Thursday, April 28, 2011

Rule, Britannia?

Royals
The happy couple - Courtesy of the Windsors

by blogSpotter
What is it about the Royals that gives Americans a total case of Brit Envy? Prince William and commoner Kate Middleton will tie the knot tomorrow, April 29th. There has been a news blitz unlike anything since … well the 1981 marriage of Diana and Charles. While Charles and Di's hitch-up seemed a little bogus and prearranged, Will and Kate seem to have the “real deal” – true love, whatever that actually entails. Kate, like Diana, has Cover Girl looks that any model from the Ford Agency would envy. She could probably buy her clothes at Ross Dress for Less and still look like a million dollars.

That brings me to the next (semi-related) topic – the odd fissures that have occurred between Anglo and American culture over the many years. The fictional Professor Henry Higgins noted our nations' common language, English, while adding … “Americans haven't spoken it for years”. Our original 13 colonies were brought along under England's sometimes protective (sometimes oppressive) wing and yet as American revolutionary upstarts we rejected many of England's other cultural offerings. Where to begin?

Americans do not have a king. It was actually proposed, but by the late 18th century no one was certain how you establish a royal bloodline in anyway that is credible or certifiable. Even in medieval times a regal pedigree was probably questionable but it became very established, protected by the passage of time and tradition. We also do not have a Church of America like the Church of England. It was expressly rejected by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the others – we didn't want “blood-soaked soil” as Europe (in the hands of 18th century religious zealots) was described.

We must have hated England with the ferocity that a 14 year old boy hates his old man... We ditched pounds and shillings and created our own monetary system of dollars and cents. We took a page from their Parliament but created a bicameral Congress with no references to Lords or Commoners – see above passage about permanent designations of Royalty or Lordliness. We were so distanced from England that we drove our carriages on the right side of the road and we abandoned High Tea. Also out the window were Shepherd's Pie and other English culinary items.

In point of fact, we have recreated an alternate England with an American twist. Mainstream protestantism is more or less our “Church of America” – it's a social norm that politicians best observe. We don't have royalty from “on high” but you should know that we have an entrenched, wealthy 1% that pulls most of the strings in our society. The Rockefellers and DuPonts could probably buy Windsor Castle and could say “off with your head” in a figurative sense to be sure.

It's a two way street and we've given back to Great Britain as much as we've taken...We've exported Starbucks to England so that their High Tea may face a cultural volley of lattes and cappuccinos. We also gave them Muddy Waters, Elvis and Fifty Cent which has intermingled variously with their own musical forms. Did I mention that we probably helped keep them from oblivion in World War II? We Americans do nurse an affection for a motherland culture which beguiles us with Beef Eaters, double-decker buses, red phone booths and vintage looking taxi cabs. What the hey – we probably also have a cultural debt owing to Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and the Beatles no less.

How do we love England? We love it mightily, so much so that we probably would advise the Founding Fathers if we could – the Red Coats really weren't so bad. We wouldn't want to bring Shillings or shepherd's pie back to America but we have never really cast away the shared history and cultural bonds. Despite the two nations' disparate powers and capacities in the early 21st century, England and America have a tremendous shared reverence. And America, without any princes to speak of, turns back to Britannia for its needed dose of regal fantasies. Congratulations to Will and Kate.

© 2011 blogSpotter

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Jabberwocky

250px-TheJabberwocky
Will it compile? - Courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I’m a software engineer by day and a widely read blogger by night ;-). Being a little “long in the tooth”, I can recall simpler times for business data processing. Back in the early 80’s COBOL was the “lingua franca” for Fortune 500 companies – with a bit of Pascal, ALGOL, and PL/1 thrown into the mix. Some 4th Generation reporting tools like FOCUS and MARK IV rounded things out. Young people from schools as diverse as Harvard, UT or UCLA would be versed in nearly the same coding standards. A lad working at Chevron could pretty easily segue over to Frito Lay.

With the advent of UNIX platforms and client/server computing in the late 80’s, the options multiplied… The language choices were enriched with C, C++, perl, smalltalk, Visual Basic, Shell scripting (in different UNIX “flavors”) - - leaving off many things here. Each new entrant was hyped for various advantages – rapid development, reusable objects, fast execution, etc. The advent of the Internet in the mid 90’s created a dizzying multiplier effect. We added java, javascript, J2EE, HTML, XML to the list. Suddenly we were also picking “frameworks” like JBoss and Spring. As if these weren’t and aren’t enough, we also have proprietary choices such as SAP and CASE tools to compete for our corporate dollars.

Well, variety is the spice of life; whose life isn’t made richer by more choices? Without multiple options, we would never have the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Every enterprise is like Goldilocks, looking for a fit that is “just right”. I myself supported mainframe legacy (“sunset”) applications during the 90’s and supported an aging C++/PowerBuilder application during the 00’s. Like Rip Van Winkle (another fairy tale) I woke from my 17 year legacy-induced coma to an IT world overrun with java beans, dependency injectors and advisor methods. Computer science used to have mathematical precision and concise meaning in its charter; now it seemed more to resemble pop psychology with complex verbiage and obtuse data structures.

