September 2007 Archives

Art historians can tell us why some pictures have a strong emotional impact on us. In a free booklet (available in PDF format if you can read Danish) issued by the Faculty of Humanities at Aarhus University, Denmark, focusing on the topic "war," art historian Lars Kiel Bertelsen takes a closer look at the powerful and famous pictures taken after the World Trade Center attack and compares them with religious and nationalist pictures, which have a striking resemblance.

There are comparatively few pictures available showing situations of horror, fear, and defeat from the World Trade Center attack used in the media coverage of the event. But there are numerous pictures of tired, heroic rescuers or survivors that escaped before the buildings collapsed.

One of the most famous pictures is that of the fire fighters carrying the dead body of the fire department's priest, Father Symon Judge. This picture is compared with the painting of Jesus being taken down from his cross to be resurrected from the dead. The picture receives the same symbolic value, presenting the dead priest as a Christ or a saint. It is quite remarkable in this regard that the priest's name was "Judge."

Similarly, the picture of rescuers raising the American flag in the ruins of the Twin Towers is a striking parallel to the famous picture from Iwo Jima during the Second World War where American soldiers erected the flag on the top of the island to symbolize victory.

It is unclear whether the images were carefully selected by a skilled propaganda team, or whether they just had a strong emotional appeal to the American people who felt that the pictures communicated national history. Lars Kiel Bertelsen is convinced that in any event the pictures were consciously used to justify the Bush administration's "war on terror."

Regardless of intent, the choice of pictures expresses a cultural background—or a desired cultural background—that one wishes to communicate to others or reinforce in oneself.

In the case of the World Trade Center attack, the pictures communicate the Christian resurrection and victory which has been a recurring theme in the American rhetoric in the war against "the axis of evil." According to Lars Kiel Bertelsen:

Terrorist Tycoon from Clandestine Action Games is the latest addition to the huge and growing array of tycoon games on the market. According to Clandestine Action Games:

With Terrorist Tycoon, you design, build, and manage your ultimate terrorist organization. You're in control of everything from politics to combat, always keeping your terrorist army content with your leadership and discontent with your enemy.

Spread propaganda through Al Jazeera or Fox News to gain the support of your patriotic terrorists, and use lies and religion to mislead the world opinion to support your invasion of a country rich with resources using any excuse necessary.

Create trade embargos to "prevent the enemy from using medicine for explosives," or build an economy based on opium to survive. Set up import trade routes for enriched uranium and weapons, but remember to hide your financial transactions so that no-one discovers that your chief arms customer might be your enemy.

Train your combat units in hidden desert camps, experience exciting challenges as your opponents intercept your plans or capture your important leaders, and regroup as former allies become your sworn enemies.

Destroy historical buildings such as the Twin Towers of the former World Trade Center to strike fear in your enemy, or torture your political opponents in the Abu Ghraib prison. Immerse yourself in stunning 3-D effects as bodies are thrown to the ground by a suicide bomber, and watch wounded children drag themselves to safety as your coalition of the willing bombs their homes in your organization's "defense" against its "enemies."

Become the most powerful nation on Earth through your skilled leadership and the support of your God, and make you the one that can call your opponents the terrorists: Bring them on!

Sociotags is a plug-in for Movable Type 4 that adds a list of "sociotags" to your entries. Sociotags are the little images you may have seen on various pages that let you add the page to Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Slashdot, etc.

The Sociotags plugin includes a huge array of references to page sharing sites, and each of them can be enabled or disabled. With sociotags enabled, you'll get a box that looks like this (not an exhaustive list):

Requirements

• Movable Type 4
• Template Installer

Installation

1. Download Sociotags for Movable Type, and extract the archive file.
   
2. Upload the contents of the "mt-static" folder to the "mt-static" folder in your Movable Type installation.
3. Upload the contents of the "plugins" folder to the "plugins" folder in your Movable Type installation.
4. Go to Preferences -> Plugins for each of the blogs where you want to enable Sociotags.
5. Go to the Sociotags plug-in, press "Settings," and click on the "Install Templates" button. This will install the necessary stylesheet template.
   
