Little you can find when installing the beta version of “The Chrome”, as I expect it to be called in the high tech community, but the new browser from Google promise to be the ultimate browser that any multi-tasked internet surfer would like to have as explained in the Google Comic Book about their design goals.

The comic explains a rather obvious design to most developers but the main interesting point is that Google is going to use the power it has to fine tune the new browser for maximum performance on the most visited sites. And I’m sure soon after there will recommendations about how best practices for building web-sites that are Google Chrome compliant for best performance.

Way to go!

The movie story reminds me of my 20 years of office CUBation and makes me pay some attention to my other sides in life; beside programming I always liked painting and playing music the least to mention.

However, as my situation is different from Waters in the movie since I love and enjoy my job, I may share with her and many others the hostility towards the walls of something called “cubicle” — for those who enjoy sun and fresh air in their day jobs, “cubicle” is a small compartment used as a workplace for people who use their fingers and, sometimes, their minds in there jobs. Of course I’m kidding with this last one. But to give you a better idea the plural cubicles is only similar a honeybee hive.

I made a little search about the cubicle and found lots of complains and only few fans. The only two advantages of this system might be flexibility and cost. I also found the inventor, according to resources, of this system; his name is Bob Propst and he came up with this idea in 1964 to replace the open system that was common at the time, an interesting article about this story could be found here.

Here are a couple of shots from the short film “CUBEd”:

There is definitely some sort of happiness by volunteering I know it a bit from myself and I know it more through my brothers Fadi and Chadi who give their time for The Faith and Light organization in Syria which takes on itself the responsibility of caring for the mentally unfortunate children and also from my other brother Somar who joined with friends built a social community for the Kirellos church in Kassaa - Damascus, a community that won him a devoted wife. That happiness of doing something and see the results right away in an atmosphere that is much different from the corporates’, an atmosphere where competition was replaced by cooperation, pyramidal hierarchy was replaced with all-for-one-and-one-for-all spirit and where the goal is the person not the dollar.
Way to go Elias, you made me proud.

The deal was like that, the old CRT is now looking blur so we’ll replace with an LCD. But I had many benefits of my CRT setup that I couldn’t give up:

• The view width: I was using two CRTs, a replacement of both is out of question which is very useful; you know, reading long line log files, showing two text files for comparison side by side, and not to mention software with side panels and tools in particular Visual Studio.
• The view height: I used to push my CRT to its limits especially on the vertical sync, this allowed me more lines. I became used to showing multiple lines in the task bar, this gives me direct access to more quick launch links, shows me more of the active tasks without shrinking the title to a sometimes useless icon, shows more of the resident processes icons; I don’t like the auto hide of inactive function, and simply showing the clock on multiple lines is cool. Also I like to see more lines when reviewing a couple of years old code. Anyway, having an LCD with 1280 pixels vertically was also out of question.

So the trade-off was clear, the closest equivalence of a 2 CRTs 19″ each is a single 24″ wide LCD which achieve the same vertical centimeters and a fairly close width. Too much for a Christmas gift. So I got a 22″; Acer 2216w with some extra letters not important for a CRT veteran.

New things I learned from my new LCD are staggering; they make higher DPI now so looking for the same vertical centimeters doesn’t make sense anymore, go by pixels. The space you gain on your desktop is really important. And my eyes now for sure need a checkup.

However, Dell did and now it seems the company is Switching back to Windows XP. Never in any previous version of Windows I remember this lack of enthusiasm about a new release and resistance to upgrade.

Is it Linux may be?… Many are saying that Vista’s older brother, Windows XP, is its main competitor and I think this is right because of many reasons…There are certain number of things that we want the operating system to do for us and they are offered with Windows XP, actually most of them where since Windows 95 which, at the time, people said about it “This is how Windows should have been in the first place”. Windows XP also fixed security weaknesses and stability issues of 95, the same thing was done even in Windows 2000.

