Software Trenches

Ruby is the programmer's best friend!

Ruby is the programmer's best friend. So true.

Eric Sink on the Business of Software

I just picked up Eric Sink on the Business of Software. The book is written for small companies developing and selling software (or ISV in Microsoft-speak).

Interesting ideas from the beginning of the book:

1. Do not choose markets over $50M -- there is a lot of money to be made in smaller niche markets. Also, markets under $50M won't have big competitors with huge development and advertising budgets.


2. Quote from Thomas J. Watson, Sr., founder of IBM: "Would you like me to give you a formula of success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you will find success."


3. Steve Pavlina: "You would be absolutely amazed at how many of the greatest shareware hits experienced dismal sales after their initial release...sometimes even no sales at all in the entire first year. But the developers turned them into hits by continuously improving those critical success factors over a period of years."
   

See also Eric Sink's Weblog

Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack...

This is funny and sad at the same time (remember when Lewinsky affair was the biggest problem in America and the president was impeached?):

See also, Al Gore 3.0

RoboForm Video Review

An interesting video review of RoboForm created by Jon from artofmoney.org.

Surveillance on the Web

Thomas Greene is writing about ISS World Conference:

It looks like conference organizers "believed that reporters are too ignorant to write competently about the secret intercourse between big business and law enforcement, and should be told as little as possible in hopes that they'll have nothing to write."

The author argues that "lawful interception" is a extremely expensive and at the same time very ineffective:

"In the end, all this surveillance gear and attendant hype becomes meaningless with simple precautions like encrypted VOIP, a good implementation of virtual private networks, and proxies and SSH for web surfing, IM, internet relay chat, webmail and the like. Skype's VOIP service is encrypted but closed-source. Still, there's SpeakFreely, a peer-to-peer, open-source VOIP app; Zfone, an open-source VOIP crypto plug-in from PGP honcho Phil Zimmermann; Invisible IRC, an open-source IRC proxy implementation that includes anonymization and encryption features, plus other dodges too numerous to mention."

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71022-0.html

Found via Schneier on Security