6. Go to the templates list, and rebuild the Sociotags stylesheet templates.
7. Go back to the Sociotags settings, check the "Enable" box, and click "Save Changes."
8. For each template for which you plan to use Sociotags, add the following line between the <head> and </head> tags (if you are using the MT4 default templates, go to Template Modules and edit the "Header" template):

<$MTSociotagStyles$>

9. Add the following tag to the templates that generate your entries (if you are using the MT4 default templates, your best best is probably to edit the "Entry Metadata" template):

<$MTSociotags$>

10. Add a link to the Sociotags for Movable Type page on your own blog on all pages where the Sociotags are shown (you'll probably want to do this in the "Footer" template). The software is free of charge, but you must add a link.

Note: to use Sociotags for Movable Type, you must place a link to the Sociotags for Movable Type page on your own blog on all pages where Sociotags is used to display quotation boxes.

Please use the comments for bug reports and feature requests.

Imagine that you know someone that believes in Santa Claus. We probably all do: little children often believe in Santa Claus. But imagine that this person you know is an adult person that honestly believes in Santa.

Now, I don't want you to think this person is stupid. I want you to imagine that this adult believer in Santa Claus is an intelligent person who is skilled at his job. He may even have attended university and graduated with high honors. He's easy-going and generally a nice person. Sure, he's not perfect, but on the overall you can't really point your finger at him. He's like most, except he believes that Santa Claus lives somewhere on the North Pole with his reindeer and little helpers, delivering your presents at Christmas, and he believes that he must behave nicely because Santa wants him to be a nice person.

It is easy to recognize that his good deeds are linked to his belief, because although he doesn't brag about them, he encourages others to note. It may be the little badge on his shirt stating that he donated to some charity, or the occasional mention that he is a board member at the local chapter of Santa-believers, who do good for the community.

In fact, I'd like you to think there's nothing wrong with this person. I think you'll agree with me... except for that Santa part, right?

Well, he's skilled and smart all right, and generally a trustworthy and nice person, and apparently his Santa belief makes him do good things, even if it seems a little quaint.

Yet, somehow you'd be a little hesitant to believing his judgment skills, wouldn't you? That is, after your initial surprise of learning that he believes in such superstitious drivel has worn off.

Perhaps you might secretly wonder if he's genuinely such a nice person, or whether the only thing preventing him from being nasty is his belief that Santa wants him to do good. After all, he would hardly believe that humans would do evil without a belief in Santa if he didn't think that he himself would do evil without this belief. You might also feel slightly offended because it means he views you as an evil person because of your disbelief. You would rightfully suspect him of not liking or trusting you, and you would rightfully suspect him of lying whenever he claimed otherwise.

He also maintains that morals and ethics are based on the belief in Santa, so in politics, negotiations, and human relations you'll find him rejecting the values and opinions of other human beings and ignoring human rights because he contributes more importance to opinions that are consistent with those that he believes are given by Santa than opinions differing from his belief voiced by mere humans. He is particularly skeptic against cultures that don't celebrate Christmas. The implication of his assertion that Santa's opinions matter more than human opinions is that human rights can be overruled by the belief in a supernatural, non-human entity.

All of a sudden, this person may not seem so nice. You should perhaps begin to seriously worry what might happen if your acquaintance doesn't get his presents for Christmas.

You realize that his nice behavior is motivated by an egoistic desire for the gift of Santa, that is, his actions are based on the assumption that Santa will give him presents for Christmas if he's behaved well. All of his good deeds are based on this egoistic desire. He believes that Santa will also give presents to anyone else that behaves well according to Santa's wishes. In fact, those people that have been struck by misfortune probably had it coming somehow, since they don't acknowledge the gifts that Santa will provide if they believe in him and behave according to his demands. If they need help, your acquaintance would rather have them profess their belief in Santa than take action or provide tangible help. He genuinely believes that a letter to Santa Claus is better than real help, and he will be happy to show his "helpfulness" by writing such a letter.

