Bernie Thompson

Where to find me online

2007-11-18T17:01:00.000-08:00

This blog was to be personal posts that "didn't fit elsewhere" -- well, so far I've not become much of a fan of personal posts or seen the value in a catch-all blog.

So I'm abandoning this blog for the time being. Please take a look at the links below if you're a customer, partner, or employer who's googling me -- or a friend looking to get back in touch. :)

If you're interested in software technology and startups, particularly around small web widgets and tools, head over to my company blog: Leancode
If you're interested in the process of developing software, I co-write a blog called Lean Software Engineering
If you know me from work somewhere, I'm happy to connect on Linkedin
If you're friend or family, just give me a call. Failing that, try Facebook

Best wishes!
Bernie

Plays Well With Others

2007-09-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

Spread the word.

Amazing new image processing technique

2007-08-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

If I were a book ...

2007-08-14T21:39:00.000-07:00

You're The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!

by C.S. Lewis

You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed
quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it
seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic
struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal
that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you're re-enacting Christian
theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust
in zoo animals.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Google complaining because it can

2007-06-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here's Google using the legal system to file a complaint just because they can, not because it's right ...

Google source of anti-trust complaint over Vista Desktop Search

I'm with Greg Linden on this one. Search is clearly a core OS function. The huge opportunity created by XP's broken search was unnatural. There's no way anti-trust should be applied here to limit innovation.

The Best Political Essay this Year

2007-06-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

Fareed Zakaria's How to Restore America's Place in the World is an important essay, perhaps the best political essay I've read this year. Fareed has been writing for Newsweek for several years, and he's always been articulate and clear-headed. But this essay is particularly important, and it comes at a critical time. We in America stand at a crossroads as a nation. We have, in many ways, gone off path.

Before us now is a choice between a dark future of insularity and fear, and a much different future -- a bright future as a open, confident, resilient microcosm of the world and advocate for all humanity across national, ethnic, and religious boundaries.

To make the difficult choice to commit to the bright future, we must change our path and recommit to principles we previously held dear, but now fear. We must embrace freedom of religion and separation of religion and state. We must relish our role as a melting pot of peoples from around the world. We must encourage free trade of commerce and culture. We must hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than our enemies. And we must engage all nations and peoples of the world with openness and respect, even if the favor will not always be returned.

It does not mean relinquishing strength. It means having the confidence to apply that strength in concert with others in the world, for the good of all.

If you can only carve out time (and stomach) for one political essay this year, this may be the one.

Many hands make light work ...

2007-06-04T21:26:00.000-07:00

This newly posted Haiku brought a smile to my face

Many hands
make light work,
and many distros.
- "Linux" by Robomarkov at Haikupedia

Haikupedia has been a green field quite some time. Perhaps, with a little more interest, the time is coming plant some more trees.

Best Free Flash Games

2007-05-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

You didn't really want to get any work done, right? Unspun didn't have a list for this yet. Vote to get your favorites to move up, and feel free to add any good ones you know of ...

Software patents: rewarding the wrong things

2007-05-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

When a system rewards the wrong things, it's only a matter of time before any company gets desperate enough to play the system, even if it's wrong.

Forbes Reports
Microsoft says free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. Will seek royalties against users.

Microsoft has always despised patent aggressors, going back to its dealings with IBM and Apple in the 80s and 90s, because they knew the patent system (as applied to software) was arbitrary and stood in the way of innovation.

But it was only a matter of time before the company had more to gain by using the system to impede innovation themselves. That time has been coming, and the interviews with Brad Smith and Horacio Gutierrezthis in this Forbes article show that the sad day is here. The conversion to the dark side is now complete. Microsoft has become what they previously despised.

Patents are a bureaucratic, intentionally anti-market mechanism. They are a government-enforced temporary monopoly that we choose to grant, to encourage innovation. If they're no longer serving that purpose in an area, it's our responsibility (through our legislators) to change the system.

