I sometimes hear the phrase 'we are carrying all the risk' which, in the narrow view of the speaker refers to financial risk. And, because of this narrow view, is often followed by 'so we need full control', 'so we have the bulk of the shares' or something similar. When I ask 'but what about the risks that I am taking?' my questions are met with blank stares that continue to remain after the explanation my point of view is complete.

It seems that most business people, when negotiating with individuals as suppliers have the attitude that they have the money and money is all that matters. Individuals do not necessarily share that observation and are concerned about risks that relate to more than money. If you were asked to work on a three year project using technology that was not mainstream or state of the art would you take it? Would you commit to being a Netware engineer on a token-ring network for two years or a cobol programmer on a hierarchical database? Most people in IT that I know would not think about it. Never mind technologies used, what about working on a project that is two years late, four times over budget with a brand new project manager that has promised to 'finally get things sorted out'? It becomes less clear in startup situations where nobody can really assess up front what the final outcome will be but in most cases you can get some gut feeling. 

When assessing an opportunity I try and assess the risk that I will be exposed to personally. Not the kind of personal risk you are exposed to if I run with scissors or handle sharp paper, but the possible risk to my career based on a particular project. The things that I consider include:

• The risk of landing up in a technical dead-end which results in being out of sync with the market demands when the project ends.
• The risk of the project failing completely and landing up with a tarnished reputation.
• The risk of a successful project landing up in a maintenance mode where there is too much dependency on individuals making it impossible to leave gracefully.
• The risk of things that I have learned and created being completely owned by those that took the financial risk (also known as selling your soul)
• The risk of being on a death-march project where I could be burned out or in bad health because I tried to be a hero.

This concept of career risk does not seem to be shared by the average business person even though some industries consider many aspects of risk. For example the banking industry, because of regulations such as Basel II, consider risks such as reputational risk and legal risk. The assertion that the financial risk takers are taking all the risk is completely incorrect and the idea that the financial risk takers should take complete control and realise all the benefits creates a risk-reward imbalance. I am of the opinion that (cheap) money is actually easier to come by than good resources and
it makes me think that maybe the equation should be turned around and the risk that individuals take should be seriously considered.

If I work on a project that leads me down the wrong path for a few years I may never be able to recover and chances are that the organization that put up the cash will still keep going – which begs the question 'Who is taking the most risk?'

Simon Munro

There is a story about a Microsoft interview where the interviewer asked "You're in an 8x8 stone corridor… The prince of darkness appears before you… What do you do?" The candidate fumbled and was told that the correct answer was "You WASTE him! You *WASTE* the prince of darkness!!" The interviewer stated that one of the reasons for asking such a question was to uncover if the candidate was a gamer as the position had something to do with gaming.

It got me thinking about the appointment of product management for XBox at Microsoft South Africa, I don't know who they are, but I don't think that they would know what to do with the prince of darkness.

Interviewer: You're in an 8x8 stone corridor… The prince of darkness appears before you… What do you do?
<long pause>
Microsoft ZA product management: Sell him Vista Ultimate?
Interviewer: No… Quickly! You're about to be pwned!
Microsoft ZA product management: Oh, I know… get into a licensing agreement and join him in taking over the world!

I don't think that the product management in South Africa really knows enough about gaming to get through any real gaming related interview.  Let me give some reasons why not.

The console distribution channel seems confused and unsure of what they are selling and why.  Apart from sales staff not having a clue what you are talking about, the games that are on the shelves are sparse and outdated.  Last year, when buying Gears of War, the Sandton City CNA finally received stock after Christmas – the biggest game of the season, timed for a Christmas release internationally, was in short supply.  In October they had posters in the window, but come 'Emergence Day' nothing emerged – no locusts to waste or pwn for Christmas.  When I walk past the store I always pop in to see what they have on the shelves and it doesn't do the XBox justice – about three months after COD3 was released, they still had COD2 occupying their shelves and no COD3.  So, a new XBox owner is going to buy his console with a game that he thinks is a new game, but is already a classic – comparing his new console to a PS3 will be embarrassing.

