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Engineers like problems and businesspeople like solutions. When was the last time you heard any executive say, “let’s sit down in front of this whiteboard and try to better understand the problem at hand”? If it was recent, congratulations, you’re in a lucky minority. The truth is that the majority of executives want to hear solutions, not problems; sales, not internal struggle.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!Henry David Thoreau

There is a dreadful anxiety surrounding nudity in some modern countries, most notably the United States. [...]

What is your online banking password? I have 10 to 1 odds that say it sucks. You should probably do something about that. If you like money, that is.

Alex King wrote a couple of posts [1, 2] on using password hashing software to abstract your passwords out of your head, ostensibly increasing the level of security involved with the web sites you entrust your information to.

You’re up late in Widener Library on the Harvard campus, studying for your MCAT to get into Johns Hopkins Medical School. There’s a familiar face at one of the tables next to you — it’s that kid who never shows up for lecture and is constantly struggling through the same material that you and your [...]

Usually when starting a new web site, a company will design the site for use in only one language. As companies grow, however, it is often prudent to internationalize the site and make it accessible in many languages. If the site is to become a large commercial success in countries around the world, this step [...]

I’ve been reading a lot about design lately; specifically information architecture, interface design and industrial design. It seems that design comes in at a specific point in a given production process. In software, a developer is able to create a program, script or application that solves some specific problem; namely that of accomplishing some set [...]

There are unique conditions in Western culture and the United States specifically that highlight vast differences from other cultures and past times with respect to consumption and production. It should be obvious that technology has given Western culture a large lever with which to accelerate its levels of both consumption and production. Still though, there [...]

I am frequently confronted by a dilemma while working on new projects — that is, writing new code and designing new architectures. The whole time I’m designing the architecture I think of how much better it could be solved for a more general case. There is a constant temptation to step back and [...]

I have long been a proponent of Clean URLs (URIs). The URL should be treated as a human-readable representation of the data resouces being accessed. Many sites are getting better about this, especially with the growing popularity of applications like WordPress, Django, Ruby on Rails, etc. which make it incredibly easy to sculpt beautiful URLs.
An [...]

“Business is business.” says the old adage. It is, of course, true. Naïvety, anxiety, or eagerness can cloud issues of business and lead to unsupported judgments and decisions. It is not immediately apparent that trust in the business world is something to be reserved for the most solid of relationships — though none is probably [...]