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One can not help but wonder how many Harvard freshmen would pass this exam today. Click to see the Harvard admission document.

Did you think that by announcing your goals you would feel more pressure to work to achieve them? Apparently works the opposite way. When Intentions Go Public - Does Social Reality Widen the Intention-Behavior Gap? by Peter M. Gollwitzer et al.

Sometimes we forget that other people have faced the same problems we face today in software development. These quotes are from the proceedings of the Nato Software Engineering conference in 1968. On the management of software projects: Programming management will continue to deserve its current poor reputation for cost and schedule effectiveness until such time as a more complete understanding of the program design process is achieved. We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes — build the whole thing, push it off the cliff, let it crash, and start over again....

My son has the dubious pleasure of being the primary beta tester of T-shirt messages. This time it is the first draft of the model that will be called “Twat”. Turned out pretty OK… Also see the Ballmer Tee.

Dear DHL (and other logistics companies because you tend to behave exactly the same). How is it that you are able to move my package from the UK to Sweden fast as hell but spend several days trying to move it from your terminal to my home address in the same city? Visa DHL delivery på en större karta Like most people living in Stockholm (and other cities I guess) I live in an apartment building to which you have no access....

An interesting approach to chains of copyright but these are really interesting. None of the participants were involved in making these songs. At the same time all of them were. A guess is that remixes like these will become more and more popular. Where can I buy these songs? Who will get paid? More information at http://thru-you.com/

Everyone is celebrating this friday in a different way, apparently:

Tim Bray has an interesting post titled What Sun Should Do where he lists some suggestions. I have been thinking about Sun for a while and how my own image of the company has changed over the years. A long time ago I was working for Cambridge Technology Partners (later acquired by Novell). We did a lot of interesting projects, some of which were deployed on Sun hardware. At that time (around ‘97-‘98) my image of Sun was that it was a huge company selling huge hardware at huge prices....

For a long time I have been amazed how much expression you can get into the twitter icon. It is only 48 by 48 pixels but many of my contacts manage to squeeze a lot of style in there. So, starting on monday november 3 I will change my twitter icon once every day trying to impersonate people who follow me on twitter. At the end of the week I’ll publish all icons side by side for your viewing pleasure....

Two interesting quotes from Dietrich Kappe: So no, we don’t hire architects. We hire developers. In a small team, there is no room for management deadwood. I agree completely. My view is that the title “Software architect” is a misnomer for what most architects in the software industry do, or at least what they should be doing. It is part of the weird trend that career advancement means getting away from actual programming for some reason....