Santa is capable of performing miracles, such as bringing your son back safe from Iraq of Afghanistan for Christmas, or in other ways making sure you're reunited with your loved ones. It is the belief in Santa, not personal involvement, that makes the change, according to your acquaintance. Getting your son back safe from the battle field is a matter of belief rather than social responsibility, because your acquaintance wants belief and shuns the thought of responsibility to the responsible. Show your belief in Santa, if you wish to be granted a miracle, and deny the profane methods of the non-believers. That is also how he would prefer that you be treated at the hospital, because he considers this medicine thing to be disgracefully distrustful of Santa's abilities.

You had better hope there are not too many of his kind.

This attitude of his is either a corollary of his belief or symbolized by his belief, but it is in no way caused by, or indicative of, some fundamentalist stance towards Santa. The attitude is the same no matter if he keeps his belief half-heartedly to himself or flaunts it openly. It is that he believes in a supernatural authority that reveals his social irresponsibility and perception of other human beings, not the intensity of his belief.

The belief in Santa that seems a little eccentric at first has major implications that affect the person's life and the person's interaction with other human beings. It indicates how badly this person thinks of other human beings, and how poorly this person treats other people.

Now imagine that you believe in the Christian God, the Muslim Allah, or some third metaphysical being. Maybe now you know what I think of you. I don't mind your specific belief, because belief systems come a dime a dozen. I mind you, the way you are, what you think of me and others, and the way you treat other people, which are revealed by the fact that you believe. You might strike me as skilled and smart, and generally a trustyworthy and nice person... except for that thing about your belief and its implications.

Swan Lake 2003

I have usually just shaken my head at the saccharine-sweet romance that accompanies the lifestyle marketed in the shape of Barbie dolls. In 2003, however, my slight contempt was replaced by indignation when the toy company Mattel introduced "Swan Lake" as a new theme in the Barbie universe: a dream of romance and love in the enchanted wood, where true love conquered the evil sorcerer, according to the commercials.

The original German story of the swan lake did indeed include both romance, love, and enchantment, but it is a tragedy. During his hunt for swans a prince meets the beautiful Odette, and they fall in love. She explains that a sorcerer has cast a spell on her, turning her into a swan and only allowing her human shape by the lake at midnight. The spell can only be broken if a man promises her eternal love. At the wedding when the prince expects Odette as his bride, the sorcerer plays a trick that causes the prince to promise his love to someone else. Odette's curse cannot be broken, and the prince has lost his love. When Odette forgives the prince his mistake, and the story seems about to end happily, the sorcerer drowns the lovers in the lake.

Tchaikovsky cast the story in music, and turned the Swan Lake ballet into one of History's most spectacular musical works. If Mattel's distortion of the original tale alone should cause some wonder, it is a mockery against this classical masterpiece to reduce it to Barbiefied pop culture.

Fairy Tale Exorcism

Mattel is not the only trend-setter. Disney has also discovered that romance sells better than tragedy, so in Disney's version of The Little Mermaid, the mermaid does not die and become the foam on the surface of the sea; she is married to the prince. And in Pocahontas, Disney prefers falsification of History to a tale of American extortion and brutality against the Amerinds.

The children's fairy tale books are also polished. Early versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales abound with bloody gruesomeness against children and other creatures that you won't find in today's renditions.

It is clear that popularization of fairy tales has taken a distinct direction. Fairy tales must no longer be too sad or too scary. Bloody scenes are converted to pastel-colored Teletubby worlds, and grand conflicts are converted to momentary disagreements.

In general, children must no longer be confronted with the dark side the fairy tales of fear, scare, and evil.

Embracing Fear

In earlier times it was a very real and familiar fear that the children could find in the fairy tales. The risk of being abandoned by one's parents was only too imaginable, and hunger and misery was often a daily challenge. Witches, trolls, and magic were something you believed in, and Hansel and Gretel weren't the only children that were left to die in the woods as a result of food shortage.

Fairy tales were thus not just exciting stories. They were scary because they confronted children with those things they had the most reason to fear. Fairy tales were gruesome tales, but they made children face their fears, enabling the children to process these fears.

At the same time, fairy tales confronted the children with a number of conflicts such as desparate love, the relation to an evil stepmother or stepfather, or the situation of being abandoned by one's parents. These conflicts might not have been solvable, but the fairy tales helped children use words or images for conflicts that the children felt but did not quite understand.

