Does It Compute?

There are Bugs and Then There are Bugs

What exactly is a software “bug?” To what lengths should companies go to exterminate them? Should consumers have an expectation of “bug-free software?” 

To take the last question first, software will never be “bug-free” for two reasons.  The first is of course the Great God Profit. In the spirit of Steven Leavitt’s Freakonomics, it is clear that it is not in the economic interest of a large company to produce bug-free software – it is simply too costly. This is where smaller, individually owned companies have an advantage: they are not as tied to quarterly financial reports as larger, publicly owned companies. They are also likely to be more personally committed to producing good software if they created and developed it themselves. The second reason is more substantive. Even with all the Quality Control in the world, no company can test for all the possible configurations and uses (and abuses) the software will face in the real world. Unusual configurations can expose shortcomings that no amount of laboratory testing could reveal.

As for the key question of just what is a bug, a lot of people tend to define a “bug” as anything software does that they don’t like. Or, as one user put it recently, “a bug is when the program does something it should NOT do” and possibly also “when the program does NOT do something it SHOULD do.”

From a developer’s point of view, a bug exists when the software does not perform the way it was designed to.  If it was supposed to do “x” but does not, that is a bug.  If it was not designed to do “x” then it is “Working As Designed” (WAD). (You may have heard this from tech support).

No matter that the design is flawed, idiotic, etc. The frustrated question “how could they not see this is stupid” is irrelevant here (although linked to the axiom that any time you have to start a sentence concerning software with the phrase “you would think that....” you know you are in deep trouble).

This is a golden opportunity to invent two new acronyms: WAPD (“Working As Poorly Designed”) and even WAVPD (“Working As Very Poorly Designed”). Are these bugs?  Not technically.  Are they infuriating?  Oh yeah.

The Hidden Life of Deer

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has a new book: “The Hidden Life of Deer.” Well worth reading, although gardeners may be a bit upset at her willingness to let deer eat her plants down to the roots. 

The book follows two others in a similar vein, “The Hidden Life of Dogs,” and “The Tribe of Tiger.”  (That’s cats – based on her position that a house cat is nothing but a miniature Tiger and that if the size difference between us and a cat were reversed, we’d be dead meat in 30 seconds.) Both will show you things you never knew about dogs and cats respectively.

She is also a highly respected anthropologist, and has also recently published a book on the Bushmen of the Kalihari desert (she first went to the Kalihari 50 years ago with her parents). “The Old Way: A Story of the First People” makes fascinating reading. Her basic thesis is that a small group of hunter-gatherers has survived for over 30,000 years then there must be a reason for everything they do and they must have been doing something right (before their way of life was wiped out by the South African and Namibian governments in the 1980s).

Take Documents to Court on a Kindle

Sharon Nelson’s blog reports on an attorney who takes documents to court on his Kindle DX (the larger format version) and uses Kindle to show them to the Judge – with no objections so far.  It is fairly easy to upload a PDF file to Amazon and have them put it on your Kindle. I have done this with one or two documents and it works fairly well. There are a few more formatting errors than with a native Kindle book, but the result is quite acceptable.

This would also be an easy way for, say, a consultant to take the manuals for various programs with him on a Kinde.

Even better would be a reading device that would integrate with a Document Management System and would let you download directly to it from the DMS. You might even be able to mark up the documents and then upload them back up to the device. At the rate that readers are multiplying, we may yet see this.

Metadata Ethics Update - ABA

Vermont is the latest state to issue an opinion on the ethics of metadata.  The various opinions always address three issues:

1.  What is the responsibility of the sending attorney with respect to checking for metadata?
2. May the recipient of a document from opposing counsel review a document or “mine” it for metadata?
3. If metadata is found, must the recipient notify the sender?

Aside from legal niceties, a lot of this issue is just plain common sense. Any attorney who does not check for metadata when sending a Word file to opposing counsel is being negligent and self-destructive.

My favorite example of this happened to one of my clients (in the days before metadata had become a hot topic). His firm was using WordPerfect and received a document in Word format. Upon opening it in WP, all the changes, comments, etc. were exposed, including a comment to the effect “Jim, do you think we can get away with this language?” Needless to say, in the course of negotiating the contract terms, my client said “now, you don’t think we’re going to let you get away with that language,” and opposing counsel folded.

Saying that the recipient of a document cannot check for metadata is like the disclaimers on faxes to the effect that if you receive the fax in error you should not read it. In practice, totally useless. In many cases, all you have to do to reveal the relevant metadata is to turn on track changes (which a firm might routinely do in the process of editing a document).