“I’ll get to Scotland before you”

When I look at the resulting databases and graphical interfaces from all these advancements, they don’t seem any more sophisticated than what could be done with something relatively simple – a scripting language or a simple HTML. I can’t help but wonder if the value added (which, undeniably there is some) isn’t countervailed by:

• Expensive contractor fees
• Threat of obsolescence for technologies out of the mainstream
• Forced option of replace, not repair for broken systems
• Forced option of “as written” for opaque, unchangeable systems

I just received an O’Reilly email ad -- O’Reilly is the premier retailer of computing texts. The languages and skills advertised were: GIT, R, Gamification, Arduino, MS Expressions and MS Prism. I have never heard of any of these, much less mastered or excelled in them. I know I’m an old dog, but I do wonder how much branching capacity a young software engineer will need to add GIT and R to his repertoire already weighted with J2EE and Hibernate. Maybe they are different animals (“a graphic arts engineer wouldn’t need to know Hibernate!”). I can’t help but remember what Mac, the 63 year old man nearing retirement told me at my first job… K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid. (or Silly if you take offense at Stupid).

The proof is always in the pudding. That’s true of economics, engineering and computer programming. If we have a difference of philosophy, you do it your way and I’ll do it my way. You take the high road and I’ll take the low road. If someone is full of grandstanding horse manure it will be established by the competitive results. I can’t help but think that KISS wins the race (and I don’t mean Gene Simmons!).

I’m going to close with a snippet from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky which has as much clarity as the last advisor method I reviewed:

Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe:
All mimsy were ye borogroves;
And ye mome raths outgrabe


© 2011 blogSpotter

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Wednesday, April 06, 2011

The Day of the Androids

200px-Android_robot_svg
The green creature is at large - Courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Last weekend, I did a bold and daring thing, Apple fan that I am -- I bought an LG Optimus V Android phone at Target. The phone is a $200 "no contract" pay-as-you-go phone. People who are familiar with my Apple zealotry will think I've surely lost it. Let me explain in a little more detail...

I'm what is sometimes termed a "value shopper". Others might say "cheap bastard" but that's so unseemly. I use coupons, look at sale racks and always, always look for a good deal on whatever I buy. Along the same lines, I don't secure services that I don't need, eg: premium cable, ultra-fast fiber optic line, etc. I'm never uncomfortable and never without nice things but rest assured that I'm not paying a big surplus for what I don't need. When it comes to cell phones, I'm single and not extremely talkative. Where a lady might call and say (open-endedly), "Whatcha thinkin about?" my calls are more purpose-driven. I'll confirm appointments, check on movie times and make dates but I won't do rambling gab sessions that run for an hour or more. This mildly autistic character trait on my part indicates that I don't need a lot of "anytime" minutes. If you talk to me for longer than 15 minutes I might pretend there's somebody at the door. How does this relate to cell phones? Here’s how …

When I looked at the latest iPhone (iOS4) I was indeed smitten by its sturdy form and sleek interface. It's the "Cadillac" of phones in some (actually several) senses of the word. If you throw in basic services and smallest minute allotments, my monthly iPhone bill (with taxes and fees) would be about $90/month. This would be in tandem with a 24 month contract -- my worship of Apple would run me @ $2,160.00 plus the cost of the phone. I was surprised when Verizon's iPhone came out and they offered very much the same (possibly higher) monthly rates. For people like me who have high data usage and low talk time, there's not much to soften the financial impact.

My jail broken 2007 iPhone is T-Mobile pay-as-you-go but it's lagging in many ways now -- I can't update the OS without "bricking" it, can't buy new apps, can't do Outlook Exchange, etc. What's a technophile to do in this sad situation? This technophile found something that's previously not existed ...a smart, no-contract (VirginMobile) Android phone. The LG Optimus V is not as super-slick as an iPhone but it bears a strong resemblance to one and does almost everything an iPhone does. Have found very few apps that aren't available in both the Android Market and the Apple App store.

The Android VirginMobile “no contract” plan gives me:

• $25/month 300 anytime minutes
• Unlimited web surfing
• Unlimited messaging
• Unlimited email

This is all music to my ears (literally, when I listen to the Android DoubleTwist app on my Optimus). It would be a shame for Apple to ultimately lose its market lead based on the poor plan options offered by its telephone partners. Does Apple read my blog? Probably not but here are a couple of suggestions for the next iPhone hardware release anyway ….

The iPhone 3G will be two releases old by Summer of 2011 – a complete dinosaur as smart phones go… Why not keep this one available as a “Go” (No Contract) phone? Some people don’t need the latest bells & whistles. My second option is one I’ve read about on Apple sites but have no verification …. Come out with a smaller, less capable iPhone expressly to sell to people with a smaller budget. Of course, make it available as “No contract”.

There have been other battles of technical virtuosity that were decided on purely practical and monetary grounds … nothing to do with ivory tower engineering arguments. (Consider blu-ray versus HD DVD or Betamax versus VHS). For all I know Studebaker and Packard were good cars – I wasn’t old enough to witness the various marketing angles at the time they went extinct. All I know is that people operating under a budget in tough economic times will probably be more pragmatic and less idealistic. Android phones are practical in the extreme.

© 2011 blogSpotter

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