Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Life Settlement Mistakes



Every person selling his existing life insurance policy hopes for a quick and lucrative sale. However the actions of a policy owner, or even his advisor, can greatly influence the offer or likelihood of a life settlement successfully occurring. Unbeknownst to many there are a few major impediments that a well meaning policy owner can impart upon a transaction.
The potential problems associated with using multiple life settlement brokers have been been well documented. A policy owner should select a single life settlement broker in which they have confidence and then refrain from adding any additional confusion, such as other intermediaries, into the process. For those that don't know where to begin, there are authoritative resources available online, such as the Boomja Life Settlements Directory, with comprehensive listings of available options and vendors.
Expectations are a potential stumbling block in every transaction. If a policy owner's expectations are not in line with the market realities, a life settlement is doomed to fail. For example, a seller must be willing to accept that their policy will be subject to market forces of supply and demand. At the earliest possible opportunity, sellers should consult with their life settlement broker to collaboratively set realistic expectations for an offer. Far too often sellers will expect, and sometimes hold out for, an unrealistic offer that may never come. If a seller's expectations and requirements are unrealistic, beginning the life settlement process will be a waste of their time in addition to that of the broker's and buyers'.
Policy sellers must have realistic expectations about the time required to complete a life settlement transaction. One of the most common mistakes a policy owner can make is to poorly plan the timing of their policy's sale. Although, the impetus for a life settlement is usually a change in an estate, family or business, the policy itself must not be allowed to fall into the grace period. All to often a policy owner will stop paying premiums and then hope to initiate a life settlement. At this point, facilitating a life settlement becomes very difficult as most carriers won't provide the documentation or account changes necessary for a life settlement to occur. It is imperative to continue to pay premiums for a policy until the ownership has been changed or the prospects of a life settlement may be seriously undermined.

Failure to disclose relevant information is also a potential stumbling block for policy sellers. Bankruptcies, collateral assignments, beneficial interests, divorces, policy financing arrangements and other things materially impact a policy's value on the secondary market. Those issues usually come to light sooner or later and it is always better to address them preemptively.
When entering into a life settlement, it is imperative to be honest and forthright with your life settlement broker. Managing potential issues and setting realistic expectations on the front end of a deal makes the rest of the process much smoother for everyone involved. In the end, everyone shares the same goal of selling a policy. 
http://technorati.com/business/finance/article/life-settlement-mistakes/

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Top 10 Management Mistakes

Managers come from different walks of life, possess various characteristics, and have their own philosophies regarding how to manage a business and employees. In a broad sense, there are common mistakes made by managers at different levels and in various types of businesses. The following are 10 of the most common management mistakes.

1.              Putting policies ahead of people. The smaller the organization, the larger the mistake this is. Policies are made to be followed, within reason. Some flexibility with employees, particularly in a small company, is important. An even bigger mistake is standing behind policies at the expense of losing loyal customers. Weigh the significance of standing behind your policy in each situation. If it is a matter of physical safety or security, policies must be upheld. However, in many other instances, there are reasonable solutions that will not alienate the customer or create a strained relationship with your employee(s).
2.              Lack of communication. In any industry, at any level, communication is key to being a successful manager. Employees need to know what is expected of them and when specific projects or tasks need to be completed. Communication needs to be clear, and any questions that arise need to be answered.
3.              Failing to hear what your employees have to say.Managers make the mistake of listening but not always hearing what their employees are saying. To manage effectively, you need to understand the needs and concerns of your employees.
4.              Not acknowledging that you do not have all the answers. A good manager does not make the mistake of trying to solve every problem. Seeking help from individuals with expertise in specific areas is a sign of strength, not weakness. In addition, a good manager must understand that his or her way is not the only way to do the job.
5.              The glass is always half empty. Managers who continually focus on the negatives, without recognizing positive achievements or employee accomplishments, end up with employees who are not motivated and often have one foot out the door looking for a more positive work environment.
6.              Not accepting responsibility. A common mistake made by managers is to either delegate blame or simply not accept responsibility for that which happens under their guidance. Eventually, avoiding responsibility will catch up with a manager and usually not bode well for his or her future. Being in charge means taking responsibility for whatever happens.
7.              Favoritism. Once a manager has obvious favorites, he or she loses credibility and the respect of the rest of the team.
8.              Just do it. The Nike slogan does not work when employees are trying to gain an understanding of the process or project. Rather than expecting your team to simply work blindly on tasks they do not understand, a good manager takes the time to explain what the project is all about and how the team's work is incorporated into the plan. Remember, the more the team is invested in a project, the better the results will be.
9.              Too much technology. A new breed of managers are more tech-savvy than they are comfortable handling and managing people. Embracing technology is a key to success in the modern office environment, but not at the risk of embracing people skills. Do not hide behind e-mails and other technology.
10.           Never change. In a rapidly changing business environment, not being open to change can be a major mistake. While you may stick to tried-and-true methods in some areas, you should consider and weigh the value of change in others. Above all, be flexible.