The obvious suggestion is to go to a speciality gaming store, like the one in Northgate, which I did.  I walked into the shop, turned to the X-Box area and bolding asked "I want to buy GRAW2 please", "What?" was the reply, "I want to buy Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, please" I repeated more explicitly "Oh, okay, here it is…".  The gaming shops are into PC games and just don't understand the X-Box and X-Box Live! subculture.  To sell X-Box games you have to know, not only what to do with the prince of darkness, but must also know what "Gears", "Graw", "Six" and other abbreviations refer to.

I was walking around the PC section of the same shop and there was a customer who I could see had money in his pocket and wanted to walk out with an X-Box or PS3. The salesman fumbled through interesting anecdotes about overheating and other rumours and, when pushed about the games and graphics, finally admitted that he is more of a "PC Man" and has never played a console game. The guy left the shop with nothing and his R6,000 plus still in his pocket.

By far the most obvious example that the product management here at Microsoft wouldn't know what to do with the prince of darkness is the lack of XBox Live support for South Africans. A lot of South Africans play XBox Live and log in using accounts created with UK or US credentials and there is a thriving online community. It is not uncommon to join a quick match and find South Africans playing a game. The 'gears' community seems to be the biggest (and most addicted) and once a game gets hosted in South Africa everyone jumps into the space so that they can play a lag-free game (thanks to the hosts for using your precious bandwidth – you know who you are). When I switch on my XBox, most of my friends are local and at least half of them are online for the entire evening or weekend.

I am not sure how many people at Microsoft South Africa really play XBox live but it can't be that many because I am sure they are not officially allowed to.  For those who have not, we need to give them some clues:

• XBox is XBox live – the only possible exception being games for kids
• Live enabled games, such as 'gears' or 'graw2', without Live can be played for a weekend or two before they become boring.  There are South Africans (we know who they are) who have probably spent an average of three hours a day for the last six months (500+ hours) playing 'gears' – the value proposition for the entire console and game changes drastically when you get that much entertainment out of it.
• X-Box Live is miles ahead of what PS3 has to offer and is the key difference between the consoles – if you want to sell XBoxes, get Live sorted out and get some market share!

Why is there no XBox live in South Africa?  I don't know really and when I stopped following the discussions last year there was a mention of 'negotiations with Telkom' (Telkom is South Africa's much hated, overpriced fixed line operator). Hang on a minute!  Does this mean that Telkom is telling me what to do with my (very expensive) bandwidth?  Am I being censored and is Microsoft South Africa colluding with Telkom?  Don't start with lies about consuming too much bandwidth, there is a 'gears' junkie who plays 'gears' (very well) on a dial-up line.

So to return to the interview…

Interviewer: You're in an 8x8 stone corridor… The prince of darkness appears before you… What do you do?
Microsoft ZA product management: We negotiate with him and offer the souls of local XBox Live users to him in exchange for being left alone.

The prince of darkness in South Africa is Telkom and he is not being wasted by anyone at Microsoft South Africa.

A new update of XBox Dashboard will apparently filter content based on originating IP addresses – supposedly all the South Africans will still be able to play live games but nothing is sure when your IP address originates in the realm of the prince of darkness. This is enough to make a whole lot of shotgun wielding COGs and locusts nervous and trigger happy and there is a petition online to bring this to the attention of somebody. 

This has created a stir and Microsoft is giving some answers on CraigN's blog and in this News24 article.  One official response from Cindy White cracks me up - "Xbox 360 is a true next-generation digital entertainment experience, that with or without Live the experiences can be enjoyed." Dont be such a noob!  XBox is no fun without Live, and this comment appeared in the GRAW2 forums echoes the feelings of many Xbox gamers - "I vow you will never see a single player achievement for me in Graw2 <snip> if i wanted to play single player games i would have gotten a ps1"

So, if you are from Microsoft South Africa and reading this please try and change things before you get pwned by Sony and Ster Kinekor.  You may need to start a new round of interviews though.

Simon Munro
Gamertag – Delph1za

To Whom It May Concern,

Recently, because of various firewalls, proxies, scanners and content filters I find my Internet usage habits negatively changing.  Your objective of limiting my Internet usage has been achieved although it does not align with my objectives and I question whether or not it aligns with the long term strategic objectives of the organization.

As an aside to my understood delivery related job functions my position requires that I am plugged in to the Internet so that I can find answers to current, relevant questions as well as having a constant stream of data that helps me formulate my thoughts - about what needs to be understood, as well as fueling insight and creativity which - although your organization may not realize immediate benefits - I expect something useful will be reaped in due course.

