mike.mainguy

This is an enabling concept and should be a key component of effective military (or business) doctrine. If every commander in the military had to ask the boss what they where supposed to do when they encountered an unspecified problem, how effective would they be? Imagine the Tank Commander on halting his tank and radioing to the platoon leader "hey LT, there's a building in my way, what should I do?" and then the platoon leader radioing to the company commander... all the way up to the president. Wouldn't be a very effective fighting force would it? The idea of "Commander's intent" is that it relies on subordinates having an understanding of what the overall mission is and how they fit into it. It specifically frees subordinates to act in accordance with their understanding of what they are being asked to accomplish. In essence, the commander formally recognizes that specific details are the responsibility of the lower echelon and it the the lower ...

Update from previous blog post about retailers and their non-widescreen compatible layouts. I was commenting on how nobody seemed to get how to properly design a web page so it could be stretchy... kmart.com has done it! Congratulations guys! I also like the new experience, it really looks nice. I will say the left nav is a little disconcerting. I was initially confused when I clicked on the department and the popup disappeared and showed the details down below. It took a few seconds to understand what the heck actually happened.

I recently sat down with a group of technical people and I made a statement that now haunts me. The statement was: "If a developer doesn't know exactly what they are supposed to do, they should just GUESS what they think should be done and move on. " Once the words left my lips, a technical team lead at the table paled and began to argue about how that statement was totally incorrect. I was puzzled for a moment, but then realised this person probably thought I was implying that they should not EVER go back and ask what should be done. In addition, I think they heard me imply that developers shouldn't ever ask questions in general. This was not really what I intended to communicate and in retrospect, my choice of words was unfortunate. To clarify, I obviously think people should ask questions, they should openly challenge requirements that are vague, ambiguous, or contradictory. More importantly, they should be free to use their best judgement in the absence of sp...

OK, I've had it with my old clunkly Dynex keyboard. Normally my typing speed is somewhere up around 80+ wpm, but with this keyboard it sinks down to around 70wpm... that's over 10% and just not acceptable when I'm knee deep trying to get ideas out of my head and into a computer before they disappear. So I thought what I'd do is go online and see which local retailers have my product, and, more importantly, which one's had my product in stock in my local store. The only reason I would go to a Brick and Mortar site for electronics is because either: I want it NOW!! it's so expensive/heavy that I want to make sure I have a real person to yell at if something goes wrong Off the top of my head I know I picked these stores due to their proximity and my inclination that they may have what I'm looking for. Best Buy (800lb gorilla).. I have a bias toward them because it is very close to my house and I know they have keyboards I can test drive. Wal Mart (close by...

Last year (or maybe two years ago) I purchased a Yamaha ES8 workstation. It's been a great tool, although I just started using it last week after about 4-5 months of disuse. One thing I've been wanting to do was start editing/mixing and otherwise integrating the workstation with my PC. The big problem is that I run Ubuntu linux at home. On the yamaha site, their software appears only for windows and Mac. Since I a big geek at heart I thought I'd see how far I can get anyway. For my first step, I thought I'd plug the Motif into the USB port and see what happened... Well, nothing. lsusb didn't even return it as a device. However, dmesg reported a new device. [67560.034283] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2 [67562.707240] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice [67562.803313] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio So, just for grins, I restarted the ES with the USB already connected. This seemed to allow the ...

First off, let me confess, I am employed by Sears Holdings Company, so my evaluation might have some bias. I have tried very hard to be as unbiased (for OR against) as possible. That having been said, one thing that really bothers me is how many large retailers with an online presence continuously fail to understand basic things like web design. As a quick and unscientific measure, I thought I'd review a big box retail sites and give a quick once over. The selections are based on my personal preferences and have no real scientific backing. Let's use the following sites: Wal-Mart Sears (obviously) Target To make it real, I'm actually going to try and buy some new socks. It's winter here in Chicago and my last pair of Smartwool socks now has a hole in it. Again, not scientific, pretty practical. First off, the 800lb gorrilla of retail. One thing that blows me away is the huge waste of real estate for anyone with a wide-screen monitor. If you look at this image,...

I was reading slashdot this morning and saw an interesting ad pop up. It was for a site called http://www.earncashfastwithgoogle.com . It sure smelled funny, but thought it was an amusing approach. From what I can determine it's something like: #1 Target advertising #1 Ask a bunch of questions to "Qualify" the applicant (Optional?) #2 ask for some cash up front to "ship" the "instructions" (Dubious) #3 Profit! First of I took [very quick] peek on google about this and found a couple of complaints: here . Then, I started thinking about it... What better way to make money than to charge people a very low amount of money for instructions on how to make money. From what I can see, while this really seems like it could be a bit unethical, it is an interesting way to make money. If one keeps the number of people "in" the network widely distributed enough and keeps the costs low, this could continue this for quite some time. I'm not a l...