jack barse

Tech legend has it that a self-confident engineer, when facing an ambitious product manager in a design meeting and realizing that said product manager had specced a product that did everything, cost next to nothing, and needed to be in the market in weeks, said something along the lines of, “I can build your product quickly, I can build it cheaply, I can build you a good product. Pick any two qualities you want, because nobody can build you a product with all three.”

I recall that the first time I heard it was at MCI Mail, which would put the timing sometime in the mid-80s. It was in exactly the context I described above. An engineer was asking a product manager to get a little bit more realistic about a particular product design.

I later came up with the corollary for wireless networks. Not quite as elegant as ‘Fast Good Cheap’ but every bit as valid. A given wireless system, regardless of protocol, frequency or power, had three variables: Base station radius, airlink data rate and the battery life of the terminal. The tradeoffs forced interesting choices in network and terminal (think handset) design. If you want a network that offers users a lot of bandwidth either you’re going to have to put in a lot of base stations or the users are going to be charging their handsets a lot. If you want to deploy a network with broad coverage and decent battery life in the handsets the bandwidth available to users will be low. These sorts of decisions are still made today.

Software and hardware designers have been working on ways to mitigate these restraints for years. Engineers have put in power saving circuits that essentially ‘woke up’ the terminals for 1/15 of a second, every second, to see if the network had an incoming message or call for the terminal. Users never knew that their terminals were asleep most of the time, but they were ecstatic at the battery life. Didn’t you ever wonder why a simple pager could last a month on a single penlight battery?

Where else have you seen similar ‘Fast Good Cheap’ choices?

…is mercifully gone from the lexicon of inebriated on-course golf spectators (not to be confused with fans). But, based on what I heard while watching the spectacular US Open at Torrey Pines for the past two days, that trite belligerence has been replaced by a bellowed ‘get in the hole’ coupled with the obnoxious-to-the-point-of-distraction ‘three whistle’ after nearly every televised putt. Almost makes me wish for the rainbow-wigged proselytizer holding up his ‘John 3:16′ poster.

C’mon, people. Every player wants every putt to go in. You’re hardly showing your prescience by shouting it every time a pro hits it with a flat stick. And as for the ‘three whistle’? What, you got no roller derby in your town? Really. I’ve enjoyed every visit to San Diego. You can do better.

OTOH, maybe the San Diegans were just trying to set the bar for next year’s Open attendees.

After years and years running my sites, and those of a few friends, on WebStar I’m moving over to Apache running on Mac OS X Server. Why? Pretty simple: Kerio, the company who bought WebStar, has let it languish. While they’ve said for a couple of years that they’re committed to the platform they haven’t upgraded it or patched it. Meanwhile, the newest version of Leopard Server is terrific.

I’ll miss the simplicity of WebStar’s admin interface, without a doubt. And I’ve got a bit of a learning curve to climb with Apache, and with Leopard server. But from what I’ve seen so far I’m impressed by the speed. Hopefully I haven’t screwed up the realms for those who need them.

If you’re reading this it means the move was successful. Now all that’s left is to upgrade to the latest and greatest Wordpress version, then make sure my offline editor works.

Now, if you’re reading this it means the upgrade to WP worked, too. At least, we think so.

And finally, if you’re reading this, I’ve verified that the offline editor, MarsEdit, is working with it too. Now on to the next one…

Inspired by Khoi Vinh’s posting a New York subway map and Randy Plemel’s London Tube map for their iPhones I whipped one up for the DC Metro. You can download it here.

To use this with your Mac and your iPhone, download and open the archive. Create a new album in iPhoto, name it something witty (like ‘DC Metro Map’) then import the JPGs into the new album. Finally, sync the album with your iPhone via iTunes.

If you have Windows, or sync your iPhone’s photos with a folder instead of iPhoto, consult the iPhone User Guide.

I originally found Khoi’s map through this post on TUAW.

This clip is worth it just for the tweak Jobs give Microsoft at the very end of the clip. Mossberg points out that with several hundred million copies of iTunes running on Windows machines Apple is one of the largest Windows developers. Jobs responds by bragging that Apple gets letters from users saying that iTunes is their favorite Windows application, which gets a chuckle from the audience. Then the clincher: “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.”

The ESB finally carbonated (the recipe’s here, if you’re inclined toward homebrew)…Turns out the yeast is highly flocculent, and while it produces a very clear and tasty beer, it means that there aren’t a lot of live cells floating around if you leave it in the secondary too long. So it took nearly a month of bottle conditioning before it produced anything other than the weakest of fizzes. But boy, was it worth the wait. Every bit as good as I thought it was when I brewed it. Well worthy of the name… Lost Bunkers ESB. Might even have to come up with a label for this one. Thanks to Jeff Brooks to helped with the brewing and Alex who helped with the bottling.

How long will it be before the second person asks when they’ll be able to run Blackberry software on their iPhone?

[Later] Gee, that didn’t take nearly as long as I thought. Not exactly the Blackberry question, but close.

AT&T plans to market the iPhone to business users in addition to consumers but analysts aren’t recommending that enterprises supply workers with the phones.

Cingular, which was acquired by AT&T, recently decided that the iPhone will appeal to business users and the operator is now working hard to ensure that its backend enterprise billing and support systems will accommodate the device when it ships, said a source familiar with the company’s plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Nick, you might find one of these pictures familiar….

Problems accounting for previously issued stock options – and not a few of them – have cost Rim more than embarrassment: they’ve cost them their chairman. According to The Wall Street Journal, Jim Balsillie has stepped down as chairman but will remain as co-CEO. Former CFO Dennis Kavelman has assumed the title of COO for operations and finance.

RIM said that Mr. Balsillie was directly involved in approving grants following the company’s initial public offering in 1997, including grants that have been found to have been accounted for incorrectly. Mr. Balsillie’s role in approving grants decreased over time, as more responsibility for approving certain grants was given to Mr. Kavelman and other employees.

The company said it will restate earnings as far back as fiscal 2004 as a result of its investigation into the options accounting and will take a charge of $250M rather than the $25-45M charge it anticipated last September. The company said that 63% of all options grants made since the end of February, 2002 and last August were accounted for incorrectly.

I said a couple of weeks ago I believed some things I read in the papers. I still do, with the emphasis on some. I certainly didn’t believe the comments attributed to a man I respect greatly, Ben Brundred, regarding this subject in yesterday’s Post.

But Ben Brundred Jr., a former Congressional club president and chairman of its U.S. Open committee, said the tour has not contacted the club.

“I think their first step is to talk to a potential sponsor, and if any of those stepped up to the plate, that’s the city where the tournament would go,” Brundred said. “But we haven’t heard word one from anyone, and I guess that’s a little surprising.”

To borrow a well-worn phrase from a former President, I guess that depend on what the meaning of “we” is.

The construction schedule at Avenel (kindly pointed out by Todd in his comments to this post) dictates that the Tour can’t stage an event there until 2009. Period. No discussion. So the most straightforward solution would seem to be to play a Tour event at Congressional in 2007 and in 2008 leading up the Amateur in 2009. That lets the members and the club staff have a year to prepare for the onslaught which will be the US Open in 2011. Which, I shudder to point out, is a mere four years hence.

So will Congressional do it? I’d say its up to the members who, if the past is any indication, will say yes. Because the financial benefits far outweigh the inconvenience.

Sure, the Tour could try to open up a new market on short notice this summer. Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Portland are all fine cities. But with a venue like Congressional waiting, a volunteer organization and tourament staff in place and last year’s messy exit still fresh in the fans’ minds, I’d think those savvy folks in Ponte Vedra are working awfully hard to make this happen.