Sunny. You're lame. Did you even read the story?

And, I suppose that since Keith has called me on the Genesis bit I'll have to post that soon. Just not today.

Keith makes some good points that I appreciate and agree with, particularly about the evidence that all life evolved from the same beginning. I think there's nothing to debate there.

Fortunately, my post wasn't about trying to disprove evolution. I was just simply trying to express some thoughts I have about it that seem still very mysterious to me. And kind of funny, to tell the truth. I think it's interesting that we imagine (via films like Star Wars) this huge diversity among humanoids, but so far there is very little diversity at all.

I like Keith's description as the brain quest as a sort of race, and the first one to get a brain worth using earns domination over the planet. I hadn't thought of it that way.

Here are two very interesting evolutionary tidbits. I'm providing them from memory, so if you're academic you're gonna have to find the references on your own. Sorry.

1) There is archaeological evidence that wolves became dog-like in a very short period of time, and I'm not talking in geological time. Human time! The evolution of a wolf into a dog very likely occurred in less than 70 years. Yup. A human could have been born around wolves and died around dogs. That's what the fossil record suggests anyway.

2) A Russian researcher devised a simple test for domesticatability among foxes in the 1950's as a way of making it easier to produce pelts en masse. He would put a thick glove on his hand and stick it in the cage with the foxes. The foxes that attacked it were destroyed and those that were curious or friendly were allowed to breed. Within a few short years, he was able to domesticate foxes, but in the process they took on rather dramatic physical changes. The shape of their ears changed, and they began to have previously unseen variations in color and markings on their pelts. They also began to bark, much like dogs.

Isn't that crazy? Sometimes, evolution happens very fast. To Keith's point about evolution not seeing more than a generation ahead, I think it's very possible the intelligence lightning struck very fast.

Perhaps. I tend to believe it's more of a difference between an overall healthy organization and an unhealthy one. An unhealthy one will take a good boss and ruin him. A healthy one will purge bad boss's and make good boss's better.

Hi Mark,
Community Edition is downloadable. Just go to the community edition site (http://trisano.org/) to get it.

Feel free to join us in irc (freenode/trisano) if you have any questions about downloading/installing.

Thanks!

Dave

You're right Mark. Here's an updated link to the TriSano product site (we've renamed the product since this post). I hope that helps!

http://csinitiative.com/products/trisano/overview...

You know the saying that the exception proves the rule? This is definitely one of those moments. If you have to find an example that extreme as an (apparent) argument against this post, it is powerful evidence that it's a good rule.

Well Dennis, that may be your bottom line but it's not mine. I'm much more concerned about the long term impact of a job I hate on my health, wealth, and happiness than I am about a paycheck.

That said, the pay is about the same. One major difference though - if we're successful there's a heck of a lot more upside than in IT. Conversely, failure is a lot rougher too.

Hi Jim,
While this is perhaps not as detailed an analysis as you'd like, here are the differences that have been important to me:
1) I feel valuable to the company. I'm not treated like a cost center anymore - I think this is because I'm not. I'm directly tied to my company's revenue.
2) People listen to my recommendations. I don't always win, but when I lose it's because of what's best for the company, not because of what's politically expedient for my management chain.
3) I like my work. A lot of this is because of how important it is that we stay current. We're always close to the edge, and that is fun.
4) I don't have a lot of meetings. When we meet, it's because we have to, not because it's someone's mandate or best practice.
5) My leaders understand my job and actually grok the issues I face.
6) My leadership is under the same pressure to stay current in their responsibilities as I am and they do it.
7) We focus on execution and delivery.
8) We have simple, effective communication channels.

None of these things were true in any of the corporate IT work I've done.

Oh yeah, thought of one more:
9) We don't carry ANY dead weight. We are very careful who we hire and we don't keep low performers around.
Dave

That's a good idea Adam. I think I'll mess around with that. When I test our Enterprise Edition version I don't have to worry about that because the build process creates a working copy that is outside of git, but it's an issue with our Community Edition.