Friday, April 30, 2010

The only question that matters: What is the cost of failure?

Risk ManagementImage by Cold Cut via Flickr
So my buddy JFP pointed me at this Harvard Business Review post about how an endless series of questions can kill innovation. It's good advice, and falls well in line with my quasi-37signals philosophy on business generally, and software  development specifically. But I like to cut to the chase, so here's the one and only question you should ask before deciding whether to go ahead with a project: What is the cost of failure?

More specifically: What would happen if you tried something and all the time, effort and resources you put into it were a complete loss? Put a number on that. Put a dollar figure on that. This is your cost of failure.

Now, decide whether you can afford to lose that amount of money. If you can, then you can withstand the cost of failure, and you're allowed to consider the project. If you can't afford to throw away that amount of money, you can't afford the project. It's that simple.

The corollary of this rule: The cost of mitigating failure may never exceed the actual cost of failure.

If modelling the likelihood of a project's success would cost more than the actual cost of failure, don't do the model. Do the project instead. You'd be surprised how often this rule is violated. Meetings have a dollar figure attached to them. Reviews have a dollar figure attached to them. A long, laborious project approval process has a huge dollar figure attached, one that is almost certainly higher than the cost of failure.

Take out the roadblocks. Yes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But the law of diminishing returns applies even to caution, and most businesses are applying a pound of prevention in order to save an ounce of cure.

Create a quarterly failure budget, if it makes you feel better. This is how much you can afford to write off. Keep innovating until that failure is spent. Mandate that you must keep innovating until that failure is spent. Institutionalize innovation. You should embrace the possible, not fear it. You'll be surprised how much progress you'll make.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Nerd Word of the Week: Openwashing

Open SignImage by trawin via FlickrOpenwashing (n.) - Portraying a product or technology as open when in fact it's closed and proprietary. Yet another play on the notion of whitewashing, applied to open source and open standards of technology.

I bring it up because: Facebook is trying to brazenly openwash itself again, this time with the Open Graph Protocol. The OGP is open in the sense that you're free to share data with Facebook, and Facebook might share data with its partners, but all the data belongs to Facebook and only businesses that play by Facebook's rules can get at it. That's not an open protocol; that's a cartel. The OGP is also open in the sense that your Facebook friends can now share data about you unless you explicitly forbid it, which takes some doing. Doc Searls reminds us that we've seen this kind of openwashing before -- Microsoft called it Hailstorm/Passport -- and it didn't work. Sun Microsystems was also a victim of its own openwashing. Maybe the same will be true this time, but I wouldn't bet on it. Regardless, just because you call yourself open doesn't make it so. Beware of CEOs bearing (open) gifts.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Truly Trivial: Who was the original Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings?

Moviefone: 15 Movie Posters Re-Imagined With the Stars Originally CastImage via Moviefone
Great movies are a product of a special, unpredictable alchemy between actors, directors, screenwriters, editors and a public ready and willing to receive a story. This is doubly so for geek films, which is why many movie nerds still say a silent prayer of thanks that Nick Nolte didn't get cast as Han Solo in Star Wars. (Patton Oswalt being the exception that proves this rule.)

The truth is, there are many such spine-chilling near misses in geek cinematic history, to the point that imagining "What If Casting (or Directing) Were Different?" has become a meme and industry unto itself. Richard "Lethal Weapon" Donner directed the first two modern Superman films, but betwixt Superman: The Movie and Superman II, he had a falling out with the studio. Thus Richard Lester was brought in to reshoot the sequel just enough to screw Donner out of a directing credit (and also edit the expensive Marlon Brando out of the film). Not to worry, Superman II: The Donner Cut is available to undo this nerd cinema wrong.

Eric Stoltz was also famously the original lead in Back to the Future, but was replaced part way through principle photography. While there isn't a "Stoltz Cut" of BttF, this well known revamp did earn a glaring geek in-joke in a recent episode of Fringe, in which we visit an alternate universe where the recast never happened.

What's even more intriguing about the Back to the Future casting tweak is that Stoltz wasn't even the original choice. Producer Steven Spielberg originally wanted Ralph "Karate Kid" Macchio to be Marty McFly. On a similar note, Will Smith was envisioned as the original Neo in The Matrix, and Russell Crowe was Peter Jackson's first choice for Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. While Jackson didn't actually cast Crowe, he did pull a Stoltz-esque switch and fire his original Aragorn just before principle LOTR photography in favor of Viggo Mortensen.

Who was the original Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy?

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Nerd Word of the Week: Expanded universe

Captain America and the AvengersImage via Wikipedia
Expanded universe (n.) - Stories set in a fictional universe that occur outside the franchise's original medium, such as comics that tie into a popular movie, or novels that are set in the universe of a popular television or video game franchise. The Star Wars expanded universe is the seminal example, largely because George Lucas maintains such tight control over its content, though Star Trek, Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer also maintain healthy and successful expanded universes.

I bring it up because: LucasFilm has confirmed at least two more mainstream Star Wars expanded universe projects, a Star Wars sitcom from Seth Green and the Robot Chicken guys, and an animated series chronicling the post-Jedi adventures of Han, Luke and Leia. This doesn't even touch on the news that Joss Whedon may be writing and directing the Avengers movie, which plays off the highly successful Iron Man movie continuity, including Iron Man 2 which opens May 7. It's fair to say that a great many more people saw Iron Man the movie than have ever read an Iron Man comic, and Marvel's plans for a cohesive movie continuity between Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers will pull equally one-sided numbers. This begs the question, which is the expanded universe: The Marvel movies, or the Marvel comics?