So features, stability and reliability are all there in XP but being cool, modern and more fashionable doesn’t win you popularity in the world of production. I am one of many people who “made switching to classical windows theme” the last step of any new installation of Windows XP and the reason is standardization; it doesn’t really matter if doing certain job on a PC is less ergonomic in one way or another, what matters is whether I know how to do it and practiced it for a long or is it new and need me to figure it out.

It is not practical to attend a driving course every time you buy a new vehicle. But Microsoft kept fooling us every new version of Windows with moving icons around; e.g. between control panel and the administrative tools, or by changing files names or directory structure like the “document and settings” versus the old “user profile”, not to mention the cosmetic fashion when one day it imposes the 3D buttons and the next day buttons go flat, to round or not to round a rectangle’s corners, and even using transparent and irregular shaped windows or use just simple opaque rectangle.

The matter of the fact is that standardization is the most important issue in an operating system after reaching maturity.

It is not a new idea, I should say, you all have seen online websites building tools for so long, even photo editing and enhancing tools found on online printing shops…etc. but the question is why Microsoft didn’t do that when it was able to do it?

In an article nearly six months ago I read that 90% of Microsoft profit comes only from Windows and Office business. This probably explains how crucial to the company any change to their sales strategy in those two fields. We saw SQL Server given for free after the end of its bloody war with Oracle; which could be the result of the open source database server like MySQL nevertheless I don’t like to pay for database server which I see a mature piece of software 15 years ago.

So still the question isn’t whether Microsoft is dead or not, the question is why it is not adored by people of the industry. I think the answer is because Microsoft wants a share in every PC-related business even if it doesn’t have the experience in that field, and money does not buy her the experience only time does, and this is why we see the company changing a lot in between version 1.0 and 2.0 in each new business they do, we saw that clearly in between MSS 2004 which now became deployed and in use with no future and MSS 2007 yet to come; a fully dramatic change that left Microsoft friendly developers unhappy wasting their time while Microsoft is learning telephony and meanwhile also learning how to screw up telephony business. I’m saying that because we might see eventually a Microsoft Speech SDK Express (as in SQL Server) given for free when the company discover that the 90 percent in Windows and Office business ratio simply did not change.

The only chance that push Microsoft to play fair in the industry is for that ratio to decline, and while no one wants the operating system to be nothing but standard like Windows, the only place left is Office and Google has just started an interesting run.

I said good bye to her,

a beautiful 18 years old Silver leather interior Cadillac that marched with me for almost a decade.

I grew up in a country where people live and die with their cars and so It took me a long time to give up her ride, and it even took me longer to convince myself that my drive way is too narrow if she stays in it.

… but anyway, I will always remember those days when she took me with my friend Majed all the way from Ottawa to the Atlantic ocean; a trip that totaled 5000Km, with just a little pain to be honest. I will remember the rides that really resembled riding a fleet of wood…

A great goodbye, or I should say, see you later.

Unfortunately, in software development business, among the different payables the highest bill is the developers salaries, so layoff is commonly a big part of this exercise.

However, what many don’t realize is that people are also the assets of such companies, and while companies in other industries can safely sell off some of their assets, developers cannot be sold like soccer or hockey players but divisions can. What I am suggesting here is an alternative solution that would rather look better than a bulk layoff; it is Companies Incubation.

Business Incubation is not a new term, it has been used for long time in creating companies and making them stable before they go on their own and become profitable. It is a practice of governments, especially in the 3′rd world countries where private investors have interest in quick and short term ROI rather than in new sectors that don’t have a sure market.

In the more developed world, incubation has several different models; startups are feeding on private investors pockets as well as National Research allowances, but there are many other cases where incubation was not the intention but eventually led to the birth of new little companies; split corporates under the antitrust law is an example.

Now back to the layoff issue, let’s ask ourselves this question: if you were offered lower salary with take it or leave it options, that is to completely leave the job, which would you choose? I’m pretty sure some may consider hanging around with a little less money.

Let’s change the question a bit to make it more acceptable and we’re now going to give you the choice in public to a whole number of developers, this will eliminate the speculations about “why me“; and more people will likely to accept the “other” choice.

