The other day I went to the gas station and encountered a shiny new pump.  It had a liquid crystal display to interact with me and on top of the pump was a medium sized monitor.  My first thought was “wow – nice”, but that first impression didn’t last very long.  I was a little disappointed with the responsiveness of the display and authorization of my credit card seemed to take longer than usual.  I began thinking the company had not gotten their money’s worth from the engineering department.

My thinking soon degenerated into unkind thoughts as it took FOREVER to fill my car.  It was not just the electronics that was sluggish.  The gasoline was being dispensed at an intolerably slow rate.

Finally, my car was full.  As I removed the nozzle from the car I half-noticed that the advertisements that were droning on the monitor had started over.  I don’t go to gas stations to be entertained or be educated and I sure don’t go there to watch advertisements.  As I was hanging up the pump the conspiracy theory part of my brain became active.  Could it be that the slowness of the pump was not the result of bad engineering but of the engineering team adhering to marketing requirements to delay the customer?  Was I purposefully held captive at the pump so they could show me more advertisements?

My feelings of pity for the company turned to dismay.  I no longer thought the company spent good money to get an engineering piece of junk.  Rather, the engineers did a fine job on this pump and built it just like the marketing department wanted it.

Am I being more paranoid and delusional than normal?  I don’t think so.  We are fortunate to live in a time when the raw power of economical hardware and the sophistication of software can produce miracles.  Unfortunately, too few products and services get to flex their technological muscles without being crippled in some fashion.  We are certainly on the verge of a “Brave New World”, but I can’t tell if this new world will be wonderful or horrible.  Will we have unbelievable health and convenience?  Will we have knowledge and facts at our finger tips, or will facts cease to exist as our every interaction with the world is flavored and colored by the whims of those who control the information outlets and connections?

I fear it is possible that some of the scenes of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report will be proven uncomfortably prescient and we will be fed a non-stop deluge of individualized advertisements, polls, and surveys.  Out time will be subtly consumed as customer service lines force us to wait as they are ALWAYS experiencing “unusually high call volume”.  While we are waiting we will be told of their latest sales and how much they value our business.

The machines that do all of this, like the Skynet Terminators, will feel no remorse and no sympathy.  They will simply do what we, the engineers, designed them to do.

… OH!  The Shame!!

Engineers and engineering managers generally agree that the first step of a project is to define requirements. They also agree that a design should be done before implementation starts. But is this commonly known and widely observed practice correct? Haven’t we all encountered a design that, well into the project, was found to be a poor fit for the platform? It’s not that the design was bad – it was just inappropriate for the specific technology being used. Can it be there are times when the design first approach makes no sense?

BLASPHEME!!

How dare I suggest there are times when engineers should start implementation before there is a design? Well, actually I’m saying something even worse. I claim there are times when the engineers should simply play with the technology to learn about it and see what it can do – BEFORE they do a design. I’m not saying they should do this at home in their free time. This is corporate work and they should charge the project while they explore the technology with no preconceived design.

BLASPHEME!! – again.

How dare I claim there are times when a technical expert can be behaving in a professional fashion by “playing” with a technology on company time when the schedule clock is ticking? Well, because it’s true. Sometimes, especially with new or unfamiliar technology, the team can produce a design that is completely inappropriate for the mysterious new (to them) technology. Worse, the team may produce a design that is a near miss that “sort of” works. That design must be shoehorned into the platform and beaten into submission with months of tweaking and hard work. If you have not seen this on a project, you are in denial or have not been an engineer long enough. Asking an engineer ignorant of the nuances of a technology to do a design is like asking Picasso to do a gothic painting of the Last Supper. You might get something, but the genius, subject matter, and style are just not in sync. Such a design will likely be ugly and inefficient or worse.

I recently completed an iPhone application called “Treadmill Controller”. I started it in the universally accepted right way. I started with full and complete requirements, a design, and even an implementation on a Windows PC platform. My initial concept was to simply port this implementation to the iPhone. However, the two platforms (PC and iPhone) have very different capabilities and user interface concepts.

· The PC application was intended to generate a “chirp” audio file that could be played back later with Media Player to control the treadmill speed and incline. With the iPhone app, however, it seemed more appropriate to stream the controlling audio “chirps” out the earphone jack.

· The PC has much, much more screen real-estate.

· The PC application was mouse oriented and made extensive use of drop-down menus. This approach just didn’t translate well to the touch-screen iPhone.

In just a couple of days I was able to generate “chirp” audio on the iPhone and stream it out the earphone jack to control a treadmill. However, generating specific audio chirps is pretty much an algorithmic exercise and somewhat independent of whether it is implemented in C, C++, or Objective C. Specifying a workout segment, on the other hand, requires extensive interaction with the iPhone user interface. One must provide its time, speed, and incline.