http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/workforce-management/3997-1.html

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The 12 mistakes of Christmas

At least that is how I approach the stress-fest. I ditched optimism years ago and accept that the probability of a ruined dinner and a row is high by way of insuring against Christmas calamity.
This is not because I’m one of those party-planning generals who undertakes a course in napkin origami and creative table décor in November. If anything, the strategy is based on paring it all down. I have learnt the hard way; the following these 12 fates are always with me.

1. Search the house
You did, you know you did, buy a few little handmade wooden toys in Turkey last summer, thinking they’d be perfect presents, then you hid them. Avoid the irritation of coming across them next July and turn the place upside down.
2. Resist railway travel
Thise planning train journeys must rethink. Anything – including a lift from a hated relative whose dog has bad breath – will be less traumatic.
3. Bend the knees
Osteopaths report a surge of calls from people who slip discs pulling 28lb turkeys out of the deep freeze.
4. Under-organise
Cancel the Aga/cooker/boiler service. Engineers with after-party sore heads forget to tighten vital screws or valves. Like a doomed space satellite, your kitchen infrastructure heads for collapse, transpiring just as the helpline shuts down for the break.
5. Resist recycling
Giving away unwanted presents from last year will backfire. Can you keep a straight face as the recipient opens an especially naff box of bath pearls? A relationship-busting crime is to mistakenly return a gift to its original donor.
6. Avoid obvious danger
Recalling here the fate of one of my friends who decided she could not be bothered to cook, ordered a takeaway and gave everyone a dose of food poisoning.
7. Take nothing for granted
You do not have wide-gauge aluminium foil left over from last year; nor enough candles, salt, onions, cans of peeled chestnuts or cloves for the bread sauce and glazed ham.
8. Christmas Day is sacred
Very little need be done on the day, so everyone is free to go to church. The stuffing, potato peeling, sprout preparation, bread sauce base, brandy butter, giblet stock, cranberry sauce and knife-sharpening can all be done the previous day.
9. Think big
Turkeys do not fit in conventional roasting tins. Unless, as I once did, you want to roast it after sawing it in half, buy a big tin.
10. Make stuffing history
The main cavity of a turkey is as deceptively cavernous as a Tardis. Not only is it necessary to cremate the turkey to get the stuffing remotely hot, no one will finish it. Stuff the small neck cavity, and roast the rest in a pan with turkey dripping.
11. Avoid Delia
Not the recipes but the “15-minute” planning chart. This only works without inevitable distraction, or by starting in October. And I find the
15-minute period set aside to pour a lonely glass of champagne in the kitchen somehow sad.
12. Lower your expectations
Nothing you eat on Christmas Day is likely to taste as good as the cup of tea poured early that morning.
The luxury hangover
While many corks will pop in celebration that such a thing as cheap champagne exists, be warned: there’s a painful price to pay for cheap luxury. Sainsbury’s £14 Etienne Dumont Champagne may be flying off the shelves, but is it even worth the price tag that comes in at approximately half of that charged for a £30 bottle of Moet? My own, purely anecdotal, experience of cheaper champagne brands is that they deliver agonising hangovers.
There are sparkling wines made using the champagne method that cost even less than the Dumont bottle, which I feel much more comfortable after drinking. I have bought a South African type from M&S for under £10, made with wild yeast and no preservatives, downed plenty and never suffered a glimmer of a hangover. Likewise there is organic Venetian prosecco and Spanish cava at a similar price that have little effect either. I’d like to know why but research into allergic reaction to alcohol is notoriously difficult.
For many choosing a celebratory drink, such wines have half the lure of champagne, because the magic word is not on the label. We need to get over this. The so-called great ‘Appellation Controlle” wines of France, including champagne, thrive off the buyers conceit that there is something more in parentage, while many ‘orphan’ sparkly types do not get a look in. Well-made champagne indeed has a feel good factor, but it should not be assumed that poorly made does not exist.
Sell-by dates
The 2,400 year old soup recently discovered in an ancient cooking pot by Chinese archaeologists must be past its “best before” date, though the phrase has the vaguest of meanings.
A reader writes that they have bought supermarket fruit that does not ripen before the BB date expires. I have yogurt, bought in November, that still tastes perfect, though it is officially “off”.
Apparently, the 8.3 million tons of household food thrown away every year could be eaten, the CO₂ impact would equal taking one in four cars off the road. Meanwhile, stale labelling laws do not entrust us to use our senses. I’ll be turning turkey bones into soup well into January, just using my nose as a guide.
Far Flung Christmas Food
Panic sets in as the snow threatens a delivery standstill. I have got through few Christmases without pulling a sticky Portuguese Elvas plum from its box. I will ski if necessary to London importer Rainha Santa for these greengages that were Agatha Christie’s festive favourite. In The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, their beauty is explained by Mrs Lacey to Poirot. “You arouse my gastronomic juices, Madame,” he replies. Too true, but so is the saying that snow doesn’t give a soft white damn.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/rose-prince/8210330/Rose-Prince-The-12-mistakes-of-Christmas.html

