Preparing your children for total surveillance

I noticed these in a book shop today:

What they do is project a "soothing picture" onto the wall or ceiling at night - ostensibly to help your child sleep. What struck me was the similarly in their design to a surveillance camera, so I guess there's no better time that early childhood to start preparing your child to be oblivious to such devices in everyday life.

Remember, total surveillance is for your safety and security...

Go figure...

Agile is dead

This is an excellent post, though some might consider it a rant, about how Agile wasn't really nor became what Agile should it should have...

Agile is Dead

"Are you an IT consultant or contractor? Agile Software Development work is dead. If you practice that, you are a doorstop. If you manage that way, you are a boat-anchor. The wave has ended, it is over, and if you went for the head-fake and bought certifications, you wasted some money. Soon recruiters will be putting your resume in the circular storage container. I have been warning you for some time, and the day is here. Hah, you should have listened. Move along."

But here's the best quote:

The moral of this part of the story is that if you produce some compact politicised ideology (manifesto) consisting of principles and rules there will be unintended consequences.  Success creates a religion or cult, and defeat is being ignored.  No such doctrine is perfect.  Thinking you will change the world with a manifesto is naive, and if you succeed you may not have improved the world.

To me, given the problems that Privacy by Design has caused with privacy officers believing in some mythical "compliance" without any consideration of the software engineering or cultural aspects of developing information systems, this sums it up quite nicely!