To build a suitable user interface on the iPhone I had to learn how to create and manipulate a number of user interface elements. To appropriately use this iPhone technology I also had to learn what looked and “felt” right. While there was learning “how to” there was far more learning “how to in situ”.

I invested over a month “playing” with different approaches and implementation concepts to learn what was useable, comfortable, and efficient. In many companies the cost of this investment would have been prohibitive and the first generation product would not have been very good.

There can be many unknowns in the real world of engineering design. Resolving issues and implementing a good product requires teamwork between management and staff and between the various corporate groups. Great products cannot be made from a superficial understanding of a new technology. One must master the technological nuances, speak the proper incantations, and lay the magic sticks in the right orientation. This will only happen when management supports pre-design “playing” to become expert with the new and unknown technology.

I hate rebates. They are incredibly annoying and force me to do work to keep the manufacturer honest. In the early days of rebates I religiously kept a folder where I filed copies of all the receipts and papers for all my outstanding rebates. I had to use this archive a number of times as manufacturers claimed they never received my information. At times this became an annoying game as I had to submit paperwork over and over. More recently I simply buy an on-sale product that has no rebate.

Then, one day my company assigned me to a new development project. The business guys decided that the product would be sold with a $30 rebate. I protested that I hated rebates and that having one cheapened the image of the product. Business guys rarely listen to the engineers. They explained that so few people successfully claimed the rebate that they were essentially selling the product at a $30 higher price. It was money for nothing and I was therefore condemned to help produce a product that, in my opinion, made the world a worse place to live. I understood how the scientists employed by the tobacco companies must have felt.

After 30 years I’m still very proud to be an engineer. Without our skill the companies couldn’t make anything, yet we have little power and little control. Although most of us have a great deal of pride and skill in our profession, few of us have much influence over the projects to which we are assigned. To receive a paycheck, we work on bad projects that negatively affect the world. We work on turkeys that never have a chance of flying. Few of us are lucky enough to be able to take a project in a direction of our choosing. I must say that I have never seen an engineer refuse to work on a project to which a company assigned him. However, I have seen numerous engineers leave their company over dissatisfaction with project assignments.

It seems to me this is a bad situation. Companies have a ready supply of highly educated and very skilled experts. Their opinions should not only be tolerated but solicited. If the engineers feel a project’s direction is incorrect – a course correction should be made. Skilled technical experts should not have to work on a project they feel makes the world worse. If the company won’t change direction – vote with your feet and change companies. I guarantee this will force products to become better and eventually make the world a better place.

Civil Engineers are in the engineering fraternity and should also decline to work on negative projects. One great example is the horrible proliferation of toll roads. Not many years ago good roads, like good schools, were felt to better society. Schools, roads, sanitation, etc. were viewed as communal resources created and maintained for the common good. No sane person said their taxes should not go to support the schools because their children did not attend and no sane person claimed their taxes should not fund roads since they did not drive on them.

Toll roads are like rebates. They are annoying and are the result of greedy bureaucrats trying to get a few more dollars from their customer. Everyone benefits from good roads. The roads improve commerce, access to jobs and shopping, and save time – time that can be put to beneficial use. Governments want to spend like drunken sailors yet don’t want to incur the wrath of voters by raising taxes. So they look for alternative ways to grab money… speed cameras, toll roads, fines and fees. Man up to it boys and quit nickel and diming us. If you want to keep spending, be man enough to ask for a tax increase and stop the toll road nonsense.

It’s that time of year again – time to walk from room to room and change all our clocks. For some of us, this nonsensical ritual involves staring blankly at the coffee maker while we try to remember how to set its time. On the way to work some of us will try to remember how to set the clock in the car and fiddle with it at stoplights. At work we may find the clock in the meeting room is an hour off. It may stay that way for the next month.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) may have made sense when we were an agrarian society but today it costs us a fortune in added complexity of modern electronic devices. I worked for several years making TV settop boxes. There were two components to the design and implementation of the settops that required significant work yet provided no particular feature or benefit to the consumer. One was the handling of Daylight Saving Time (DST) issues in the program guide and the other was content protection. Not much can be done to minimize the added cost, time, and complexity of content protection so long as the content owners insist on getting paid. However the wasted time and lost productivity caused by designing around DST produced no economic benefit for anyone. It was just headaches, pain, and expensive labor.

Over the last few years the period for which DST is in effect changed from the more traditional dates. This forced software updates to millions of computers and those software updates had to be implemented and tested. This cost money and diverted resources from far more meaningful tasks. In addition, the incomplete distribution of these updates caused confusion and consternation.