Friday, December 17, 2010

Drunk driver learns from his mistake


An Auckland man is lucky to be alive after his car was ripped in half by a bus in a high speed crash.
Gareth Hurn says his life has changed forever because of the bad decisions he made behind the wheel.
It's hard to believe that anyone could walk away from the crash, but 25-year-old Mr Hurn did.
On Sunday night he smashed into an oncoming bus, tearing the front off his Honda Integra.
“As the bus hit, I remember all the noises, the most strange noises I've ever heard in my life, of metal just plying all around you,” he says.
Mr Hurn had gotten into an argument with his brother and despite having had a few drinks, he took off in his car to go to his mate's place on the North Shore. He overtook one bus, then crashed into another.
Hurn's Honda Integra was travelling at an incredibly high speed when it came down East Coast Road. There were no passengers in his car but police say if there were, they wouldn't have been so lucky.
Mr Hurn broke his collar bone and five ribs. He knows he's a very lucky man, so he's decided to make some changes to his life.
“Since the accident I haven't picked up a drink, and I will not ever again. It's just one of those life changing experiences,” he says.
And he's got a message for people who find themselves in a similar situation.
“Don't speed, and don't drink and drive man. That's the biggest thing I can ever say. Speed kills and I'm very lucky not to be one of those people that died.”
Police are waiting on the results of a blood alcohol test before they lay any charges.
Mr Hurn says he'll take them on the chin and deal with the consequences of his mistakes.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Drunk-driver-learns-from-his-mistake/tabid/423/articleID/190414/Default.aspx

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

What happens in your brain when you make a mistake


In today’s issue of Nature magazine, Vanderbilt researchers report they’ve discovered the part of your brain that recognizes when you’ve made a mistake- the Oops center, as it’s been dubbed. This is a powerful finding because it localizes self-control in the body. It brings to mind a medieval painting that describes the moment when the soul of a baby enters its mother’s womb. Humans have struggled with the question of where our emotions, thoughts, and spirits were located within the body for centuries. Beginning to answer these questions through science is a complicated, and fascinating, undertaking.


The Vanderbilt team included Jeffrey Schall and post-doctoral fellows Viet Stuphorn and Tracy Taylor. Their group specializes in the study of how the brain controls eye movements. This study focused on the brain’s decision to move the eye or not. The experiment consisted of tasking macaque monkeys with visually tracking a spot on a computer screen. When the monkeys first began observing the screen, there was a spot in the center, which disappeared once their gaze was fixed, while another spot appeared in the periphery. If the monkey shifted its eyes to the new spot, it was awarded with juice. In some cases as the monkey was “planning” to look away, the central spot reappeared. Reward for this situation was given only if the monkey cancelled its intended eye movements and kept its eyes on the central spot.

