php-horde-feed 2.0.1-4 / usr / share / php / tests / Horde_Feed / Horde / Feed / fixtures / lexicon / http-www.joelonsoftware.com-rss.xml

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	<title>Joel on Software</title> 
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com</link> 
	<description>Painless Software Management</description> 

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	<copyright>Copyright 1999-2008 Joel Spolsky.</copyright> 

	<managingEditor>Joel Spolsky</managingEditor> 

	<webMaster>webmaster@fogcreek.com</webMaster> 

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	<title>Joel On Software</title> 
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	<description>Painless Software Management</description> 
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	<title>Pecha Kucha</title>
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/18.html</link>
	<author>Joel Spolsky</author>
	<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/18.html</guid>
	<pubDate>18 Jul 2008 14:59:00 EST</pubDate>
	<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/"><img src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/i/rsshead.jpg" width="100" height="44" align="right" border="0" style="margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px;" ></a>
<p>We've already got a great lineup of speakers for the <a href="http://www.businessofsoftware.org/">Business of Software conference</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li>Seth Godin</li>
<li>Eric Sink</li>
<li>Steve Johnson</li>
<li>Richard Stallman</li>
<li>Paul Kenny</li>
<li>Tom Jennings</li>
<li>Dharmesh Shah</li>
<li>Mike Milinkovich</li>
<li>Jessica Livingston</li>
<li>Jason Fried</li>
<li>and me!</li></ul>
<p>Neil Davidson was looking for a way to bring in a handful of extra interesting speakers for very brief presentations just to keep the conference more dynamic and hear from different corners of the world. I had recently read about <a href="http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha">Pecha Kucha</a>. The speaker gets 6 minutes and 40 seconds: no more, no less. You submit exactly 20 slides. Each one is shown for exactly 20 seconds and then flips automatically. At the end, even if you're <em>almost done</em> and just have <em>one more thing</em>, the mic cuts off and you sit down.</p>
<p>It sounded like a good idea. Speakers have to plan very carefully and rehearse repeatedly to make sure their speech is going to synchronize correctly with the slides, which makes for a more polished speech. They have to edit mercilessly to boil their subject matter down to 400 seconds, which makes it more interesting and dynamic. And if they suck, well, you don't have to wait very long for them to go away!</p>
<p>45 people submitted applications to speak. There were a lot of terrific applications. Somehow, Neil and I narrowed it down to <a href="http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2008/07/pecha-kucha-fin.html">8 very impressive finalists</a> who will speak in Boston. I can't wait!</p>
<p>Not loving your job? Visit the <a href="http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel on Software Job Board</a>: Great software jobs, great people.
</p>
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<item>
	<title>Annual Fog Creek Open House</title>
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/14.html</link>
	<author>Joel Spolsky</author>
	<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/14.html</guid>
	<pubDate>14 Jul 2008 11:12:52 EST</pubDate>
	<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/"><img src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/i/rsshead.jpg" width="100" height="44" align="right" border="0" style="margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px;" ></a>
<p><img style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px" height="666" alt="" src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/RandomStuff/recruitingstrip.jpg" width="200" align="right" border="0" />Here at Fog Creek Software we get a lot of requests for a tour of the office, which we usually have to decline: we have this unusual obsession with giving programmers quiet working conditions.</p>
<p>But once a year, we do have an open house. It's a rare chance to peek behind the curtains and meet the people behind FogBugz and Copilot.</p>
<p>This year, we're only a month or so away from moving (to a much larger space downtown) but we didn't want to skip the annual tradition, so the open house will be held anyway at the old office:</p>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<p><strong>Thursday, July 17</strong><br /><strong>5:00 - 7:00 pm</strong></p>
<p>535 8th Ave. (cross street: 37th)<br />18th Floor<br />New York, NY 10018</p></blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">You'll get a chance to meet the Dingos (class of '08 <a href="http://www.fogcreek.com/Jobs/SummerIntern.html">interns</a>), the <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBA.html">SMTPs</a>, our new sales department, the developers behind FogBugz, Copilot, and Wasabi, and the rest of the team. Some kind of food-like snack will be served. Tiny cheddar-cheese-flavored crackers in the shape of fish, maybe. Don't skip lunch.</p>
<p>Not loving your job? Visit the <a href="http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel on Software Job Board</a>: Great software jobs, great people.
</p>
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</item>