For some time in the software market, the patent system has been broken. Broken for everyone -- the small guys and the big guys like Microsoft. They stifle, not encourage, innovation. The system needs radical reform, or the software market will become much more of a legal battlefield and much less of a innovation battlefield, to the detriment of all.

Support patent reform. And consider supporting the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.

Update: In response to the uproar, Microsoft has made a statement to try to distinguish themselves from SCO (who sued users directly): "We're not litigating".

Considering the whole environmental impact

2007-04-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Doing right by the environment is not as simple as it seems. For example, is it better to use paper or plastic cups? (answer below)

To know, you have to consider the whole lifecycle impacts, as this prior report gets closer to doing -- how much energy to produce, how much energy to recycle, how many contaminants as byproducts, how many contaminants to dispose.

Many of these are very difficult apples to oranges trade-offs. Our environmental professionals have to do better in synthesizing these for consumers -- who can't possibly weigh these on their own.

Consider this cautionary story on Mercury in those energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.

Beyond household accidents, how many people will mistakenly throw away these bulbs, contaminating our landfills and surrounding groundwater with Mercury?

Please, if you're involved with reviewing products for environmental impact -- help us consumers by providing the difficult analysis that spans the product's lifecycle. I have doubts whether I really should be buying CF bulbs.

(answer to question above: all things considered, it's actually glass cups that seem to have the best compromise of initial and ongoing energy consumption, and potential to recycle rather than dispose)

Real Estate Roller Coaster

2007-04-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

TurboTax 2006 bugs

2007-03-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

For the first time in many years of use, I'm finding basic bugs in Intuit's TurboTax (2006 app v53). Fields that, once populated, can't be changed if you return to that page of the wizard -- the numbers appear to change, but the original value is what gets used.

I got trapped where I had an incorrect value that TurboTax knew was incorrect, but then I could never change it.

Then when I backed out of that wizard, and started entering the data for that transaction via the other (non-wizard) method, it refused a valid date, then locked up for a few minutes and went to an (incomplete) error page.

The problems hit so far are in the area of entering basis and long/short cap gains.

In this area, I'm already annoyed that Intuit's products (Quicken, TurboTax) all try to hide the tickers of the security, leaving a truncated string that can be the same across different securities, or at least impossible to recognize at a glance.

When you're dealing with financial stuff, software has to earn and keep your trust. It's got to be better than this.

Flat tax & simplification

2007-03-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

April 15th coming up. Taxes on the brain. Gotta get those darn forms done!

lcurve.org (video in the previous post) makes a case against a flat tax.

The flat tax would shift the burden downscale even more. The sales pitch for this shift usually focuses on "simplification." Simplification is unrelated to the issue of who the money is coming from. You could have a simple progressive tax just as easily as a simple flat tax. The proposal to eliminate the income tax entirely would be disastrous. Those on the vertical spike would escape virtually all of their obligations and the burden of government would be born almost entirely by those of us on the horizontal spike, both through increases in other forms of taxation and reduction of services. The income tax originally taxed ONLY the vertical spike. This is the direction tax reform needs to take if it is to be truly considered "reform."

But simplicity is critical and the flat tax isn't about getting rid of income tax -- and it can do what the last sentence hints at. Why not combine a flat rate income tax with a distribution (not just an exemption) to take care of that lcurve. Explicit redistribution of wealth. Say the flat tax rate is 25%, and the distribution back to each taxpayer is $15,000.

A family earning $40,000 a year would pay no taxes, and in fact get $5000 back from the government (preferably, direct deposited to a gov't provided checking account in weekly installments, potentially in lieu of complex benefits programs).
A family earning $100,000 a year would pay $10,000 (25K-15K) in income taxes
If BillG ever had $50B in realized gains in a year (which, by the way, he never has) -- he would pay $12,499,985,000

To truly be a flat tax, there would have to be few/no shelters or deductions, so wealthy taxpayers can't just hire accountants and lawyers to find shelters their income. Check out this IMF study (warning: long) for analysis of Russia's 2001 flat tax reforms.