Protection from Evil

Responsible parents know that it is only elements of real danger that children should be protected against, such as falls from considerable heights. One should not protect the children from bumping against sharp table corners when they play around the tables. The only result of shielding the children against such accidents are clumsy children that bump into anything that has a shape.

The same is true for children's feelings. Just like a parent should not protect a child against any sharp corner in the house because that will produce a clumsy child, a child will develop a bad response to emotion by the parents that protect the children against its own emotions and feelings. If a child does not learn to cope with the obstacles in its daily life--be they physical or emotional--the child will be poorly prepared for life.

But that is exactly what one does by shielding the child against fear by softening the fairy tales. The fairy tales loose their original scary aspects, and the conflicts are lost. In doing that, the fairy tales loose the very effect that made them so appealing. They no longer provide children with a healthy and safe confrontation with fear and conflict.

If any conclusion is to be drawn from the recent tendency to add artificial sweeteners to the old fairy tales and folklore, it is that children are to be protected against pointy and sharp feelings that may hurt.

The parents' eagerness to protect their precious offspring by any bruise on its self-confidence and any scratch in the sense of justice can only lead to children that have no idea what to do when one day these feelings become pressing. I expect that the new generation will be unable to cope with emotional challenges. They will become even more dependent on religious pipe dreams and more or less dubious therapists and psychologists than currently characterizes the country that produces the Barbie dream.

More Fear, Less Costume

The alternative to padded wrapping of children's emotions will not lead to the brutalization that some film and movie critics warn against. I think the reason movie violence is in fact often a compensation against the movie's protection of the audience against the real fear, leading to a requirement for much more powerful effects before the movie leaves a reaction. If in the original fairy tale one was afraid of being abducted by a monster, the brutalized fairy tale would be a version where the fear of abduction was overlooked while the monster had been very fearfully described.

This is why the movie Alien is much scarier than its successor, Alien 2, where monsters are everywhere. The first movie captures the very thing one fears the most: the fact that there is a cunning and very dangerous monster that is hunting you, not how it looks. If a movie can capture the actual fear, its need for brutal helpers diminishes. Ironically, it is the very protection against the fearful element that turns the tale brutal.

In raising our children, we have never attempted to prevent them from being bruised, neither physically nor mentally. I think they learn that a scratch or a hurt feeling may be uncomfortable but temporary. It will not cause them to panic or to become incapable of coping.

I prefer that my children do not watch the Disneyfied interpretations of old tailes where conflicts have been filtered and brutality removed. We try to encourage self-confidence and a feeling of safety in our children, but we have also purchased a Brothers Grimm book of fairy tales from the time when blood and dismemberment was allowed in the fairy tales—and our children love the stories.

When a person lies, usually it is a conscious attempt to lead a person in another direction than the person would otherwise have taken. Although lies of course share the common feature of deceit, they come in many forms. I've listed some of the more common forms below--not necessarily to suggest any ideas, but to provide an indication of what to beware of:

1. Make a false statement. Such statements range from simple "the grass is blue" expressions to more sophisticated statements, such as stating that one's earlier statements were based on testimonies from people that made type 5 lies (see below).

2. Combine two unrelated, true statements to a third, false statement. This is often done by religious fanatics who argue that their teachings are true. They can provide numerous true examples of how their religion has helped people (for example, their religion may talk about helping people in need, and some people belonging to that religion may work in hospitals), but that doesn't mean their teachings are true.

3. Modify a component or change the order of components in a structure of true statements, so that the meaning of the structure is changed without making any type 1 lies. This is common in "spin control," where a different phrasing changes the "spin" of a statement.

4. Use idea association where unrelated components are added to a structure of true statements, changing the meaning of the structure. For example, we know that Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Chinese government all were/are proponents of state ownership of the industry. Completely unrelated to this fact, they all were/are responsible for human massacres. If this unrelated component is added, one is left with the impression that state ownership of industry implies massacres of the people.

