Fighting to make good software

To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accommodation that will get one more person up the curve. There are no shortcuts. Luck is involved, but you don't win by being lucky, it happens because you fought for every inch.

-- Dave Winer


I like this and try to live it.

Sales in Japan and the West

I get the impression that in the West, sales is all about closing the deal.

A salesman thinks his job is done when the deal is closed. A lot of Americans, in particular, can be such reality-distorted optimists that in my experience some of them act as if their commission is already in the bank from the point that it merely appears that the deal is going to close. When things fall through (as is increasingly common in these times) they are honestly surprised and shocked and angry.

In Japan, always a few degrees less flaky than America in most aspects, a salesman isn't as defined by the deals he's made and closed, so much as the maintenance of existing relationships. After a deal closes, his job begins in earnest.

Japanese clients seldom start out placing any kind of large order to a supplier or vendor they are using for the first time. They start out placing a small order and carefully observe the level of quality and service they are receiving. They are particularly finicky about the kind of customer support they get from the salesman, how responsive he is, how clear his explanation is, and his approach to dealing with errors or trouble. If they are satisfied they will progressively place larger and larger orders.

No Such Thing as a 'Voice Print'

Another popular misconception proven wrong. From the Discovery site.

No Such Thing as a 'Voice Print'

Dec. 4, 2008 -- Speech analysis might be flavor of the month on TV, but one expert says popular crime shows may be giving the public an unrealistic idea of what the science can do.

"Most dramas include this kind of thing [and] there's a great deal of poetic license in what they do," said linguistics and phonetics expert Paul Foukles of the University of York.

Foukles, who has provided training in forensic speech analysis for the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI, spoke at a meeting of the ARC Network in Human Communication Science in Sydney.

Forensic speech science, which involves acoustic, phonetic and linguistic analysis of recordings, can be used to try and narrow down possible suspects. It can also be used to determine how well a suspect's voice matches a criminal's voice.

But, said Foukles, a recording of speech can never be used to identify someone with certainty on its own.

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"There is no such thing as a voice print," he said. "It's a very very dangerous term. There is no single feature of a voice that is indelible that works like a fingerprint does."

Many different factors influence how people speak at any particular time and place.

"If you're tired or if you have a cold or if you're speaking on a phone against traffic in the background you do all sorts of things to the voice, which make it phonetically very different from time to time," said Foukles, who also works as a freelance consultant for a private forensic speech science laboratory.

"The features of speech and language are such that you can't use them as a marker of identity to identify one person and exclude all other people under normal circumstances. People's voices overlap."

In addition, said Foukles, acoustic analysis using software must contend with the problems associated with the recording. For example, voices are often analyzed from wire taps, covert recordings taken from someone's pocket or messages from a voicemail.

While speech analysis cannot be used to identify someone on its own, it can be used to eliminate suspects, said Foukles.

Phonetic and linguistic analysis can be used to analyze component parts of voice such as pitch, how vowels and consonants are pronounced, voice quality and even vocabulary.

If the forensic investigator is lucky, they will be able to identify certain voice features, pathological features that are difficult to disguise, such as pronouncing 'r's as 'w's, said Foukles.

One issue of concern is the use of software to analyze the acoustic properties in someone's voice to determine their state of mind, including if they are lying.

Foukles said such "lie detectors" or "voice stress analyzers" are based on "questionable principles" but are now being used for security purposes.

"Moscow airport is using this as a way of detecting whether someone is a terrorist threat or not," said Foukles. "I think that is a very worrying development.

Red Bar in Miyamasuzaka

Here's a goofy cell phone camera pan at the Red Bar very near my office. I took it on Jan 25. I just created a Youtube account and this is my first upload. Yaaaay!!!

However the damn thing seems to have been clipped to just 4 seconds :(

Ending words with an O

I've been in Japan all this time and in recent years I'm noticing back in the States (well, being Canuckistani I guess it is le sacrilege for me to say "back", but compared to Japan I suppose America seems sufficiently Canadian that it qualifies as a kind of "home turf") that people in the tech biz have a way of shortening a word and then sticking an "o "on its ass.

Examples

presentation -> preso
distribution -> distro (as in Linux distro)
algorithm -> algo
definitely -> defo

Any other major ones? Feel free to add them to the comments.

Fukutoshin Line

A new line is being built on the Tokyo subway, going to our station. Opening date is June 14.

As a result my life is going to get 200% better (not sure of the exact figure, I will admit).

It is going to run along the same route as the Yurakucho Line in our general area west of Ikebukuro. However past Ikebukuro into the city core it will just run directly below Meiji-dori to Waseda (hence Takadanobaba), Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Shibuya. All these places will be accessible without having to change trains! In fact Shibuya is my daily commute.

Yeehaw!

Toto Cafe

In the course of bicycling around our area last weekend I found another nice little cafe, the Toto Cafe.

It was around before, but seems to have reopened and is better and brighter. Not overly expensive and a nice place to park yourself to read and relax.

Back to normal

We had a nice New Year's mid-day meal yesterday at home, cooked by Kasumi. Mio joined us.

Will post pics later... sorry I know I'm sounding like a broken record.

In the evening, the three of us went to Hie Jinja for hatsumode. We dropped by my office because I needed to pick up something. We then went to a Turkish restaurant right near my office called Anatolia. I love that place.