In 2001, Russia dramatically reduced its higher rates of personal income tax (PIT), establishing a single marginal rate at the low level of 13% [with a substantial exemption for lower incomes]. In the following year, real revenue from the PIT increased by about 26%. This ‘flat tax’ experience has attracted much attention (and emulation), making it perhaps the most important tax reform of recent years. But it has been little studied. This paper asks whether the strong performance of PIT revenue was itself a consequence of this reform, using both macro evidence and, in particular, micro level data on the experiences of individuals and households affected by the reform to varying degrees. It concludes that there is no evidence of a strong supply side effect of the reform. Compliance, however, does appear to have improved quite substantially – by about one third, according to our estimates – though it remains unclear whether this was due to the parametric tax reform or to accompanying changes in enforcement.

US Income Distribution

2007-03-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

More and commentary at lcurve.org

Parody of Two Cults: Jobs and Bush

2007-03-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

Godaddy DNS down this morning

2007-03-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

Godaddy's DNS servers are down this morning. I noticed first at 10:30am PST. Trying to go to a site hosted there (like http://leancode.com/ ) returns a server not found error. The server itself (which, in this case, is at aplus.net) is still running fine, if you try to reach it by its IP address (66.226.72.78).

If this is widespread, it's a big deal given the huge number of domains registered at godaddy.

I'm sure it will be quickly resolved. You can see the status at their network status page.

Just another reminder of how amazing it is that this stuff works at all. When you hit a page, there can be dozens of servers/routers involved in the transaction. Some of the infrastructure has redundancies (as DNS should, but something went awry in this case) -- but still, for anyone trying everything they can to achieve 100% uptime for their web servers, it's just a huge number of possible failure points to think about mitigating against.

Google Master Plan

2007-02-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

I both use and recommend a lot of Google products. But like any corporation, especially a public one, it's silly to expect them to be "moral" in any abstract sense. Ultimately they serve the market and their investors. So this little movie is a good reminder to us, and to Google, about what's at stake.

Appropriately enough, I'm pointing you to the copy on Google itself. If you want to check against the original, head to http://masterplanthemovie.com/

Feedsparks link

2007-01-29T09:07:00.000-08:00

There is a burst of traffic on leancode and ... it has a bunch of trouble with two of my hosting providers on the same weekend. Both textdrive and aplus went down in different ways, leaving no way to get to the information page for the new feedsparks gadget (although the gadget itself is fine, for everyone that happened to have it installed, since it's hosted elsewhere)

So if you happen to make it here, you can find the backup homepage at

http://bernie.thompson.googlepages.com/feedsparks

Or you can go to the main (more up-to-date w/ discussion, etc.) homepage of the gadget at

http://leancode.com/feedsparks

Using the Tekka Template

2007-01-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

It's nice having a blog engine which lets you manage the page layout with individual page elements and a UI for moving them around. The new (Dec 2006) version of blogger has this support, but it requires porting whatever stuff you added to your old template to the new format.

I finally did the upgrade here on this blog, and as you can see, also chose to take on a new look.

The "Tekka" template takes up less space for the header, and has a variable page width (making fuller use of the screen) -- both features I like in blogs. Let me know if you disagree.

Every Problem is an Opportunity

2007-01-09T08:47:00.000-08:00

Apple is set to announce a new product line this morning -- an Apple phone, previously called the iPhone.

The Internet is buzzing about this for one simple reason -- the cell phone market today is one huge headache for consumers. The quality of the hardware and especially the software on phones is lousy. The carriers, especially here in the US, are all about lock-ins to long contracts, and towards that goal they use their bag of bait-and-switch, selective crippling, and other lock-in strategies against the consumers that they aught to be serving more honestly. Microsoft has been doing a better job with Windows Mobile, but still is resistant to open standards at the communication layer (e.g. syncing contacts).