Schall and his team were monitoring the monkeys’ brain activity during the experiment. The team kept track of neurons in the supplementary eye field, located in the frontal lobe, and the frontal eye field, which directly controls eye movements. In the supplementary eye field, three types of neurons fired in response to different circumstances. One set fired when the monkey received a reward and thus realized it had made the right decision, another set, which the team began calling the “oops” neurons, fired when the animal knew it had made a mistake, and the third set of neurons in this field responded when the brain received conflicting instructions, like in the scenario when the spot reappeared in the center just as the monkey was about to move its eyes. This indicates that the supplementary eye field is monitoring, not controlling, eye movement. Cognitive psychologists have long agreed that there must be a center that exists in the brain which controls its own activities as it makes decisions and corrects mistakes, but this is one of the first studies to identify physically where that area might exist. 

This finding has the potential to illuminate issues like schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt, Sohee Park, studies schizophrenia, and has found in her own eye-tracking experiments that 80 percent of schizophrenic patients and about half of their healthy first-degree relatives have difficulties in the executive control of eye movements. Localizing these neurological deficiencies in such patients is an important first step in effectively medicating and alleviating schizophrenic symptoms.


http://www.examiner.com/science-news-in-nashville/what-happens-your-brain-when-you-make-a-mistake

Friday, December 10, 2010

Avoid these mistakes when with your lady

GIVING DIRECTIONS 
Women know what they want to do in bed. Do not push her. If she is not responding even after 20 minutes of foreplay, she probably doesn't want to do it. So cut it out. 

ASKING FOR PERMISSION 
Women like a man who takes charge and has smooth moves. If you keep asking 'Shall we make some sexy time?' you'll come across as a wimp. Assess her mood and the situation, use the fine art of seduction and dive in. 

SELFISHNESS 
There's a reason sexexperts stress on foreplay - women need a lot of physical affection before they are ready to get into the sack. If you repeatedly put your satisfaction before hers, she might call it a night with a book in bed. 

BEING BLATANT 
Most women know when they want to get intimate with a man. Gentle persuasion, like a deep kiss, may make her change her mind, but don't keep hinting at it as soon as you get home. And definitely don't keep refilling her glass of wine and nodding towards the bed through dinner. 

GRABBING 
Nobody wants to make out with a groping school boy. Move with some finesse. Chart a mental route and follow it with soft touches and gentle kisses. 

TAKING A CALL 
Don't even think of picking up the phone. No, don't even surreptitiously sneak a peek at the screen to see who's calling. It would be good manners to shut off the phone completely once you know which way your evening is heading. You don't want to talk to your boss in the middle of getting in on, or worse, your mother. 

FRISKY SOUNDTRACK 
Ambience is the key to a good time. But if the strains of Hit Me Baby One More Time fill the air as the lights go dim, you aren't going to get anywhere. Anything too peppy or teeny-boppish (Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus), too obvious (Bheege Honth Tere...) or too girly (You're The One) isn't going to cut it either. Settle for some classics – Something Stupid or My Funny Valentine. Heavy metal should not be allowed anywhere near the bedroom.

Read more: Avoid these mistakes when with your lady - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/man-woman/Avoid-these-mistakes-when-with-your-lady/articleshow/5027022.cms#ixzz15SI25tMZ