If you find metadata, should you notify the sender?  This is a bit more sticky: most jurisdictions (and the ABA) say that you should, and this is obviously reasonable.

But the main point in all this is that a firm is negligent if it does not use a metadata checker when sending out documents.

To see the ABA’s review of opinions, click here.

Potential Clients - Do You Track Telephone Inquiries?

When someone calls in inquiring about your services, how do you track and record the call?  Many firms do so minimally or not at all. This is a mistake, for the following two major reasons.

First, if you are using a program such as Time Matters or Amicus, you should create a contact for that person, together with any notes about the call, and assign it to a category of “potential client.” You may also want to assign that contact to a Matter called “potential clients.”  This gives you a powerful reporting and followup tool. By looking at all the “potential clients” at regular intervals, you can see which inquiries should be followed up, which are “dead” and can be taken off the list (but NOT deleted from your contact list) and so on.

Second, these entries, however summary, can be invaluable six months or a year from now (or whenever) in terms of conflict checking. Let’s say someone calls but does not engage you. Some time later, their spouse, brother, etc. calls and wants to engage you. Does the first contact represent a conflict of interest?  It may or may not, but at least you can make an informed decision rather than plowing blindly ahead having forgotten all about the first contact.

And if that first person does call back some time later, you will look very good if you are able to say “oh, yes, you called a year ago about x.”

So, always record your contacts and inquiries. It is one more way to stay on top of your business and preventing potential clients from falling through the cracks.

Another Take on French Cooking: J-P Sartre's Cooking Diary

With the Julia Child’s movie (“Julie & Julia”) popularizing French cooking, what could be more appropriate than the French Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s Cooking Diary. Here it is.

    October 3 – Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.
    October 4 – Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.
    October 6 – I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarettes, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.
    October 10 – I find myself trying ever more radical interpretations of traditional dishes, in an effort to somehow express the void I feel so acutely. Today I tried this recipe: TUNA CASSEROLE.  Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish.
    Instructions: Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light.
    While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more frustrated.
    October 25 – I have been forced to abandon the project of producing an entire cookbook. Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups. To this end, I purchased six hundred pounds of foodstuffs from the corner grocery and locked myself in the kitchen, refusing to admit anyone. After several weeks of work, I produced a recipe calling for two eggs, half a cup of flour, four tons of beef, and a leek. While this is a start, I am afraid I have much work ahead.
    November 15 – Today I made a Black Forest gâteau. I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but would not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.
    November 30 – Today was the day of the Bake-Off. Alas, things did not go as I had hoped. During the judging, the beaver became agitated and bit Betty Crocker’s wrist. The beaver’s powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America’s favorite homemaker. I only got third place. Moreover, I am now the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit.
    December 1 – I have been gaining twenty-five pounds a week for two months an I am now experiencing light tides. It is stupid to be so fat. My pain and ultimate solitude are still as authentic as they were when I was thin, but seem to impress girls far less. I will live on cigarettes and black coffee.

Score One for the USPS

I recently went out to mail some letters and go to the bank. With my mind on other things, I dropped the bank deposit into the mailbox. After a moment of utter panic, I called the Post Office.

They immediately conferenced in the pickup guy for that mailbox, who circled back around on his route and met me at the box within about 15 minutes. He fished out my deposit and I was back in business. And this was in a big city (Jersey City), not a small town.

So, thanks Ray and score one for the much-maligned Postal Service!

Multitasking -- Is It Counterproductive?

The issue of multitasking gets sporadic attention – most recently on the subject of texting while driving (which could also be construed as a death wish). But it is not new. I always recall my driving instructor many years ago saying that you shouldn’t try to make out while driving because you couldn’t pay proper attention either to the road or to the girl (that was before the days where PC rules).

One of the most recent studies, done at Stanford, is the one that many recent news stories are based on. It shows that:

“People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.”

The fact of the matter is that “multitasking” in a real sense (or as a computer would understand it) does not really exist. What multitasking really amounts to is that you divide up your time into more or less small “slices” and simply switch rapidly from one “slice” to another. You are still doing one thing at a time, but switching back and forth in rapid succession. So if you “multitask” by doing four things in twelve minutes, you actually focus (for example) on each one of them three times in one minute “slices.” For better or worse, human beings simply do not have quad core (or even dual core) brains.

This understanding is behind one of the classic recipes for ways in which lawyers can more efficiently manage their workflow: to set aside one or two periods in a day to deal with email, and to turn off your email during the rest of the day to avoid distraction.

However, this sort of advice runs counter to the current obsession with multitasking, texting, twittering and instant answers to email. Thus the growth of 2-monitor (or even 3-monitor) setups is due to the desire to keep more and more programs open at the same time and swap back and forth between them. Similarly, people who run stock tickers or sports tickers, not to mention Instant Messaging clients on their desktops are just inviting interruption and distraction.