5. Omit selected statements from a structure of true statements, changing the meaning of the structure. The classic version of this lie is the use of "snips" in statements, where it would be quite easy to reproduce an opponent's speech as follows (albeit more subtly than in this example): "the economic politics of the Democrats focus on (snip) rechanneling the economy (snip) to people that don't need money." Like the type 3 lie, this lie is common in spin control and commercials, where a product's weaknesses are omitted from the description of the product.

6. Ask a third party, whose statements are known to include the desired false statements, to provide an explanation. The third party will thereby be responsible for the lie.

7. Use a surprise attack, where you present a person with so vast amounts of information that the person does not have enough time to process the information. The person will then prefer to believe in an incorrect executive summary of the information rather than process the information himself.

8. Extrapolate, using an otherwise true statement beyond its valid range. For example, we often see Christians, who usually don't appreciate the idea of comparing humans with other animals, state that because a particular animal is monogamous, then so are humans.

9. Mention a false component in a way that makes it seem true. The old classic in the software development business is the defect that is said to be a feature.

10. Repeat the lie. Ignore all counter-evidence to your lie, and refuse to meet the objections. Then repeat the lie as often as necessary, still ignoring others' calling your bluff. Eventually your audience will perceive the lie as just a repeat expression, and although the lie is still recognized as a lie, the initial feeling of being lied to has lost its intensity, and the resistance from your opponents wanes.

If one always spoke the truth, one could simply repeat what had happened if one was to be asked at a later time. If one had originally told a lie, however, there is the potential problem that one must be capable of repeating the story without alterations. This places the demand on the liar that he or she either have a very good memory, or that the liar is able to forget that there ever was another truth than the lie.

Research of human consciousness has shown that human memory finds it easier to believe in that which requires the fewest mental resources to accept. Not surprisingly, in practice this means that a lie either has to seem so probable that it isn't necessary to think about it, or that the lie must provide a mental shortcut for the victim, providing a sort of "aha" experience that "explains" a series of complex connections or lack of same.

Perhaps the key skill is therefore to make lies look like truth. In the simplest version one may appear credible and persuasive when one lies. In a more advanced form, one can build confidence by introducing a type 1 lie with a number of demonstrations of truthful intentions designed to lead the victim into a trustful position. Feelings of guilt or an appeal to higher insight can lead a person to feel indebted or stupid, which will prepare the person to believe you. There are numerous such methods of setting the stage for a lie.

At a somewhat more "spiritual" level, lies is a war of space. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu explains how a battle is won by leading one's enemy into a desired (other) place. This creates a vacuum where the forces were moved from. A vacuum tends to be filled, and by placing one's own forces in the vacuum, the enemy can be hit there. The art is to find the right place to create a vacuum, and to lead the enemy to move his forces from that place.

The vacuum is thus "the place where the person was." In its most primitive form of war, a fist in someone's face is also a war of space. The attacked person is hit because the fist "removes the person from his space" and the fist fills the space where the head used to be. In some martial arts, a person can easily be thrown to the ground by exploiting the fact that certain movements create a natural "vacuum" that the person falls into. The vacuum is that person's weak point.

The perception of a lie as a war of space should be taken quite literally. A person's thoughts and attention is part of the person's body, and if the body is affected, so are the thoughts--and vice versa. Lies are used as "movements" that create a vacuum where the person's attention to the truth used to be, and becomes the place where the victim has a weak point. Depending on the character of the lie, the person may simply fall into the vacuum by drawing his own conclusions, or the victim will be dependent on the lies that the liar--quite tellingly--fills the victim with. As in a physical battle, there are many techniques for lying, and the techniques listed earlier are just a small taste.

If a person lies to himself, it is within the person himself that the vacuum exists. Most people that know such a person understand it intuitively. The person defines himself by things outside of himself, is shallow and "empty." If such a person happens to lie to you only to feed his own self-deceit, it is the person's own vacuum that you might get drawn into. Beware of such people, because if war is a battle of space, then it is a war between you and that person--and that person has trained for combat his entire life.