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

12 programming mistakes to avoid



But certain programming practices send the majority of developers reaching for their hair upon opening a file that has been exhibiting too much "character." Spend some time in a bar near any tech company, and you'll hear the howls: Why did the programmer use that antiquated structure? Where was the mechanism for defending against attacks from the Web? Wasn't any thought given to what a noob would do with the program?
Creatures of habit, we developers seem locked into certain failure modes that can't be avoided, such is the frequency with which we fall prey to a particular poor programming practice.
Below you will find the most common programming pitfalls, each of which is accompanied by its opposing pair, lending further proof that programming may in fact be transforming into an art -- one that requires a skilled hand and a creative mind to achieve a happy medium between problematic extremes.
 Programming mistake No. 1: Playing it fast and loose
Failing to shore up the basics is the easiest way to undercut your code. Often this means overlooking how arbitrary user behavior will affect your program. Will the input of a zero find its way into a division operation? Will submitted text be the right length? Have date formats been vetted? Is the username verified against the database? Mistakes in the smallest places cause software to fail.
The worst part about sloppy programming is that advances in language design aimed to fix these problems don't do their job. Take the latest version of Java, which tries to make null-pointer checking easier by offering shorthand syntax for the endless pointer testing. Just adding a question mark to each method invocation automatically includes a test for null pointers, replacing a rat's nest of if-then statements, such as:
With this:
In the end, however, such syntax improvements can only prevent code from crashing, not ensure that it's useful. After all, it doesn't eliminate the root of the problem: the proliferation of null values due to fast and loose programming.
 Programming mistake No. 2: Overcommitting to details
On the flip side, overly buttoned-up software can slow to a crawl. Checking a few null pointers may not make much difference, but some software is written to be like an obsessive-compulsive who must check that the doors are locked again and again so that sleep never comes.
Relentless devotion to detail can even lock up software if the obsessive checking requires communicating with a distant website over the network. I have several packages that slow to a crawl if I fire them up on a laptop without a Wi-Fi connection because they're frantically trying to phone home to see if a new version might be available. The Wi-Fi LED flickers, and the software hangs, constantly looking for a hotspot that isn't there.
The challenge is to design the layers of code to check the data when it first appears, but this is much easier said than done. If multiple developers work on a library or even if only one does all of the coding, it's difficult to remember whether and when the pointer was checked.
 Programming mistake No. 3: Not simplifying control
Too often, developers invite disaster by not simplifying control over tasks in their code.
Mike Subelsky, one of the co-founders at OtherInBox.com, is a keen advocate of there being one and only one place in the code for each job. If there are two places, odds are someone will change one but not the other. If there are more than two, the odds get even worse that someone will fail to keep them all working in the same way.
"Having worked on one code base for three-plus years, my biggest regret is not making the code more modular," Subelsky says. "I've learned the hard way why the Single Responsibility Principle is so important. I adhere to it strongly in new code, and it's the first thing I attack when refactoring the old code."
Subelsky, as you may surmise, is a Ruby on Rails programmer. The framework encourages lean code by assuming most of the structure of the software will fall into well-known patterns, a philosophy that Rails programmers often summarize as "convention not configuration." The software assumes that if someone creates an object of type Name with two fields first and last, then it should immediately create a database table called Name with two columns, first and last. The names are specified in only one place, avoiding any problems that might come if someone fails to keep all of the layers of configuration in sync.
 Programming mistake No. 4: Delegating too much to frameworks
Sometimes the magic tools lead only to confusion. By abstracting functionality and assuming what we want, frameworks can all too often leave developers at a loss for what's gone wrong in their code.
G. Blake Meike, a programmer based near Seattle, is one of many developers who finds over-reliance on automated tools such as Ruby on Rails a hindrance when it comes to producing clean code.
"Convention, by definition, is something outside the code," Meike says. "Unless you know Ruby on Rails' rules for turning a URL into a method call, for instance, there is no way, at all, that you will ever figure out what actually happens in response to a query."
He finds that reading the code often means keeping a manual close by to decipher what the code is doing behind his back.
"The rules are, while quite reasonable, not entirely trivial. In order to work on a Ruby on Rails app, you just have to know them. As the app grows, it depends on more and more of these almost-trivial bits of external knowledge. Eventually, the sum of all the almost-trivial bits is decidedly not trivial. It's a whole ecosphere of things you have to learn to work on the app and remember while you are debugging it," he says.
To make matters worse, the frameworks can often leave you, and any who come after you, stranded with pretty code that's difficult to understand, revise, or extend.
As Mike Morton, another programmer, explains, "They carry you 90 percent of the way up the mountain in a sedan chair, but that's all. If you want to do the last 10 percent, you'll need to have thought ahead and brought oxygen and pitons."
 Programming mistake No. 5: Trusting the client
Many of the worst security bugs appear when developers assume the client device will do the right thing. For example, code written to run in a browser can be rewritten by the browser to execute any arbitrary action. If the developer doesn't double-check all of the data coming back, anything can go wrong.
One of the simplest attacks relies on the fact that some programmers just pass along the client's data to the database, a process that works well until the client decides to send along SQL instead of a valid answer. If a website asks for a user's name and adds the name to a query, the attacker might type in the name x; DROP TABLE users;. The database dutifully assumes the name is x and then moves on to the next command, deleting the table filled with all of the users.
There are many other ways that clever people can abuse the trust of the server. Web polls are invitations to inject bias. Buffer overruns continue to be one of the simplest ways to corrupt software.
To make matters worse, severe security holes can arise when three or four seemingly benign holes are chained together. One programmer may let the client write a file assuming that the directory permissions will be sufficient to stop any wayward writing. Another may open up the permissions just to fix some random bug. Alone there's no trouble, but together, these coding decisions can hand over arbitrary access to the client.
 Programming mistake No. 6: Not trusting the client enough
Sometimes too much security can lead paradoxically to gaping holes. Just a few days ago, I was told that the way to solve a problem with a particular piece of software was just to "chmod 777" the directory and everything inside it. Too much security ended up gumming up the works, leaving developers to loosen strictures just to keep processes running.