Multi-monitor setups can be very useful if you regularly work on tasks that involve consulting multiple sources – but just having your email open on a right-hand screen is an invitation to disruption and lack of productivity.

To increase productivity you have to reduce the tendency toward rampant multitasking. Or, to put it another way, instead of dividing up your time into “slices” of 2 minutes, and switching back and forth, try to divide up your time into bigger slices of 15 minutes, half hour, etc. In some cases you may not be able to control this.  There are phone calls you absolutely have to take. However, in others – only dealing with email twice a day in segments of a half hour at a time or answering all your phone calls at the end of the day, for example – you may be able to bring at least a small amount of order to the chaos of multitasking. This approach is embodied by an attorney who is in a meeting or working on drafting an important document and tells his assistant to “hold my calls.”

In short, what the Stanford study cited above shows is that people who “multitask” do each one of the multiple tasks less well than someone to takes the same amount of time but does them one at a time. So yes, most of what passes for multitasking is inefficient and counterproductive – and will lead to performing each task less well than if it were done as a single task all at once.

Flat Fee Billing - Even for Consultants?

As the pressure on attorneys’ fee structures continues, the trend toward flat fee billing continues to grow.

Some practice areas already use this widely – for example, real estate transactions, will preparation, etc.  The main reason for this is that these are known quantities. But what about “unknown” quantities such as, primarily, litigation?

Matt Homan has a very useful blog, “the [non]billable hour” on the subject. He recently posted a “Q & A on flat fee pricing.” 

The core point is that even when an overall engagement may be unknown or unclear, it can be broken up into mainly known chunks. For example, a day in court costs so much, depositions and transcripts cost so much, a price for drafting standard motions can be easily fixed, and so on.

So even a complex engagement can be broken out in the form: “known pieces will cost so much” (flat fee). Unknown pieces, what in the construction industry are known as “change orders,” will be extra.

The other point is that even though some cases may wind up with overruns (losing money); in others you should be ahead of the game – especially if you use any form of document automation – so on balance you should be OK, assuming you can estimate time accurately.

OK Hotshot (I hear you say), what about flat fees for consultants?  Although I believe this is possible, at least in part, there are two major caveats here.

First, when you install a new program on top of an existing system, it is a bit like renovating an old house: you never know what you are going to find (and hence how much time it will take). I recall the first major renovation I undertook on an old house in Cambridge, MA, I what horrified to discover that the joists were cross-braced, so that electrical or other lines could not be “dropped down” in between joists. Second, the 2x4's were actually 2" by 4" and not today’s nominal 2x4's which are actually 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches. So nothing fit right. Provision has to be made for that.

Secondly, there is what is sometimes known as “project creep” – “While you’re at it, can’t you just....”  Sure, but that is extra. That has to be clearly understood.

As long as provision is made for these two exceptions (which can frequently be major), I do think that certain basic installations can be broken down into flat fee pieces, if not 100% for an entire job.

The NSA Vacuums the Internet

I just finished reading a pretty scary book by Mark Klein, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine... And Fighting It (available from Amazon).

Klein was a senior technician at ATT who accidentally discovered that the NSA has been vacuuming up all traffic on the Internet – and continues to do so under the Obama administration.

Klein discovered a "secret" room – 641A at the Folsom Street office of the phone company in San Francisco. A "splitter" was installed on the fiber optic Internet cables that directed half the light along the normal path and half the light to the Room 641A – and all the traffic to each side of the "splitter." Over the course of several years, being asked to assist in installing equipment, reviewing installation manuals, testing connections with other offices, etc. Klein realized that there are probably 15-20 such offices across the U.S. Based on internal (but not classified) ATT documents, it is clear that the NSA is intercepting virtually all Internet traffic in the US. This was confirmed by former NSA analyst Russell Tice on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" program on MSNBC – on January 21, 2009, the day after Bush left office.

Needless to say, no warrant covers these actions, only the thin veil of "anti-terrorism." The "anti-terrorism" argument might make sense if cables and offices that routed mainly foreign traffic that is entering the US from abroad were targeted, but they are not. Thus ocean cable-head stations are not targeted but Atlanta and downtown San Francisco are.

The book goes into detail about how the NSA spying was revealed and the story spread despite government attempts to suppress it. Klein's conclusion seems unassailable: the NSA is snooping on every single piece of Internet traffic in the US. The only consolation is that they can't possible have the manpower and equipment to review it all – although a new center in a Denver suburb that seems to be designed to do exactly that.