Hilzoy says it best. I just have the succinct “Egad, I hope not.”*
*Bonus points for catching the reference. I’m looking at you, Uncle.
For some reason, I just today got a June 2005 trackback of this post. I forgot I wrote that. That’s funny, I don’t care who you are. 
Over in this thread, I made what I thought was basically an uncontroversial comment:
The other story worth covering here is the Pittsburgh Steelers’ hiring of Mike Tomlin — an African-American coach they wouldn’t have even interviewed if not for a requirement that they interview some minority candidates. This is exactly what that requirement was supposed to accomplish: a candidate who otherwise would have been overlooked so impressed team management that they hired him in favor of several other big-name coaches, and even in favor of promoting from within.
Why did I think this was uncontroversial? Because at the time I made it, almost all of the stories on the subject basically said as much. Basically, they said that the Steelers interviewed Tomlin because he was on a short list of “qualified minority candidates” that they’re required to interview because of the “Rooney Rule,” established in 2002 at the prompting of Steelers owner Dan Rooney, which requires teams with coaching vacancies to interview minority candidates. But commenter Ted challenged me on this claim, and when I went to look it up again today, almost all of those references are gone.
Do a quick Google on tomlin steelers “rooney rule” and you’ll see what I mean. Plenty of references, but when you click through — to Yahoo sports, to the New York Times, etc. — the references to the “Rooney Rule” are gone. You have to look up the cached versions to find them. I’m not that conspiratorial, but what’s going on here? Something doesn’t smell right about this.
With enough searching, I was able to find one story out of Pittsburgh that’s still essentially unaltered:
Not long ago, before Steelers owner Dan Rooney successfully lobbied in 2002 for a rule that requires all NFL teams to interview minority candidates for coaching jobs, the 34-year-old Tomlin might not have been targeted by the Steelers.
But after a successful first season as Minnesota’s defensive coordinator, Tomlin’s name was one of about a dozen on a list of qualified minority candidates given Rooney at a mid-December meeting in New York. Rooney is the chairman of the NFL Committee on Workplace Diversity.
The very intent of the Rooney Rule was to give coaches such as Tomlin a forum to display their credentials. And Tomlin was chosen largely because of the motivation, enthusiasm and organizational skills he showed in two strong interviews with Rooney, team president Art Rooney II and director of football operations Kevin Colbert.
…snip…
Tomlin’s hiring completed a 2 1/2-week search in which he was initially viewed as an unlikely choice behind perceived front-runners Ken Whisenhunt and Russ Grimm, but Whisenhunt later accepted the Arizona Cardinals’ job.
Why have virtually all of the other stories been edited to remove this aspect? It seems not only relevant, but extremely important. Something’s not right here.
The MIT Technology Review has a brief piece by a Portuguese Professor sorta taking Open source usability to task:
Collaboration can cut both ways, however. Because new functions may be proposed and appended by almost anyone at any time, open-source software can become every bit as feature-rich as its commercial cousins, and thus equally vulnerable to the creeping excess that bedevils many mainstream products. As the code slowly grows in complexity as well as capability, usability suffers, not only because new functions add to the user interface but because such additions are ad hoc and implemented case by case.
Open source may be superior in producing robust, reliable code. It can hold its own in providing functionality. But its weakness remains usability, which increasingly is the battleground for competing programs.
He doesn’t provide any support for his contention that usability suffers in open source projects, but he doesn’t really need to. Anyone involved in software - -the audience for this article — doesn’t need convincing. Open Source projects lag far behind their closed source competitors when it comes to the user experience for non techs. Linux desktops for example, have gotten better but there is not one that is better — or, really, even comparable — to the ease of us in Windows or Macs. Prof. Constantine wonders if they ever will. I don’t think so, at least not anytime soon.
the first problem open source projects have is one of selection bias. Good programmers do not necessarily make good user interface designers, and good user interface designers do not seem to be involved in large numbers in open source projects. Perhaps because there are still some quarters in programming that consider designers to be a lessor breed. I think, though, that the larger reason is the kinds of projects that generally get created through open source methodology.