At any point in time I have at least three development environments open, Word, Outlook, Media Player, some explorers and at least ten browser sessions open.  I flip through all of these constantly without breaking my stride... a pause while I let a technical problem that I am encountering sink in is a chance to switch to another window and do something else.  Google is my guide to the world and my profession and I constantly monitor about 50 rss feeds - admittedly one or two of those may not be considered work related, such as The Dilbert Blog or Boing Boing and others may be borderline relevant to my job, such as The Register or SlashDot.  The rest of them I consider highly relevant for the functions that your organization expects me to perform on a daily basis.

Of course I don't expect you to understand any of this as you sit there in your office counting beans while you wait for your emails to print out so that you can read them.  You are interested in the bottom-line cost of Internet availability and you are not able to picture how the Internet is constantly changing the world - unfortunately your 'visionary' board members have the same myopic view.

You may think that I am just some geek whose needs are irrelevant, but geeks are at the forefront of technology adoption for the next generation - who at some point you want to have as customers as you sit in retirement waiting for your dividend cheques.  About ten years ago I was considered a geek because I used an Apple Newton - now you probably have an I-Mate of your own and are trying to figure out how to use the technology to push more products and services to your customers. SMS (Text Messaging), which is considered a vital communication mechanism for any business, was not adopted because of some boardroom directive or even a Gartner analysis report - it was driven by millions of youngsters flirting with each other at noisy raves, where voice communication simply did not work.  Those youngsters are now your customers - which is why they demand that services are delivered by text message.  If you don't believe me, step out of your office, find someone young - and challenge them to a race to see who can type out a message fastest on their mobile - you will lose.

Other technology is being adopted by the next wave of youngsters where instant communication and access to vast sources and types of media is considered normal.  For them it is more normal too scan the Boing-Boing feed than to watch prime-time news.  They want things that interest them streamed directly into little white headphones that they are always plugged into.  They create blogs and wikis and use them as a source for their buying decisions.

They are becoming your customers and, your actions clearly indicate that you will only understand them too late.

I know you think that I should not be using the Internet for non 'business related reasons' and that Internet access decreases productivity.  I beg to differ and think that productivity is the responsibility of line managers and not some piece of software that sits between me and the rest of the world.  If I may not access the Internet at work for fear of being dragged in front of a disciplinary hearing, may I bill you for my work related Internet usage at home?  How much can I charge for listening to a relevant thirty minute podcast at home?  Will you refund me for downloading a 200MB software update at home because I would never be able to get it downloaded at work?

I am not requesting that you investigate my Internet usage in order to determine if I am worthy of more Internet access.  I consider such investigation an invasion of privacy and where I go on the Internet is not something for public consumption.  The recent exposure of the AOL search logs is a clear indication of how such data can be (mis)interpreted.

The irony is that this is being addressed to you via a blog, and you are so disconnected that you wont even find it.  If someone does forward you this post, bear in mind that I have left out the links on purpose so that you can use that precious bandwidth to go and figure it out for yourself.  You can start at Google - the only link you need to get started.

A comment by a colleague on my last post on 'relations' - chuckling at the question "What on earth is a 'parent-child relation'?" prompted a post on one of my other naming pet hates - namely the mis-used concept of Parent-Child to denote hierarchy.

Over ten years ago I wrote a tree handling routine that needed to delete sub-nodes of a particular node and the method started off being called Node.DestroyChildNodes() which, at the time, I thought would be pretty cool to rename to Node.KillChildren() to reflect the concept of eliminating the children.  Over the years I became more pedantic about naming, primarily inspired by my mentor who was and is extremely particular about naming.  This person had an interesting academic background and his degrees in Theology, Psychology and Electrical Engineering made him interesting to deal with.  He was working as an architect on a project and I overheard a discussion he was having with a developer that went something like this...

Architect - "Did this account fall pregnant?"

Developer - "Er... no" (I don't understand the question look on his face)

Architect - "Did this account go into labour?"

Developer - "Er... " <long pause> "No"

Architect - "Was this account inseminated by another account"

Developer - "I don't think so" (some language barrier here)

Architect - "Did this account go to hospital and, after a long labour, give birth to this (other) account?"