<item>
	<title>Don't hide or disable menu items</title>
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/01.html</link>
	<author>Joel Spolsky</author>
	<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/01.html</guid>
	<pubDate>01 Jul 2008 11:42:48 EST</pubDate>
	<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/"><img src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/i/rsshead.jpg" width="100" height="44" align="right" border="0" style="margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px;" ></a>
<p>A long time ago, it became fashionable, even recommended, to disable menu items when they could not be used.</p>
<p>Don't do this. Users see the disabled menu item that they want to click on, and are left entirely without a clue of what they are supposed to do to get the menu item to work.</p>
<p>Instead, leave the menu item enabled. If there's some reason you can't complete the action, the menu item can display a message telling the user why.</p>
<p>Not loving your job? Visit the <a href="http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel on Software Job Board</a>: Great software jobs, great people.
</p>
]]>
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<item>
	<title>Desks</title>
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/06.html</link>
	<author>Joel Spolsky</author>
	<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/06.html</guid>
	<pubDate>06 Jun 2008 16:25:47 EST</pubDate>
	<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/"><img src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/i/rsshead.jpg" width="100" height="44" align="right" border="0" style="margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px;" ></a>
<p>A reader wrote in to ask what kind of desks we're going to be using for the new office.</p>
<p><img style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px" alt="" src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/06ergonomics.PNG" align="right" border="0" /></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.nismat.org/ptcor/ergo/">ergonomics experts</a> always want you to have your feet flat on the floor. So you have to adjust your seat height first. Then, your arms are supposed to be horizontal while you're typing. This means you need an adjustable-height keyboard.</p>
<p>Most of the adjustable height keyboard trays are extremely annoying... they're floppy, flimsy, and limit the keyboard to one location. Therefore we decided to get desks where the entire worksurface can be raised and lowered.</p>
<p>Finally, a lot people praise the benefits of standing up for a part of the day, even if you spend the whole day at a computer, so we wanted desks where the worksurface could rise all the way to "counter height" so you could stand and work. And if you are going to be standing up and sitting down it's best to have a desk with a pushbutton, electric motor so you don't get lazy about doing it.</p>
<p><img style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px" alt="" src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/06details.PNG" align="right" border="0" />Eventually we settled on the <a href="http://www.details-worktools.com/">Details</a> adjusTables <a href="http://www.details-worktools.com/products/height_adjustables.php?id=9">Series 7</a>. We didn't like the desk surface that those came with (with rounded corners and a chubby profile, it's just too blah) so we ordered a custom desk surface from Steelcase with something called a knife edge profile. That makes the desk look paper-thin:</p>
<p><img alt="" src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/06knifeedge.PNG" border="0" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Not loving your job? Visit the <a href="http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel on Software Job Board</a>: Great software jobs, great people.
</p>
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<item>
	<title>StackOverflow podcasts moving to IT Conversations</title>
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/05.html</link>
	<author>Joel Spolsky</author>
	<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/05.html</guid>
	<pubDate>05 Jun 2008 11:21:45 EST</pubDate>
	<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/"><img src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/i/rsshead.jpg" width="100" height="44" align="right" border="0" style="margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px;" ></a>
<p>Yes! I'm still doing those weekly podcasts with <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/">Jeff</a>. We've already done eight of them.</p>
<p><img style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px" alt="" src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/05stackoverflow.PNG" align="right" border="0" />We're moving, though, to <a href="http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/index.html">IT Conversations</a>, a huge network of terrific audio shows about technology. Just looking at all the great shows they have there makes me feel a bit like a kid in jeans and a T-shirt with a dirty slogan who just walked into Chez Panisse.</p>
<p>The new feed, IT Conversations-based feed is at <a href="http://rss.conversationsnetwork.org/series/stackoverflow.xml">http://rss.conversationsnetwork.org/series/stackoverflow.xml</a>.</p>The easy way to subscribe is with ITunes, choose Advanced | Subscribe to Podcast, paste that URL in there, and you'll be all set.
<p>Not loving your job? Visit the <a href="http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel on Software Job Board</a>: Great software jobs, great people.
</p>
]]>
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</item>