Web forms are another battleground where trust can save you in the long run. Not only do bank-level security, long personal data questionaires, and confirming email addresses discourage people from participating even on gossip-related sites, but having to protect that data once it is culled and stored can be far more trouble than it's worth.
Because of this, many Web developers are looking to reduce security as much as possible, not only to make it easy for people to engage with their products but also to save them the trouble of defending more than the minimum amount of data necessary to set up an account.
My book, "Translucent Databases," describes a number of ways that databases can store less information while providing the same services. In some cases, the solutions will work while storing nothing readable.
Programming mistake No. 7: Relying too heavily on magic boxes
Worried about security? Just add some cryptography. Want your databases to be backed up? Just push the automated replication button. Don't worry. The salesman said, "It just works."
Computer programmers are a lucky lot. After all, computer scientists keep creating wonderful libraries filled with endless options to fix what ails our code. The only problem is that the ease with which we can leverage someone else's work can also hide complex issues that gloss over or, worse, introduce new pitfalls into our code.
Cryptography is a major source of weakness here, says John Viega, co-author of "24 Deadly Sins of Software Security: Programming Flaws and How to Fix Them." Far too many programmers assume they can link in the encryption library, push a button, and have iron-clad security.
But the reality is that many of these magic algorithms have subtle weaknesses, and avoiding these weaknesses requires learning more than what's in the Quick Start section of the manual. To make matters worse, simply knowing to look beyond the Quick Start section assumes a level of knowledge that goes beyond what's covered in the Quick Start section, which is likely why many programmers are entrusting the security of their code to the Quick Start section in the first place. As the philosophy professors say, "You can't know what you don't know."
 Programming mistake No. 8: Reinventing the wheel
Then again, making your own yogurt, slaughtering your own pigs, and writing your own libraries just because you think you know a better way to code can come back to haunt you.
"Grow-your-own cryptography is a welcome sight to attackers," Viega says, noting that even the experts make mistakes when trying to prevent others from finding and exploiting weaknesses in their systems.
So, whom do you trust: yourself or so-called experts who also make mistakes?
The answer falls in the realm of risk management. Many libraries don't need to be perfect, so grabbing a magic box is more likely to be better than the code you write yourself. The library includes routines written and optimized by a group. They may make mistakes, but the larger process can eliminate many of them.
 Programming mistake No. 9: Opening up too much to the user
Programmers love to be able to access variables and tweak many parts of a piece of software, but most users can't begin to even imagine how to do it.
Take Android. The last time I installed a software package for my Android phone, I was prompted to approve five or six ways that the software can access my information. Granted, the Android team has created a wonderfully fine-grained set of options that let me allow or disallow software based on whether it requires access to the camera, tracks my location, or any of a dozen other options. But placing the onus on users to customize funtionality they do not fully understand can invite disaster in the form of inadvertant security holes and privacy violations, not to mention software that can prove too frustrating or confusing to be of use to its intended market.
The irony is that, despite being obsessed with feature check lists when making purchasing decisions, most users can't handle the breadth of features offered by any given piece of software. Too often, extra features clutter the experience, rendering the software difficult to navigate and use.
 Programming mistake No. 10: Overdetermining the user experience
Some developers decide to avoid the trouble of too many features by offering exactly one solution. Gmail is famous for offering only a few options that the developers love. You don't have folders, but you can tag or label mail with words, a feature that developers argue is even more powerful.
This may be true, but if users don't like the idea, they will look for ways to work around these limitations -- an outcome that could translate into security vulnerabilities or the rise of unwanted competition. Searching for this happy medium between simple and feature-rich is an endless challenge that can prove costly.
 Programming mistake No. 11: Closing the source
One of the trickiest challenges for any company is determining how much to share with the people who use the software.
John Gilmore, co-founder of one of the earliest open source software companies, Cygnus Solutions, says the decision to not distribute code works against the integrity of that code, being one of the easiest ways to discourage innovation and, more important, uncover and fix bugs.
"A practical result of opening your code is that people you've never heard of will contribute improvements to your software," Gilmore says. "They'll find bugs (and attempt to fix them); they'll add features; they'll improve the documentation. Even when their improvement has been amateurly done, a few minutes' reflection by you will often reveal a more harmonious way to accomplish a similar result."
The advantages run deeper. Often the code itself grows more modular and better structured as others recompile the program and move it to other platforms. Just opening up the code forces you to make the info more accessible, understandable, and thus better. As we make the small tweaks to share the code, they feed the results back into the code base.
 Programming mistake No. 12: Assuming openness is a cure-all
Millions of open source projects have been launched, and only a tiny fraction ever attract more than a few people to help maintain, revise, or extend the code. In other words, W.P. Kinsella's "if you build it, they will come" doesn't always produces practical results.
While openness can make it possible for others to pitch in and, thus, improve your code, the mere fact that it's open won't do much unless there's another incentive for outside contributors to put in the work. Passions among open source proponents can blind some developers to the reality that openness alone doesn't prevent security holes, eliminate crashing, or make a pile of unfinished code inherently useful. People have other things to do, and an open pile of code must compete with hiking, family, bars, and paying jobs.
Opening up a project can also add new overhead for communications and documentation. A closed source project requires solid documentation for the users, but a good open source project comes with extensive documentation of the API and road maps for future development. This extra work pays off for large projects, but it can weigh down smaller ones.
Too often, code that works some of the time is thrown up on SourceForge in hopes that the magic elves will stop making shoes and rush to start up the compiler -- a decision that can derail a project's momentum before it truly gets started.
Opening up the project can also strip away financial support and encourage a kind of mob rule. Many open source companies try to keep some proprietary feature in their control; this gives them some leverage to get people to pay to support the core development team. The projects that rely more on volunteers than paid programmers often find that volunteers are unpredictable. While wide-open competitiveness and creativity can yield great results, some flee back to where structure, hierarchy, and authority support methodical development.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/120610-12-programming-mistakes-to.html?page=1

