星期五 2005年09月30日
星期五 2005年09月30日 最近正在看吴思写的《血酬》。其实前阵子曾经被推荐过这本书，当时瞄了一眼，觉得把简单问题复杂化了。这次仔细品味一下，还是有些不同的。最重要的一点是明确提出了所有“潜规则”背后的“元规则”，也就是“合法伤害力”是制定一切规则的决定力量。
以后有空也看看他写的《潜规则》吧。
星期二 2005年07月19日 
星期一 2005年06月20日 草莽软件：代码的性感生活
Richard P. Gabriel和Ron Goldman都是Sun公司实验室的研究人员。他们合作完成了一篇很有意思的文章《草莽软件：代码的性感生活》，由Richard在2000年10月19日的ACM关于“面向对象编程、系统、语言和应用”大会上首次发表。
星期四 2005年03月03日
星期五 2005年01月07日 “自由文化”三部曲的前两部著作中文译本出版
斯坦福大学法学院教授Lawrence Lessig的“自由文化”三部曲著作的前两部：《代码：塑造网络空间的法律》（英文书名：《Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace》）和《思想的未来（网络时代公共知识领域的警世喻言）》（英文书名：《The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World》）的简体中文译本已经由中信出版社出版发行。
这两本书都是阐述网络时代公共知识和创新的重要著作，相信会对国内互联网业对竞争、创新、自由、道德、秩序、和相关法律的认识的重整和反思有一定帮助。
“自由文化”三部曲的最后一部著作《自由文化》（英文书名：《Free Culture》）正在由SocialBrain.org社区组织通过Wiki的方式进行翻译，目前已经完成大部分工作。该书将以“创作共用”（“Creative Commons”）的协议（“署名-非商业用途”）方式发行。
星期一 2004年12月13日 最后期限
by Tom Demarco
汤 普金斯先生是一位经验丰富的项目经理，却也难免被炒鱿鱼的命运。这时有人出双倍的价钱将他"请"到一个海上的小国管理六个软件项目，资金、人员、设备等所 有外部条件都万事俱备，可以放手去做，还可以将自己的奇思妙想付诸实践。本以为因祸得福，却逐渐发现事情并没有那么简单，最后期限似乎变得不可能，但他已 骑虎难下…… 书中用一个虚构的故事阐述了真实世界中关于项目管理的一些原则，虽然它并不能解决任何软件问题，但它绝对会让你对项目管理的重要原则终生难忘。它将看似高 深莫测的项目管理理论以浅显易懂的方式展现出来，改变了项目管理书籍一贯枯燥乏味的形象，让你在轻松阅读小说的同时受益非浅。书中每章都以汤普金斯先生的 日记结尾，是他逐渐收集的经验，有了这些，你也可以成为一个优秀的项目经理。
I think it's a really good book, hmm, actually a story, a tale, a comedy, a fascinating experience for project management. I like it, and hope you too.
Engines of Tomorrow
企业研究院
After several months of hard hard work, just just finished one book "Engines of Tomorrow". //Sad
1929 年，美国发明家凯特林在对美国商会发表演讲时说：“我并非是在呼吁你们进行变革，事实是，你们非得进行变革不可——我没有耸人听闻，因为如果你们不这样 做，你们就会被淘汰。实行变革的人所推动的浪潮会淹没那些不事变革的人，并将后者淘汰掉。”从那时起到现在，企业研究和推动公司的发展之间的关系，从来没 有像今天这样密切。本书作者罗伯特·布德瑞将把我们带入当今世界最为成功的大公司之中——IBM、西门子、NEC、GE、朗讯科技、施乐、惠普、英特尔和 微软，深入他们一流的企业研究院，了解在今天瞬息万变的经济全球化环境中，这些企业研究院都是如何进行管理和运作的。这些行业中的巨擘都在自身的企业研究 发展过程中经历过艰难险阻，也在许多重要的问题上做出过重大决策，如研究经费的支出、研究资源的配置以及跨越地域和文化的研究机构管理等，他们的经验和教 训对今天的中国企业无疑有着巨大的参考价值和指导意义。本书讨论的这些开路先锋(包括老开路先锋和后来的新开路先锋)，他们不畏艰辛地在不同的历史时期、 不同的地域文化中，从事着各种研究创新和管理活动，他们是未来蓝图的描绘者，他们是世界发展的明日引擎。
I think this book is worth to read, which describes how these big companies started their CRLs (Central Research Laboratory), how these CRLs experienced hard regression at the beginning of 90' of 20th century, why the CXOs decided to set them and how the research areas are set, how different are these CRLs, how about the relationship among academic research, application research and product development, what's the difference from academic research to basic research, invention and innovation.
