There’s an agile development methodology out there called Scrum which seems to be getting a lot of attention lately. I like agile methodologies, but it’s hard to get people to buy into a particular methodology as a whole. But I love the idea of “stand-up meetings” from Scrum:

From It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns for Daily Stand-up Meetings:

Require that all attendees Stand Up. Use standing up to link physical with mental readiness. Physical discomfort will also remind attendees when a meeting is taking too long. A simple way to encourage this is to simply hold the meeting where there are no chairs.

Hmmmm…does Heaven use Scrum?

Peter Griffin: Wait! Before you go what’s Heaven like?
Nate Griffin: There’s a shortage of chairs.

Family Guy

I got a field "promotion" to Director of Security yesterday. Like most field promotions, this happened about the same time bullets started whizzing overhead. Now that I'm responsible for helping to lock down our systems, I've been reading some security-related blogs & such. I came across this, which might be of interest to my Libertarian friends as well as the geeks…

Privacy International is now taking nominations for their 2006 Stupid Security Awards. What kind of examples are they looking for? Check out their 2003 Winners.

If you thought the accounting profession was bad news, just wait till you hear how stupid the security industry has become. Even before 9/11 a whole army of bumbling amateurs has taken it upon themselves to figure out pointless, annoying, intrusive, illusory and just plain stupid measures to "protect" our security.

It's become a global menace. From the nightclub in Berlin that demands the home address of its patrons, to the phone company in Britain that won't let anyone pay more than fifty pounds a month from a bank account, the world has become infested with bumptious administrators competing to hinder or harass you. And often for no good reason whatever.

The sensitive and sensible folk at Privacy International have endured enough of this treatment. So we are running an international competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, stupid and self-serving security measures.

In a funny coincidence, just a few days after I posted my commentary on how Yahoo! Answers doesn't work, Google announced that they will be discontinuing their Google Answers product.

Google's offering was interesting in that it cost real money to post a question. You could pick any amount between $2 and $200 which was given to the "researcher" with the best answer. There was also a 50 cent "listing fee".

According to their FAQ, researchers (answerers) had to be vetted by a testing process Google used to ensure they had good searching & communication skills. Google also kept a team of editors on hand to get rid of bad answers.

3. Are Researchers experts in their field?
All Google Researchers are tested to ensure that they are expert searchers with excellent communication skills. Some of them also have expertise in various fields. Your question may be answered by an expert in a particular field or by an expert searcher. Either way, if you are unsatisfied with your answer for any reason, you may apply for a full refund.

It's interesting to note that this closed community seems to have had fewer stupid questions than Yahoo!'s offering, and far fewer stupid answers — at the very least, there were fewer that I could find.