The ultimate proposal will be to give all developers in certain division that is subject to be closed the choice to leave the company together taking the division and its products with them. How many times do we see people leaving their jobs and their projects behind on the shelves? Did anyone try to evaluate the loss here?

I think in many cases this could turn out to be very doable especially when developers tend to be super enthusiast about marketing products they worked on for long time.

The Cubicle System, As I heard it from many fellow developers, is “the most stupid design a workplace could ever have“. Despite the fact that it was designed for what is called “White Collar” professions, I could only distinguish it from the Production Line system we commonly find in factories by its cleanness. If you are surprised I’ll explain.

The factory environment as we know is noisy, something you expect to be different in a software company. Wrong! software development is noisy too, especially if you have marketing and sales people sharing the site of R&D. Developers are forced to listen the weather current conditions every time a call is made to a customer, not to mention weekend plans and last trip to the Caribbeans the business development people have made. I would even say that the noise you hear in a factory might even be better, at least it sounds like one of the emerging music genres as it is generated from machines that are working in sync. Hands-free phones are more common that you expect, even managers who have their own private offices tend to use them only for telling an employee the bad news of a layoff while all other work or vacation plans related discussions are made across the cubicles soft walls.

Workers in neither environments enjoy any privacy; and I’m not talking only about rubbing their noses without being counted for. Although in a factory everyone is too busy to notice what anyone else is doing, unless it is a break, where it is break for everybody. While in software development, flexibility created conflict between those who are walking around having a break and others who are trying to gain some focus.

The size of a cubicle, or what we can call the “workspace allocated to you“, is about the same. It is in fact a little bigger in many factories especially the ones designed for standing workers. Software development assumed the sitting position and anything above or around you is free for public use.

Shared living space has a known problem of managing the temperature, I even have this problem at home. However, an always moving person with physical activity has a superior ability to adjust his body to the environment, that is probably why Jack in the Titanic died when he fell asleep and Rose stayed alive although we know that water is normally warmer than the air. In the cubicle system, the main mental challenge is to find the thermostat that controls your area, and then when you find it the puzzle is even more mysterious: “how does it work?” You find only one thermostat positioned somewhere in the ceiling and affects the heating system of a whole section of 25×25 meters, an area that fits 8 people in a generous company or even more. With the time, residents of such area have developed their own system of weather control; a set of T-shirts, light jackets, and wool shirts each for certain time of the day.

These problems of the cubicle system created the need for a cubicle etiquette; a set of rules to counter the temptations to be noisy or invading…etc.

My first exposure to the French word “Etiquette” was when I was a child. In particular the different greeting etiquettes I needed to follow. When we visited family A we had to say “Bon Jour” because that is what they consider a proper greeting, if we visited family B we needed to say “Marhaba” [Arabic for Greetings] because the first might look like an insult to them and visiting family C needed the use of “Assalamu Alaikom” [Arabic for Peace on You All]. Why couldn’t we just say “hi” and get down to business right away?

Apparently the etiquette is a part of the rules societies have naturally developed to regulate the individuals behaviors. Irony is in the individuals need for both freedom and socializing at the same time, and the balance is in the saying “one’s freedom ends where the freedom of others begins“, in other words: “Your freedom ends where my cubicle begins“.

That balance is very hard to achieve with the cubicle system. The reasons I guess because it was designed for the opposite purposes; it was designed to emphazise team interaction not to serve isolation, for managers to show their visiting investors where their money is spent and also let developers know investors are still interested, and to simply look and operate like a production line because any other system is hard to understand. No privacy by design, noisy by design and crazy by design.

So until someone “powerful” brings back the private offices system with windows to the daylight, own thermostats and doors, you’re going to have to use your common sense to achieve “THE BALANCE“.

Oh, and one more thing to elaborate, I’m not a native English speaker and English is not even my second language; well just the third, so I hope you bare with me when I try with difficulties explaining certain ideas, it may sometimes take longer and more sentences than it really deserve. I guess you already have seen one example .

Remember to refer to my F.A.Q Page for more info about this blog.

Finally, I take care of this blog when I need a break from my main day course, and today it seems my break was so long for setting up the blog… so now back to reality, back to work…