I think it's a good book to know the position of CRLs among companies.
Unfortunately it didn't mention Sun Lab.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
高效能人士的七个习惯
"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", it's a really good book for us, from my point of view.
Technical abilities are very important for us engineers, to be great engineers, or event to be good architects. But what's more is good habits to work & life. Some great guy said "Success is not a fortune, it's a habit." Yes, I can't agree with him more.
But how can we own these good habits? Changing behaviors are most difficult for persons. Sometimes we want to do so, but we fail. Less persons try again and again, and then they change their habits and success.
I want to be successful, and I think almost of you think so too.
This book is a great book to tell you what to change and how to change. The most important seven habits to be highly effecitve people are:
1) Be Proactive - Principle of Personal Visio
2) Begin with the End in Mind
3) Put First Things First - Principle of Personal Management
4) Think Win-Win - Principle of Interpersonal Leadership
5) Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood - Principle of Empathic Communication
6) Synergize - Principle of Creative Cooperation
7) Sharpen the Saw - Principle of Balanced Self-Renewal
I hope you can read this great book, self-reflect, change and we can progress together and succeed.
References:
新浪连载
专业培训
FranklinCovery网站
Peopleware
人件
"PeopleWare"?
Yes, PeopleWare. People is ware.
Strangly enough, When I firstly read this book, I didn't like this title very much. How can people be ware? From my view of last more than twenty years, I was instructed that people is totally, different from machines, again and again. We human beings are active, reactive, or even proactive. We have ideas, feelings, and spirits.
But how a corporation, a software corporation, or a team of software group, can achieve its goal in schedule? If the demands, environments, techniques are changing frequently and greatly.
How can the project managers treat their guys/girls exactly to bring, encourage, or incite them to work hard to meet the deadline, even in a project so called "road to hell"?
Different customers demand different menus.
For certain large, slow, clear software projects, old-fashion methodologes, such as water-fall, CMM, UP/RUP are quite adequate. But for small, quickly changed and unclear projects, modern ways are better. Agile Programming, eXtreme Programming, Crystal, and so on, fascinating and inciting engineers work harder and harder.
How about peopleware? People are very important in software projects. Not processes, not managers. Actually the most important thing of project managers is to make people, developers, testers, writers, and others feel better, either in CMM, UP or AP, XP, Crystal.
"People are the first ware in software projects".
Who said it? Who?
It's me. //Wink
Either you like it or not, if you want to know what people should do and how they're treated in software projects by good managers, you should read this book carefully.
It's really an excellent book for mangers firstly, and engineers too.