There are many ways of figuring out whether a person lies. Similarly, there are many ways of making a person admit that he lies, often without the person ever being aware of it. Only an undetected lie is successful, and the liar must defend himself against a significant arsenal of weapons that can be used to reveal the liar. I will take a closer look at these methods in part two of The Art of Lying, which will appear on this blog in about a month. So bookmark this blog and check back often!

Part I, Part II, Part III

I can follow some religious fundamentalists that claim that atheists have no morals. But only with some interpretation, and only some of the way.

Most movements, including Christianity, define themselves according to "positive" and "negative" comparisons. A positive definition is when the movement makes statements about who its followers are, what they believe in, and what their opinions are. A negative definition is when the movement makes statements about what it isn't; for example, Christians will readily state in which areas their religion differs from Islam, and the various Christian groups will gladly explain how they differ from other Christian groups. A positive definition is the religion's "what we are" statement, and a negative definition is the religion's "what we are not" statement. Both are valid descriptions helping define the movement, and both are moral statements of what one believes in and what one doesn't believe in.

Atheism is only negatively defined. It rejects the notion of gods but there is no explanation of what atheism is instead. Atheism only implies a non-belief in gods. Moral questions are not covered by atheism. As a "movement," atheism has no shared interests to gather around--just like one doesn't create an organization with the goal of not collecting stamps. Atheism can easily state itself in negative terms (i.e., it is the disbelief in gods), but cannot state itself in positive terms, that is, atheism cannot answer the question of what atheism offers.

In short, atheism has nothing to offer, and the corollary is that since atheism doesn't have moral statements to offer, then it isn't atheism that contributes to any atheist's morals. Morals have to come from somewhere, and according to the definition of atheism, morals can't come from atheism. Both from a religious view and an atheistic view one can sensibly argue that if atheism rejects the concept of gods, then atheism also rejects the notion of god-given morals.

In the hypothetical situation where atheism was all alone, atheism would in fact lack morals, and probably no society could exist without these non-spoken rules of behavior. One can therefore argue that the various religions accusations that atheist have no morals are in fact true.

The mistake in such an argument is of course that although atheism may not offer particular ethical or moral views, atheism isn't shielded from society, and while atheism rejects the existence of gods, atheism doesn't reject ethics or morals. Atheism can easily include Christian morals or other kinds of morals, even if these morals happen to be founded in a world-view that involves the belief in gods. Modern atheism began to appear while belief in gods was widespread (and that's how things still are), and in a sense adopted the morals that were already found in these societies. It means that although atheists don't believe in gods, in practice they behave as if they did.

Atheists thus find themselves in a difficult position, because if they are to draw the consequences of the non-existence of gods, at least they must come up with a good explanation of why the existing morals can be accepted. It is a rather poor argument to state that existing morals should be accepted because their justification is the belief of many people in a particular god.

In practice, atheists choose one of two options when confronted with this question. One option is a rather shallow notion that one just follows a "naturally appearing" moral--where unfortunately one misses the devil in the detail that the moral that feels most natural happens to be the moral that one was raised to believe in by one's predominantly Christian parents. The other option is to consider morals as created by human hands, that is, to rely on, e.g., secular humanism or adopt ideas from, say, objectivism (although the morals of objectivism are highly reminicent of the ethics identified as protestant work ethics by Max Weber more than a century ago).

Atheists are faced with a hard decision: either they adopt the morals and ethics of the religious people they grew up among, or they must face the consequence of a world with no Heaven og glory bright and no Hell where sinners roast: it is a world with no supernatural purpose with life; it is a world where you have only one life which you're responsible for making the most of yourself; it is a world where no authority but humans themselves make the rules. As an atheist, you choose between the hypocricy of claiming atheism yet living according to religious beliefs, or you walk the talk by playing what the religious people have long considered the Devil's game.

Religion has something to offer, and not all of if is intangible. Religion provides a sense of belonging, the feeling of purpose in one's life, and in many cases a social network. Religion has an advantage that will keep would-be atheists from non-belief until atheists can offer an alternative to the emotional, physical, and mental gratification that religions have to offer.

The primary cause of company failure is sometimes found in the company top.

Professor Per Nikolaj Bukh at Aalborg University, Denmark, has identified eight leadership tendencies that can kill your company.