Most people who work on open source projects have two things: time and an itch to scratch. Since we are talking about programmers, for the most part, the itches are usually related to things that make programmers lives easier. Not always — I have done work for projects that weren’t related to anything I did professionally just because I liked the idea of helping the target audience out — but often. Desktops and user experience in general aren’t the kinds of itches that really get under programmer’s skins. Most programmers — through necessity — learn their way around their environments very quickly. So unless they are dedicated to Linux Everywhere!, most programmers gravitate to other “itches” more important to their own experiences. Mac OsX, the best desktop interface I have ever used, is built atop an open source operating system. It could have been done by open source programmers. That is wasn’t tells us something about the priorities of said programmers.
More importantly, programmers don’t need their interfaces to be as simplified as the general population does. Since programmers by definition understand software better than most people, the level of usability that programmers find acceptable is a lot lower than that most end users. What seems “simple” to an expert is very often seen as complex and confusing by the general population. Since there are fewer designers in the open source community, and since most of the people who use the end product are, if not technological professionals, much more at ease with computer technology than the general population, the developer’s version of “simple” is what gets released. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, because I don’t see the incentives for participating in open source projects changing anytime soon.
There is a lot of talk in the United States about global warming, with even Republicans and some of their big business allies finally bowing to reality. But there ha snot been, so far, a lot concrete action. The Democratic controlled House did pass a bill rolling back some of the tax giveaways to extraction industries, but only 5.5 billion out of a possible 40 billion or so. Government policy does little to provide incentives for the use of alternative energies and even less to discourage the use of fossil fuels.
Compare that to the Danes:
Whether by issuing credits for energy efficiency, cutting registration fees on hydrogen-powered cars or increasing expenditures on clean fuel research, the government will make it easer for people to contribute to the national goal of 30 percent renewable energy by 2025.
The plan, presented Friday, would require a doubling of the amount of renewable energy currently used in Denmark. At the same time, fossil fuel use would be reduced by 15 percent.
Increasing the use of alternative fuels is precisely as simple as the Danes make it appear: create attractive incentives for people to use alternative energy, help providers create more efficient, less costly means of creating energy, and actively seek tro restrict usage of fossil fuels.
Global warming is real and it is largely caused by human activities. Anyone who denies these simple facts is so far from reality that they could not see it with the Hubble. The only questions that remain are how do we mitigate its extent and how do we deal with the damage it is going to cause. No matter what the complete answers to those questions are, it is clear that the sooner we start addressing them the less costly the solutions will be. the Danish government understands this. Unfortunately, neither major American party does.
The Dems are much better on this issue, but they still lack anything resembling a serious plan for moving the country away from fossil fuels, much less a serious plan for preparing the military, diplomatic corps, civil services for dealing with the consequences of the world to be created by global warming. If that is to change, then the environmental groups in this country will have to do a much better job of changing or co-opting the structural impediments to change. I’m not really hopeful, truth be told, which is one reason I am so anxious to see Gore in the race.
Maher Arar — the innocent that the United states knowingly sent to Syria in order to be tortured — is still on the terrorist watch list. this is entirely predictable, and entirely despicable. Arar’s case brought to national and international attention the depraved practice fo rendition - -of taking suspects and sending them off to be tortured by despicable regimes. It was one of the first signs of just how far the Bush Administration was willing to gut the Constitution and debase American values. the fact that he was completely innocent just made the situation even worse for the White House. So, of course, the Administration cannot ever admit that Arar was innocent. They must cling to notion that Arar is a dangerous terrorist in order to pretend that torture can be justified.
And if Arar now hesitates before traveling, if he turns down opportunities to meet with reporters in the United States or to speak to American audiences about how the Administration abused him, if he refuses to fly near or through American airspace for fear of what might happen if the plane had to land? Well, I am sure that cause no small amount of vindictive pleasure in the shriveled soul of this Administration.
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea." Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