星期六 2004年11月13日 知识产权与自由文化
《自由文化》 作者：斯坦福大学法学院教授Lawrence Lessig
Now I'm reading one book
I think it's an interesting and enlightening book indeed, not finished yet. Following are some descriptions of this book from Amazon:
Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly
From Stanford law professor Lessig (Code; The Future of Ideas) comes this expertly argued, alarming and surprisingly entertaining look at the current copyright wars. Copyright law in the digital age has become a hot topic, thanks to millions of music downloaders and the controversial, high-profile legal efforts of the music industry to stop them. Here Lessig argues that copyright as designed by the Framers has become dangerously unbalanced, favoring the interests of corporate giants over the interests of citizens and would-be innovators. In clear, well-paced prose, Lessig illustrates how corporations attempt to stifle innovations, from FM radio and the instant camera to peer-to-peer technology. He debunks the myth that draconian new copyright enforcement is needed to combat the entertainment industry's expanded definition of piracy, and chillingly assesses the direct and collateral damage of the copyright war. Information technology student Jesse Jordan, for example, was forced to hand over his life savings to settle a lawsuit brought by the music industry—for merely fixing a glitch in an Internet search engine. Lessig also offers a very personal look into his failed Supreme Court bid to overturn the Copyright Term Extension Act, a law that added 20 years to copyright protections largely to protect Mickey Mouse from the public domain. In addition to offering a brilliant argument, Lessig also suggests a few solutions, including the Creative Commons licensing venture (an online licensing venture that streamlines the rights process for creators), as well as legislative solutions. This is an important book. "Free Cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon," he writes. "Ours was a free culture. It is becoming less so."Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Lessig looks at the disturbing legal and commercial trends that threaten to curb the incredible creative potential of the Internet. All innovations are derived from a certain amount of "piracy" of preceding innovations, Lessig argues, and he presents a catalog of technological breakthroughs in film, music, and television as illustrations. Drawing on distinctions between piracy that benefits a single user and harms the owner and piracy that is useful in advancing new content or new ways of doing... read more
Book Description
A landmark manifesto about the genuine closing of the American mind.
Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, Code and The Future of Ideas, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in Free Culture, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they're inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.
All creative works-books, movies, records, software, and so on-are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible-technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we've forgotten?
Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can't do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What's at stake is our freedom-freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.
Public Knowledge
Public Library of Science
Public Domain
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Creative Commons
Creative Commons 中文
星期日 2004年10月17日 <IT Doesn't Matter> by Nicholas G. Carr May 2003, Harvard Business Review
http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/articles/matter.html
嗯，前几天打出来，刚才看完。觉得说得很不错。
从商业的角度来讲了下，IT的地位同过去的铁路,电力,蒸气机,电报,电话，这些东东 对工商业的冲击和作用程度，并没有本质的差别。虽然有号称是第N次工业革命 甚至是生活革命，但是现状是IT的逐步大众化和普及本身造成了它逐步丧失作为 专有技术的特点，于是先锋型的公司在初期能获得高额的利润，通过推广后期为 大众逐步接受之后就面临着利润额下滑的危险。
在此基础上的方法要么是鼓吹某些并不需要的功能，例如MS的OFFICE 2003和INTEL 的主频决定论，要么是转行做服务或者叫做效用(utilities)机构，所谓网格，web services，on demand,动成长,网络计算，SOAP都是这个意思。
最后作者给公司的IT主管CIO的建议比较有意思:不要过分担心没有采用新技术而跟 不上时代，相反得要比较注意不要过渡投资IT。Dell和Wall-Mart就是两个很好的 例子，在IT技术被充分试用和标准化之后再介入，利用本身强大的运营优势，以更低的成本获得更高的利润。(想起HP的卡莉怒斥Dell就会搅乱别人的市场，嘿嘿 ）这种占先机而获得高回报的机会在现在这样IT 日用品化的时代是越来越凤毛麟角了.
企业的核心竞争力不在于用没有最新的IT产品，而在于本身的不可复制的那些东西。 (比如运营水平，品牌，服务，等，个人观点，IT已经是想电力一样的必要的基础，但不是扭转局面的决定性因素了)
CIO们应该遵循的三个最重要的原则是:
1. 花更少得钱，办更多的事.
2. 跟随主流，但不要领导潮流.
3. 关注易受攻击的程度(稳定性，可扩展性，可用性，安全性),但不是可能的机会.