Developer - "No.  What on earth are you talking about?"

Architect - "If this account didn't physically give birth, or contribute is sperm to that account, WHY THE <expletive removed> DO YOU CALL IT THE 'PARENT' ACCOUNT?"

Since then, the developer made sure that he only used parent and child when referring to real people, as parents, and their children.

So if it is not correct to use parent-child except in cases where there are actual people involved who have a legal and physical association, what should be used to denote hierarchies?  The simplest and most generic would be to use subordinate which the dictionary defines as 'One who stands in order or rank below another'.  The shorthand of subordinate is sub and is something we use often in English as in subtitle, sub-paragraph and so on.  If sub is the 'child', what is the 'parent'?  From a rank perspective, a choice could be 'principal' but more generically I prefer to use 'superordinate', which the dictionary defines as 'Of higher rank, status, or value'. Although superordinate may be a little bit obscure it is used in English (superscript) and has a convenient shorthand - namely sup (which if misinterpreted to be 'superior' is not to bad.

Using this naming, a table that stores a hierarchical structure may have the fields 'Id', 'Name' and 'SupId' (instead of ParentId).  My tree routines would also read better - instead of DestroyChildNodes() I would have DestroySubNodes(), which reads well; I would also have a property called SupNode, that would return the superordinate node.

Using sub and sup is the easy, generic solution, but if you think about it more there are other names that can be used in different circumstances such as...

Can you think of any more to add to this list?

It is important in both design and implementation that we name things well and that they make sense.  All too often business hands something over to IT and by the time it comes back it has been abstracted, generalized renamed and confused. 

Imagine the scenario when dealing with a user talking about a medical aid system where a person has dependants...

Developer : "When you click here the child nodes are removed"

User:  "Why not the spouse node as well?"

Developer: "There is no 'spouse' node"

User: "There is, two children and one spouse"

Simon Munro 

I’ve been suffering recently from TDS (Telecommunications Deficiency Syndrome) which is endemic to South Africa and is caused by Telkom.  This has affected my non-work web browsing, subsequent posts and general lurking on the Internet.

The summary of the problem is that I moved within my townhouse complex from one unit to another and six weeks later I still have not been able to move the ADSL line.  Funny that it is possible to organise a truck, movers, cleaners, boxes and cats when moving house, but it is impossible to get a guy in a Telkom truck to ‘re-patch’ four wires in a distribution box at the complex – even with a couple of weeks’ notice.

I could rant and rave, describing the weeks of frustration that I have gone through, but since the problem is endemic everybody has the same problem and I have nothing new to add.  No-one is really interested in hearing yet another rant about Telkom and neither do they care – particularly Telkom.  Talking about Telkom problems is like talking about the weather… a conversation filler when people have very little to say to each other.

(Jack and Bob are ex colleagues who meet in the frozen food section in Woolies)
Jack: Hi Bob, how are you?
Bob: Fine, and you?
Jack: Can’t complain.  How are you wife and kids?
Bob: They’re fine, but have had the ‘flu.
Jack: I can imagine, with all this weather!
Bob: Yes, it is unseasonal.
Jack: How are your Telkom problems?
Bob: The usual - high costs, no service.
Jack: Yeah, same here.  Been down for the last two weeks.
(uncomfortable silence)
Bob: (Shuffling) Anyway, my ice-cream is melting – gotta go
Jack: Ok, Bye. Good luck with the ‘flu
Bob: Thanks.  Luckily it won’t last forever. Bye.

It seems strange that Telkom made such a big deal about www.hellkom.co.za – does anybody really think that such a website will do anything to tarnish Telkom’s reputation?  Is it even possible to tarnish something that doesn’t exist?  Every Telkom consumer knows how useless and disinterested Telkom is – trying to start a negative publicity campaign about Telkom is like trying to start a group to communicate how much of a moron Mugabe is – no one will fund you as we know already.

I hope that you get through your current TDS with as little suffering as possible.

Simon Munro

Welcome to delphi.co.za

As with many websites, the lack of meaningful content within an existing structure results in a website that stagnates to a point that even the owner loses interest.

I am undertaking this blog as a challenge to produce some worthwhile content in the areas that I work and think in.  Hopefully, soon this blog entry will slide down the page into the archives.

Simon Munro