Apple has a track record of taking a broken situation involving complex technology, focusing on the basics, and making it actually work. In recent years (since the second coming of Jobs), they've flipped to become a fairly steady supporter of standards. So thus all the hope and hype.

In this case, I have a nagging suspicion that expectations are running ahead of Apple's ability to deliver. Many of the problems are too entrenched -- for example, the rumor is that Apple will launch with Cingular, which is unlikely to change its ways for just this single partnership.

But we will soon see. The announcement, whatever it is, is minutes away now.

Fox in the Snow

2006-12-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

Just randomly, Fox in the Snow came across my RSS reader this morning. A pretty photo.

And for some reason it rather made me think about this Snow job from Fox in the Whitehouse.

Bellevue crane crash: causes and photos

2006-12-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

There's been a stream of articles about the Bellevue crane collapse. If you're not in the area, the Seattle PI is a good source of info.

The comment from the construction worker I spoke to on the day after, has been confirmed: the crane was not bolted into the concrete foundation directly. The unusual design was approved by an independent engineering firm.

There's even more to the story -- bankruptcy and drugs, even. As usual, it's probably a combination of factors that led to the accident. But definitely a man-made disaster that could have been avoided.

And interesting angle on the story is the role that amateur photographers are playing in having captured the state of the crane prior to collapse. It appears in many photos that the crane was leaning even weeks before the accident. See Inquiry focuses on crane photos for more details.

If anyone has additional photos, especially from before the crash, there are now 297 photos tagged with bellevue and cranes on flickr.

Terrible Crane Accident

2006-11-17T12:07:00.000-08:00

Last night around 8pm, a crane came down. It was one of the ones photographed last month.

Here is some more information:

I spoke with a construction worker from a nearby site, and he believed that the crane at the accident site was not secured as strongly as others -- at his site, the crane is deeply bolted into the poured concrete pad. But I doubt the failed crane (210ft) was unbolted completely, so perhaps I misunderstood. We'll know more, I'm sure, as they investigate.

Lastly, here is one of last months' photos of the crane before it fell.

Cranes of Bellevue photo challenge

2006-10-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Bellevue, WA is going through quite a growth spurt, even as growth slows in much of the rest of the US. The "biggest construction year yet is reshaping Bellevue" (Seattle times Aug 2006).

Some people don't like change, growth. Others are fascinated by it and want to celebrate it. I can't stop staring in wonder at the forest of cranes in my adopted city. Bellevue has been extremely smart about growth -- zoning for mixed use, choosing good projects, making the downtown an ever more livable and vibrant mix of residents, retail, and office.

I took a few photos of this explosion of progress. They's up on Flickr here, geotagged to the (fairly exact) location where I took them. But it would be wonderful to capture all this building in time-lapse, and with a better eye. I'm not a photographer, and it's be quite a task for a single person to capture this mushrooming of a city day-to-day anyway.

So here's a challenge to my photographer friends: capture more of the unfolding of this story. Let's collect them all on flickr, and perhapse we can get a bit of a time-lapse effect going. And comment here on your favorite. A free coffee at one downtown shops to whoever takes the best photo in the cranes of Bellevue photo challenge. :)

Here's a search for all flickr photos tagged with bellevue and cranes.

Beautiful Woodworking

2006-10-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

One of my high school buddies has been doing some amazing custom/contract woodworking projects the last few years. When I had the chance to visit last, he showed me several furniture pieces with inlays and complex patterns, humidors, and more.

He's started a blog with pictures on notes on some of his projects.

I'm amazed at the patience and craftsmanship that are required for this kind of work. It's worlds away from the software development and bit-pushing that I'm used to, and nothing virtual can hold a candle to it.

Check out Dustin's Gearbox Woodworks blog for more.