The pros and cons of Daylight Saving Time:

On the bad side

· Added expense developing all products and equipment that understand time

· Added delays testing and delivering these products

· Problems with automatic backups when time goes backward

· Problems with automatic anything when time goes backward

· Danger to children waiting in dark mornings at bus stops

· The DST induced longer days are a major contributor to global warming

· DST causes cancer, acne, and flatulence

On the good side

· It provides a twice a year reminder to check the batteries in your smoke detectors

· It, ummmmm…

· …

I can visualize a better world when the burden of DST no longer exists. Join with me in this vision and work toward the elimination of this costly, archaic blight on the design and implementation of electronic devices. With any luck, next spring we can split the difference between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time. We can spring forward one HALF hour and never again have to spring forward, fall back, or worry about what the software does when time suddenly jumps an hour backward.

OK, maybe just ONE more blog on space programs…

It seems common knowledge that the government snagged a flying saucer from the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1947. Expert testimonials from any number of sources repeatedly tell us we got integrated circuits, lasers, fiber optics, Velcro, and other technology from that saucer. It seems there are “expert” testimonials for every facet of our lives. From evolution and global warming to swine flu and trillion dollar bailouts, “experts” tell us what to believe. We live in a world where power screwdrivers are rated by volts, vacuum cleaners are rated by amps, movie stars and professional athletes are paid millions to tell us what shampoo to buy, and an important consideration for our presidential candidates is their wearing of an American Flag lapel pin.

However, as Galileo pointed out 400 years ago, hours and days of “expert” testimonials are worth far less than a few minutes of actual observation. In fact, such testimonials have no place in science and are worse than worthless since they cloud the facts and confuse the issues. Unfortunately, despite hundreds of years of visible success of the Scientific Method, many people still prefer testimonials or even divination over verifiable facts. I guess it is just too much trouble to investigate details and… think.

Anyway, if we had a working, albeit damaged, flying saucer more than 20 years before the moon landing we certainly should have been able to copy it, right? Probably not. If Isaac Newton, one of the smartest people to ever walk the earth, was just handed a cell phone he would not have been able to tell if it was a weapon, paperweight, or religious artifact. He would not have been able to recognize the intended purpose of the resistors, capacitors, or any of the ICs. However, he may have been fascinated with the sparks and heat that resulted from shorting the battery. With no cell towers and no datasheets he would have found it a very curious device.

Many technologies must be invented before we achieve interstellar flight. I’m not worried about the raw science, string theory math, and such. That is fundamental theoretical research. Our many fine universities and brilliant graduate students will take care of that. I’m more worried about the implementation of complex scientific devices. “Big Science” requires big money and big money can only come from governments or large corporations. A large corporation should only be spending big money if it reasonably believes the investment will result in a substantial profit in the relatively near future. Only governments can toss large sums of money at projects unlikely to yield a financial return. Fortunately there is ample precedent for government spending with little hope of tangible monetary gain.

The current mindset of the human race is not well suited to developing technology need to join other worlds travelling interstellar space. Humans seem most willing to invest significant resources and money implementing complicated technology during times of war. Recent examples include the creation of the first operational jet fighter (the Messerschmitt Me 262) and the splitting of the atom. It seems geeks only get funding for Big Science for military supremacy or political advantage. Christopher Columbus wanted to explore but he had to convince Queen Isabella to sponsor him. Wernher von Braun wanted to explore but had to convince Hitler and Kennedy to sponsor him. One must wonder (and perhaps fear) the motivation of the sponsors of the alien geeks who sold their souls for the funding to come visit us.

If it exists, alien spacecraft technology would certainly be many, many years ahead of us, but it is not just the technology. The reliability, to travel trillions and trillions of miles, would have to be astonishing. This seems a far more difficult problem since humans don’t have the patience and focus needed to implement high reliability devices. Airplanes crash, subway trains collide, water pipes break, major cities lose power, and more. Many people talk the talk but ultimately everything gets shipped before the last bug is found and few design anything to last for decades. Furthermore, long-lasting products actually interfere with the future revenue of selling replacements. The fundamental culture of our society does not seem well suited to building things reliable enough to travel between the stars.

Why have humans ventured out to new horizons? Well, some of us are made to want to explore. Some humans risk life, reputation, family, and financial security to invent and discover. It seems most humans, however, are too worried about basic survival to care about that “stupid stuff”. While poets speak of the human inquisitiveness and desire to explore, my personal observation of the human race suggests these traits are confined to a relatively small percentage of the population. That small percentage, however, has dragged the rest of us kicking and screaming into the future.

Don’t believe for a minute the moon landing was about science and exploration. Of course many (most?) of the actual scientists were doing exactly that, but the funding only came because we couldn’t let the Soviets land on the moon first. If alien races are coming here, it costs them money – and lots of it. Thus I conclude that if aliens are indeed coming to our planet, they must have a very different culture from ours – OR – they want something important. I certainly hope their culture is different. If it’s not, I’m pretty sure I won’t like finding out what it is they want, and… I really won’t like the anal probe.