mouth, “so you don’t puke.”

According to Wikipedia, the name “Irish Car Bomb” “is sometimes considered offensive due to its reference to IRA terrorism. It is not uncommon for genuine Irish pubs to refuse to serve them.”

Well, hmm.

I think the difficulty with that statement would be in trying to find an actual, you know, “genuine Irish pub”. There being squillions of faux Irish pubs around. And I don’t think you can count those pub-in-a-box franchises that give you sure-fire instructions for building an Irish pub in downtown Riga or suburban Peshawar.

Still—I should think drinking abomination (regardless of what you call it) would be its own punishment.

Then there would come the bar bill.

Rosebud

Hearst Corporation has announced that it’s shutting down the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Today is the final print edition. From now on it’ll be Internet-only.

As you might imagine there’s been a lot of booing & hooing—mostly from the PI itself—about how this closing represents the End of Civilization as We Know It.

Well, I’m a print journalist & therefore biased towards news in a corporeal form. However I can’t get excited about this demise.

This rag is as provincial as they come—which wouldn’t be a bad thing except that its pretensions are megalithic. Most of the national & all the international stories come from feeds & the local reporting is, well, booster-ish.

Business reportage—pretty much all wire feeds—constitutes two to four pages at the back of a 16-page sports section. (All Huskies, all the time.)

Culture is presented as an exclusive purview of Seattle, & yet there’s more gardening, even in winter, than book reviews. So “culture” may refer more to nematodes than non-fiction.

&, BTW, reviews are heavily skewed towards “local” interest, whether that be authorship or subject matter—no matter how tenuous the connection. Evidently something’s only “real” if it’s “Seattle”.

Thinks I, the paper doeth protest too much.

Another quirk that got straight up my nose: that Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam last month? Most headlines were along the lines of, “Nine killed as Turkish plane crashes near Amsterdam airport”, or “Turkish plane crash in Amsterdam”.

The PI blared, “737-800 crashes in Dutch field; 9 killed”, with a sub-head: “Four Boeing employees aboard; their fates are unknown”.

Now, Boeing’s the home team (sorta—the manufacturing plant is still here although the company moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago a few years ago), but still. The "news" wasn't really the aircraft, it was the human event.

Plus, dunno who’s more at fault here—Boeing for giving out the names or the PI for hotfooting it to the Boeing staffers’ homes—but the paper butted into the lives of the families of the four to ask what they knew before it became apparent that three of the passengers were among the dead.

Okay, okay—it is a Hearst rag, but still.

So I won’t miss this paper, as much as I want to see the tradition of print journalism continue.

I just want to see it continue with some modicum of quality.

Corporate outrages (chapter 27)

A lot of media—traditional & blog—attention is being paid to outrage over corporate excess. You know:

AIG taking billions from you & me (courtesy of our Congress-slime) & then blowing nearly $500K on an “executive retreat”, & now forking out $165M in "performance bonuses" to the very morons who "led" the company into massive failure;

Merrill Lynch pushing through billions in bonuses in the final hours of 2008 so as to relieve new owner Bank of America from the pesky duty of maybe cutting or eliminating them altogether;

That same BofA throwing a five-day $10M Super Bowl bash;

The Gang of Three flying (separate) corporate jets to Washington, D.C., to beg for bailout money in the billions & billions;

Wells Fargo planning a twelve-day “business meeting & recognition event for hard-working team members”—at the Wynn & Encore hotels, for some undisclosed outrageous sum of money.

All of the above (with the exception of Ford) have asked for & accepted billions from us beleaguered taxpayers. They’ve all defended their splash-outs as “not coming from bailout funds”—like you can separate that stuff.

& their lower lips are much extended at them getting spanked for this, because they claim it's necessary for business as usual.

(Clearly, they haven’t got the point that “business as usual” got us all into this mess.)

I particularly love the argument for bonuses & corporate jollies as being necessary to attract & retain the “best talent”; without them the "best talent" would leave in droves. Like that “best talent” isn’t responsible for these companies going into a death-spiral & taking the rest of us with them.

Besides—if this mythical “best talent” does indeed walk—where the hell are they going to go? There are no hedge funds or investment banks left with openings for high-flyers. The masters of those particular universes are clinging to their current paychecks with death grips.

Well, whatever.

What bothers me is that this media fury is probably going to be no more effective than the outrage that permeated the airwaves in the last meltdown: Enron/WorldCom, etc.

In a couple of years everyone will be back to business as usual & the best talent will be back on corporate jets headed to “business meetings.”

Plus ça change…

Laptop security

Those folks at NetworkWorld have done a totally unscientific study on how security-minded (or not) people are at various WiFi locations. They went around various WiFi hot-spots (airports, coffee shops, etc.) & asked laptop users what precautions they were taking.

What’s interesting is that pretty much everyone (with the exception of the technician) is playing roulette with the security of their (& their employers’) data. In fact, none of them at all has taken measures to protect the laptops themselves, such as a laptop labeling or tracking service to aid in recovering a lost/stolen machine.

Of particular note was the CFO who was too cheap to buy a cellular data service & relies wherever possible on free connectivity.

NW does give you some tips on how to minimize your chances of self-immolation with your data. Some of them seem to be stating the blindingly obvious (don’t send anything via email that you wouldn’t want everyone at the coffee shop to read), but what’s obvious is that most of the people they polled were blissfully ignorant of the danger.

So take a look, see what you can implement for yourself. When all else fails—put down the laptop & get a life.

GM's art of cost cutting

GM has announced that it will cease funding the documentary work of Ken Burns (since they need those few hundreds of thousands of dollars to subsidize their ex-pat programs for senior execs who require $30K worth of private school fees per year, & all. Plus, there are those Byzantine “work 10% fewer hours & get paid 5% less; so you’re going to get 5% of your salary for doing nothing” schemes…).

Okay, they’re not talking about the parenthetical part, but they have cut off the flow to Burns.

I understand—times are hard. But it’s really a great pity. I love Burns’ work.

I think one of my favorites is “Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip”, about a medical doctor who took it in his head to be the first to drive from California to New York in 1903. He, a driver & a dog named Bud made it across the country—which did not at that time have either a real road network or petrol stations—in a little over two months. There’s something magical about that story.

Toward the end there was a photo of a family—perhaps around 1910—on a trip; males in the front, females in the rear of an open touring car. The expressions on their face were absolutely classic: this was not a family having fun.

I assure you, I’ve been on that trip.

Anyhow—at the moment no telling how Burns will finance future efforts. The final project to be subsidized by GM is on the US National Parks.