Denim Group, Ltd.

Elections and Bailouts: "Interface" by Neal Stephenson

By Dan Cornell

Last week I re-read Interface by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George (both originally credited as Stephen Bury) because it seemed awfully relevant with the upcoming Presidential election and banking bailout in the news.

Basic plotline: The sitting President of the United States decides to cap the amount of interest the US will pay on the national debt.  Seeing as how this is the basis of a huge part of the international economy and most world investments a shadowy group of ultra rich investors decide to replace him at the next election.  They develop technologies so that they can get real-time feedback on the emotions of Americans spread across a variety of demographics and feed that political intelligence directly into the brain of a candidate who had undergone post-stroke surgery where electronic nerves had been implanted into his brain.  Hilarity ensues.

This isn't the best of Neal Stephenson'swork, but it is a still a great read and certainly timely.

--Dan
dan _at_ denimgroup.com

NSA Article on Enigma

By Dan Cornell

I took a short break from the RSA conference today to read an article from our good friends at the NSA about the Enigma machine and World War II.  Very cool stuff.  I saw this on Bruce Schneier's blog a couple of days ago and it really resonated because I just finished re-reading Cryptonomicon.

--Dan
dan _at_ denimgroup.com

PS - If you haven't read Cryptonomicon yet - read it.  That is one of my favorite novels of all time.

Economics and Security

By Dan Cornell

Bruce Schneier had a post yesterday about a report discussing economics and security.  I skimmed the first couple of pages and they have some very interesting recommendations about laws and regulations that would tweak the incentives of ISPs and other technology vendors in order to increase the security of the Internet.  The whole document is 114 pages long but the intro was interesting enough for me to print it out to read over the weekend.

I have always thought it was important to remember that good security involves risk management rather than risk elimination.  It is interesting to see the issue addressed from another angle where changing the incentives of technology providers can be used to also improve the security landscape.

--Dan
dan _at_ denimgroup.com

Book Review: Valley Boy

By Dan Cornell

I just finished reading Valley Boy by Tom Perkins and it was a great read.  Tom Perkins was one of the founders of Kleiner Perkins and is considered by many to be the "father of modern venture capital."  This book is certainly autobiographical, but I don't know if I would call it an autobiography.  Each chapter basically walks through a different part of Tom Perkins' life and the chapters aren't presented in any specific chronological or other order.  He talks about the dispute that led him to resign from the board of HP, being convicted of manslaughter in France, being briefly married to Danielle Steele among other things.

This was a fun book to read because of the variety of the anecdotes that he relates.  There are some great business stories - you get to learn about his role in the early days at HP, his founding and sale of University Laboratories, Inc, and the creation of the original Kleiner Perkins fund.  There are also some very interesting personal stories about his love of cars and sailing and his relationship with his wife Gerd.  Through the entire book what impressed me was how balanced he was - he freely admits to his faults and mistakes alongside his achievements and writes of others with respect - even those with which he has had well-publicized conflicts.  The books comes across as very genuine and that made it both readable and interesting.

Reading Valley Boy reminded me a lot of a couple of other good books I've read in the past:

• Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure
• High Tech Start Up, Revised and Updated: The Complete Handbook For Creating Successful New High Tech Companies

Also apparently Tom Perkins has also written a romance-style novel called Sex and the Single Zillionaire.  Now, romance novels aren't really my typical genre, but Valley Boy was so well written I might have to pick up a copy.

--Dan
dan _at_ denimgroup.com

Book Review: Managing Humans

By Dan Cornell

I just finished reading Managing Humans by Michael Lopp.  It was a pretty good read.  I've never read his blog before picking up the book, but I will be tracking it going forward.  I saw the book as less of a "how to" manual for managing people and more of an analysis of how different types of people in the software development space think and work.

There are a couple of chapters with great recommendations for managers about keeping information flowing in organizations - both up and down the chain.  Having worked in environments where this constant flow of information was disrupted - either because of ignorance or malice - this is very important information for people who want to become good managers.

He also has some great career advice for people in the tech industry - how to work with various types of coworkers, how to resign from a job and so on.  Again - having seen some blowups in my day this is good advice - not just for managers but for anyone who wants to have an ongoing career in this space.

One thing I noticed was that Michael/Rands' career has been spent in large software product shops as well as a venture-backed, software-based startup.  This colors his experiences and advice - which is to be expected.  While I was reading I did see how situations and organization structures might be different for folks working in in-house IT organizations.  This isn't a criticism of the book - just a reflection of the author's background and something to keep in mind.

Overall I thought this was a fun read and an interesting take on the folks who make the creation of software their living and I would recommend it.

I have been a big fan of a bunch of these Apress books on software development and I would recommend all of these as interesting reads.  I don't always agree with everything the authors have to say, but I do believe that they have thought about things enough that they well-deserve their opinions.

• Joel on Software
• The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
• Smart and Gets Things Done

--Dan
dan _at_ denimgroup.com