BloggerCon IV, Day 2: Half-Time Show
| | Guidance 
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| | Yesterday worked, but not for the reasons expected.
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| | Interesting article by robert jones, pointed to on today's Scripting News.
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| | It's important that tech be as transparent as it possibly can.
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| | going to ask robert cox to talk about this later. Also to the people who will be responsible for the afternoon sessions.
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| | paradox: developing sw is hard. very hard work. How can you tell? Not everyone can do it. That's how I guage difficulty or challenge. if there is only one guy who can ski from the top to the b ototm of a mountain in 25 seconds, I figure that's hard.
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| | not efverybody can make a Lotus 123, or a feed demon.
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| | we tend to put people who do this up on pedastals. but it's not true that they see the world better. just that perhaps they see one piece of hte world better. apprarent contradiction.l people who feel best about deoing this also have the most passion.
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| | the hardest to make is the simplest. that creates a disconnect with users. we hardly think, as users, that if something is simple to use -- it's easy to make. It isn't.
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| | on the one hand what developers want./.. I'll ask Nick...
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| | Nick: bottom line, developers ;just want to make usable tools.
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| | what do you want from users?
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| | feedback from users that helps them develop tools that users need.
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| | dave: pull out your inner vanity. joke about being god. but there are plenty of users who think that's what we want... would you say respect?
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| | yes, everybody wants respect...
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| | Dave: speaking as a dev myself, I think it's reasonable for users to demand respect of us. working hard is one ofhte most respectful things a dev can do for users. the guy who did Ircle, whatever his strengths... but colloquy succeeded. ..
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| | Sylvia: developers deserve recognition. one guy didn't want microsoft to know... got mad when he got media coverage. inventers deserve recognition for what they do.
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| | Robert: was a bond trader on wall street. in that world, of secuityties, it has a distinct nomenclaqture used to talk about markets and products sold. not intended to be understood by laborers. Do't talk about something being ... inverted yield curves, (otehr arcana). If you have a bond from GM traded at an interest rate of 7,.25% if the 10year treasury ... (can't keep up) the reason they say that is that US treasury bonds are considered risk free.... So, on Wall Street, this is the kind of conversation that goes on (expert), aqnd by the time it got out to Joe Smith in Iowa...
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| | The less you understand the pricing of the securities, the more we can build in margins for profits. Value in obscurantism.
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| | Sean: Every industry has jargon. Flights, roadblocs, cpm... part supports our own work, part secret code in a clubhouse.
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| | Lance: there is a very long history. the word hocus pocus comes from medieval latin mass, designed to be a mystery.
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| | Dave: why they call it a priesthood. A lot of what our profession does is what we all know exists in every other human endeavor, a protection ofr livelihoods and profits. You can see it when you can't look at the source code of RSS. If they actually could see it... If I tell you a priori that something is difficult, you're likely to believe that. Like yesterday when (the woman sitting hiere) said she freaked out when she saw RSS,. But the back button is pretty safe. the damage you do by what you can't understand...
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| | mayube there is another motive tothings looking difficult.
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| | Terry: a story, in the 1990s, the AMA formed a new lobbying org to deal with congress on l.aws pertaining to mdecal info on the net. Because they could see the threat of civilians seeing real medical knowledge. We're seeing the essence in the cultural conflict now. Thrwo open the doors!
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| | I would alk to audio engineers and ask how to make an .mp3 with just a laptop. they said "we'll make it for you". and then when it came time to do it, they said "we're busy right now... Ultimately I got frustrated and faced lots of gobbledygook... once I learned, I taught everybody else, and the prei9sthood got worked around.
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| | John Palfrey (just walked in) knows that there was these (acronym) for public radio. they were building a marketplace for distribu8ting the excess radio programming to public radio stations. AQlong came podcasting and that problem (too few places to air stuff) went away.
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| | RSS right on news, where we're at ground zero of that, on the bottom floor of CNET, which produces piles of RSS feeds... but if all that gets demystified... CNET does a fine job.
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| | ___: the biggest medical standard is that they control the billing standard CPT (cutrent procedure terminology) code. they control, own and license the code. the AMA, a private org, controls that code and nobody can use it without paying them a fee. this is a real scandal.
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| | almost every oone of these hidden priesthoods, controlling what we do.
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| | if people knew it was going on, whould they stand for it?
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| | ___: sen trent lott has been trying to fix this and get it reapealed years ago... medical blog network has a focus on this.
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| | my son who is now 15 and fine, was born severley premature, very sick. had many med problems. full range of billing codes were involved.
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| | when the doc took us to his office to say the many things they were going to do, wife and I asked for an explanationl. why surgery when there may be other options. what are the % chances of success. He only wanted us to sign a consent form, and not to discuss. I refused to do it, and pinted at the books on the shelf, and aske which book tells what you are talking about. Give me that book and I;ll come back tomorrow and give you and answe3r,. he was shocked and amazed. I said you know more about medicine than I do, but you're not smarter than me. Give me the time to learn and I'll give you an answer.
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