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Truly Trivial: Who was the first superhero to appear in Detective Comics? (Hint: It wasn't Batman)

Detective Comics #1 (March 1937). Cover art by...Image via Wikipedia
Seventy-one years ago this week, Batman made his debut in Detective Comics #27. Together with Superman, who appeared the previous year in Action Comics #1, the Caped Crusader helped launch the Golden Age of Comics, and thereby became one of the most recognized, enduring, and profitable fictional characters in modern history.

Not bad for a guy who inherited a two-year-old comic title that he shared with other fictional detectives.

While Superman inaugurated Action Comics, Batman was simply the latest in an ongoing series of character experiments in the Detective Comics anthology title. Detective #1's cover story involved Ching Lung, a (more than vaguely racist) ripoff of Fu Manchu, and the only enduring character to emerge from that issue was hard-boiled pulp detective Slam Bradley, who was invented by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster -- the creators of Superman. In fact, Batman wasn't even the first superhero to debut in Detective Comics -- just the most successful.

Who was the first superhero to appear in Detective Comics?

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Nerd Word of the Week: Conlang

The Conlang Flag is a symbol of constructed la...Conlang flag - Image via Wikipedia
Conlang (n.) - Slang term for constructed language, which is a language created for a specific purpose rather than one that evolves naturally from consensual public usage. Conlangs are often created for use in fictional settings, with classic examples including Tolkien's Elvish from the Lord of the Rings book series, or Star Trek's Klingon, created by linguist Marc Okrand. There are, however, conlangers -- creators and consumers of constructed languages -- that develop these fictional tongues strictly for amusement, separate from any attachment to a book, television, or movie series. Some geeks use conlangs to flesh out their favorite fictional worlds, and some conlangers are just fake language geeks.

I bring it up because: HBO has commissioned a conlang of the Dothraki language for its miniseries adaptation of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire book series. Just chalk it up as yet another concession to the too-passionate-to-be ignored geek demographic.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Truly Trivial: Why was the original US income tax struck down?

Seal of the United States Internal Revenue Ser...Image via Wikipedia
The average rate of error for US income tax returns is roughly 21 percent, which is to say that one out of every five tax returns filed each year is wrong. To be fair, much of this wrongness is due to the complexity of printed tax return forms, as less than half a percent of all electronic tax returns are filed with errors. You can thank all those self-checking tax preparation software applications for the vast improvement in e-filed returns.

That it's possible to achieve a 99.5 percent accuracy rate with tax prep software doesn't mean the tax code isn't needlessly complex. Frankly, the fact that you need hand-holding software to prepare an accurate return argues that our tax code has gotten entirely too Byzantine. For cripes sake, the instructions for the simplest IRS tax return form, the 1040 EZ, run to 40 pages.

Ironically, the current version of US income tax -- made possible in 1913 by the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution -- was designed to simplify a problem which led to the abolition of the previous income tax system.

Why was the original US income tax system struck down?

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Nerd Word of the Week: Con

Dragon ConImage via Wikipedia
Con (n.) - Accepted slang term for a science fiction or fantasy convention, so much so that many of these conventions work the term con into their unofficial or even official titles. For example, the World Science Fiction Convention -- whence come the Hugo Awards -- is known as WorldCon. Moreover, Dragon*Con, GenCon and Comic-Con -- arguably the preeminent American science fiction, gaming, and comic book conventions, respectively -- all include con in their formal titles. Some conventions have even gone so far as to artfully work con into their namesakes, including Hunstville's Con+Stellation, Pittsburgh's ConFluence, and Tulsa's CONestoga. Who says puns are a dead art?

I bring it up because: This weekend my local sci-fi con, ConGlomeration, gets underway -- and I've never been above a shameless plug. If you need a better reason, the 2010 Hugo nominations came out this week, which means WorldCon membership -- which you need to vote on the awards -- is top of mind in the nerd-o-sphere.
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Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Truly Trivial: What was Microsoft's first operating system? (Hint: It wasn't DOS or Windows)

Digitally enhanced version of Ms_xenix.Image via Wikipedia
A mere 35 years ago this week, a fledgling little software concern known as Micro-Soft was founded in the southwestern town of Albuquerque, New Mexico by a couple of college dropouts looking to make money at computer software. As you might have heard, this worked out for them, as Bill Gates and Paul Allen are now wealthier than your average supervillain -- so much so that neither of them needs to work for the now hyphenless Microsoft. Gates uses his nigh-infinite funds to try to eradicate malaria while Allen spends his fortune on the more mundane (but far more difficult) task of winning championships with the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers.

We all know what made these guys Lex Luthor-level wealthy: Microsoft Windows, the operating system that took over the world from about 1993 until about five minutes past the iPhone launch. What most people don't know is that Microsoft didn't start as a Windows development shop, nor even primarily as a developer of DOS, the OS atop which Windows 1.0 originally ran. Micro-Soft began life as a creator of custom versions of BASIC programming language interpreters for the late, great Altair 8800 personal computer. When Microsoft built its first operating system, it was a very, very far cry from either the DOS or Windows builds that would make it the most powerful technology company on Earth.

What was the first operating system commercially released by Microsoft?