<item>
	<title>Adventures in Office Space</title>
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/02.html</link>
	<author>Joel Spolsky</author>
	<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/02.html</guid>
	<pubDate>02 Jun 2008 11:33:29 EST</pubDate>
	<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/"><img src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/i/rsshead.jpg" width="100" height="44" align="right" border="0" style="margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px;" ></a>
<p>&#8220;We lost some time because a deal to expand at our current location fell through -- it turned out that the extra floor we wanted wasn&#8217;t actually, to use the real estate jargon, &#8216;available.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p><img alt="" src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/06/02OfficeSpace.PNG" border="0" /></p>
<p>From <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/inc.html?10">Adventures in Office Space</a>, my latest column in Inc. Magazine.</p>
<p>P.S.! Neil reminds me that you've only got until the end of the week to <a href="http://www.businessofsoftware.org/register.asp">register</a> for the <a href="http://www.businessofsoftware.org/">Business of Software conference</a> at the low early rate ($1395 instead of $1795).</p>
<p>Not loving your job? Visit the <a href="http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel on Software Job Board</a>: Great software jobs, great people.
</p>
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<item>
	<title>Architecture astronauts take over</title>
	<link>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html</link>
	<author>Joel Spolsky</author>
	<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html</guid>
	<pubDate>01 May 2008 00:01:57 EST</pubDate>
	<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/"><img src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/i/rsshead.jpg" width="100" height="44" align="right" border="0" style="margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px;" ></a>
<p>It was seven years ago today when everybody was getting excited about Microsoft's bombastic announcement of Hailstorm, promising that "Hailstorm makes the technology in your life work together on your behalf and under your control."</p>
<p>What was it, really? The idea that the future operating system was on the net, on Microsoft's cloud, and you would log onto everything with Windows Passport and all your stuff would be up there. It turns out: nobody needed this place for all their stuff. And nobody trusted Microsoft with all their stuff. And Hailstorm went away.</p>
<p>I tried to coin a term for the kind of people who invented Hailstorm: <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html">architecture astronauts</a>. "That's one sure tip-off to the fact that you're being assaulted by an Architecture Astronaut: the incredible amount of bombast; the heroic, utopian grandiloquence; the boastfulness; the complete lack of reality. And people buy it! The business press goes wild!"</p>
<p>The hallmark of an architecture astronaut is that they don't solve an actual problem... they solve something that appears to be the template of a lot of problems. Or at least, they try. Since 1988 many prominent architecture astronauts have been convinced that the biggest problem to solve is synchronization.</p>
<p>Follow the story, here. I started <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000011.html">picking on</a> one company that appeared to be particularly astronautish: Groove, which was trying to rebuild Lotus Notes (a giant synchronization machine) in a peer-to-peer fashion.</p>
<p>Groove had some early success selling secure networks to the military-industrial complex, but didn't make much of a ripple outside that niche. Their real success was in getting bought by Microsoft, which brought Groove's designer and chief architecture-astronaut Ray Ozzie to the role of "Chief Software Architect" at Microsoft, supposedly the technical guy that would keep inventing the future after BillG left so that Steve Ballmer would have some new territory on which to build his next illegal monopoly.</p>
<p>And now Ray Ozzie's big achievement arrives and what is it? (drumroll...) Microsoft Live Mesh. The future of everything. Microsoft is "moving into the cloud."</p>
<p>What's Microsoft Live Mesh?</p>
<p>Hmm, let's see.</p>
<p>"Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about."</p>
<p>Wait a minute. Something smells fishy here. Isn't that exactly what Hailstorm was supposed to be? I smell an architecture astronaut.</p>
<p>And what is this Windows Live Mesh?</p>
<p>It's a way to synchronize files.</p>
<p>Jeez, we've had that forever. When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just <em>not a killer application</em>. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not.</p>
<p>But Windows Live Mesh is not just a way to synchronize files. That's just the <em>sample app.&nbsp;</em>It's a whole goddamned architecture, with an API and developer tools and in insane diagram showing all the nifty layers of acronyms, and it seems like the chief astronauts at Microsoft literally expect this to be their gigantic platform in the sky which will take over when Windows becomes irrelevant on the desktop. And synchronizing files is supposed to be, like, the equivalent of Microsoft Write on Windows 1.0.</p>
<p>It's Groove, rewritten from scratch, one more time. Ray Ozzie just can't stop rewriting this damn app, again and again and again, and taking 5-7 years each time.</p>
<p>And the fact that customers never asked for this feature and none of the earlier versions really took off as huge platforms doesn't stop him.</p>
<p>How on earth does Microsoft continue to pour massive resources into building the same frigging synchronization platforms again and again? Damn, they just finished building something called Windows Live FolderShare and I haven't exactly noticed a stampede to that. I'll bet you've never even heard of it. The 3,398th web site that lets you upload and download files to a place on the Internet. I'm so excited I might just die.</p>
<p>I shouldn't really care. What Microsoft's shareholders want to waste their money building, instead of earning nice dividends from two or three fabulous monopolies, is no business of mine. I'm not a shareholder. It sort of bothers me, intellectually, that there are these people running around acting like they're building the next great thing who keep serving us the same exact TV dinner that I didn't want on Sunday night, and I didn't want it when you tried to serve it again Monday night, and you crunched it up and mixed in some cheese and I didn't eat that Tuesday night, and here it is Wednesday and you've rebuilt the whole goddamn TV dinner industry from the ground up and you're giving me 1955 salisbury steak that I just DON'T WANT. What is it going to take for you to get the message that customers don't want the things that architecture astronauts just <em>love</em> to build. The people? They love twitter. And flickr and delicious and picasa and tripit and ebay and a million other fun things, which they do want, and this so called synchronization problem is just not an actual problem, it's a fun programming exercise that you're doing because it's just hard enough to be interesting but not so hard that you can't figure it out.</p>
<p>Why I really care is that Microsoft is vacuuming up way too many programmers. Between Microsoft, with their shady recruiters making unethical exploding offers to unsuspecting college students, and Google (you're on my radar) paying untenable salaries to kids with more ultimate frisbee experience than Python, whose main job will be to play foosball in the googleplex and walk around trying to get someone...<em>anyone</em>...to come see the demo code they've just written with their "20% time," doing some kind of, let me guess, cloud-based synchronization... between Microsoft and Google the starting salary for a smart CS grad is inching dangerously close to six figures and these smart kids, the cream of our universities, are working on hopeless and useless architecture astronomy because these companies are like cancers, driven to grow at all cost, even though they can't think of a single useful thing to build for us, but they need another 3000-4000 comp sci grads next week. And dammit foosball doesn't play <em>itself</em>.</p>
<p>Not loving your job? Visit the <a href="http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/">Joel on Software Job Board</a>: Great software jobs, great people.
</p>
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