Friday, December 3, 2010

Mistakes and mystics: survival and beyond discourse

This may sound insensitive, but if you genuinely want to know, the sooner you do away with all the nonsense in you, the better it is. 

If your perception is changing at different times of your life, clearly what you did yesterday or how you saw life yesterday was a mistake. What you are doing now seems to be the right thing to you, but this can change anytime. What you do today may seem like a mistake tomorrow, and what you do tomorrow will might seem to be the right thing. So, there is a mistake in the way we perceive life. When this gets corrected, people think you are a mystic because you are beginning to perceive life in a way that you cannot fit in logic; it is way beyond logic. Logic is just a small part of your life – you can never fit life into it. You can fit logic into your life but never life into logic. 

If your experience of life transcends the limitations of sense perception, you are known as a mystic. You experience life in a way that others do not know; you make things happen in a way that they cannot understand, so they call you a mystic – they are admitting that they are mistakes. 

There is nothing wrong in being a mistake, but not realising the mistake is the biggest mistake. When you were in the womb, you had eyes, but could not see. You had ears, but probably could not hear – else you would know how it was inside. 

At birth, your sense organs naturally opened up for survival. For anything that is beyond survival to open up, it needs striving. As a baby, if you were left all alone in a forest and if something edible arrived in front of you, would you stuff it into your ears? No, you would know where to put it. But would you know how to read, write, to speak a language? That takes some striving. Today, language comes easily to you because of striving. 

What is beyond survival does not open up for you unless you strive. All religions and spiritual traditions started off as just this striving. Over time, however, transmitting it through generations things get ritualised and the context is somehow lost. Every religion started off as human striving to know, to experience, to create well-being. If you think you are absolutely right on everything, you become fanatical. If you know that you are a mistake, then you are a potential mystic. 

When the survival process is constantly getting more complicated, there is not much room for many to strive to know the truth, to know the basic nature of our own existence. In the last century, in our excitement over achievers who accomplished things that were not possible earlier, we have gone berserk. 

Technology is not only about gadgetry but about arranging our lives in a way that the survival process is handled effortlessly and there is time and space to explore other aspects and dimensions – which would not be possible if we were fully occupied with survival. Now for the most part, survival is so organised. 

Therefore, invest time and resources to build infrastructure for deeper exploration of yourself. That is where ultimate well-being is, and ultimate liberation.

Read more: Mistakes and mystics: survival and beyond discourse - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/spirituality/mysticism/Mistakes-and-mystics-survival-and-beyond-discourse/articleshow/5336025.cms#ixzz15SIztCBM

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