The common denominator behind the eight tendencies is that the entrepreneur who has built a successful business thinks that he can handle everything himself, believing that the success of the company is singularly attributable to his superiority in decision-making and leadership.

This little guide, which is based directly on these eight tendencies, is so easy to follow that many company owners have already taken it to heart. Here is a tried-and-tested "how to ruin your business," no matter how great your products are or how competent your employees might be.

1. Decide Everything

Since you're the owner of your company that built your own business, it's you who can and should decide everything. You made the decisions when you created your company and made it what it is, and that means you should go on doing this. You may have hired subordinate managers since then, but don't let that keep you from making their decisions for them.

Make sure you become the bottleneck, and never mind the fact that although it's manageable to make all of the decisions in company with 15 employees, it's impossible with 200 employees. Also, don't pay attention to the fact that your subordinate managers become disgruntled and demotivated because their influence does not match their responsibilities.

2. Lose the Financial Overview

As your company grows, company finances become more difficult to control, and at some point a single person cannot manage the finances without an advanced business finance system that can provide an accurate picture of the financial status. Don't let that keep you from maintaining the financial records in your own head.

3. Go for Any Opportunity

The market is ripe with opportunities. Don't spend time stabilizing and consolidating your company with all these opportunities for making money. Let your development, customer promises, and deliverables slide while you you seek new avenues for profit.

4. Stay as Long as You Can

It's your company, right? If you must hand over your company to a successor, stay in your company and make the decisions as you always did, without mentoring your successor who won't get the required insight in the company to truly take over when the time comes.

5. Stick to Your Own Methods

You're a busy person, and you have lots of things to do. You won't have time to get out of your office and learn new techniques or get inspired by your staff. Using your known methods and sticking with your known tools beats skill building any time, even if it means your methods are outdated compared with those of your competitors.

6. Rely on Key Employees

If you delegate work, make sure you don't make the delegation role based. Your trusted employees must be named, few, and vital to your work so that you'll lose critical knowledge and skills if they are hired by other companies.

7. Make Wrong Investments

Your company is successful because you built it yourself. Don't outsource production tasks, and don't buy components from suppliers, but develop tools and components yourself.

Your best choice is to use your own investments for these developments, such as having your staff work on them. Firstly, such investments aren't clearly visible on your ledger, and secondly you know better than to trust academic business principles such as demanding a higher revenue from invested money than from borrowed money to justify the expenses.

8. Get the Bad Customers

The more customers the better, so focus on sales. Don't spend valuable time evaluating the customer's expected order placements or ability to pay, and don't spend time determining whether the customer matches the needs of your company. You need all the customers you can get, so don't reject customers that place too small or too large orders.

Mark Carey of MT-Hacks has written a beautiful Visitor Stats plug-in for Movable Type 4, which shows the visitor statistics on the dashboard when you login.

The free version doesn't include detailed views, such as the statistics for each entry, or which search terms led to your blog. These features are reserved for a "Pro" version, which can be expected to be rather expensive for individual blogs or blogs with low traffic.

But, you can get around that with a little hack that I wrote. It queries the Visitor Stats database and compiles the visitor statistics, letting you see the top list of visited pages, the top list of referrers, and the top list of search terms and search words.

I don't want to ruin Mark Carey's business, however, so I have deliberately made no efforts trying to integrate this hack with Movable Type. Instead, the hack is a stand-alone web page that connects to your Movable Type database and extracts and displays the statistics.

Requirements

• Movable Type 4.
• Visitor Stats from MT-Hacks.

Limitations

• This code is deliberately made as a hack. The code is not prepared for users that want a nice interface. You should probably have some experience setting up an application on a web server to use this code.
• The search term extraction relies on an array of regular expressions. It does not detect all of the search engines around the world, and it may not extract the search terms correctly. You may want to experiment a bit with the code.

Installation

1. Download viewstats.zip for Movable Type.
2. Extract the contents of viewstats.zip in a directory on your web server that you've password-protected with , e.g., .htaccess.
   
3. Edit the file config.php so that the database connection is configured for your Movable Type database, and so that the blog ID corresponds to your blog ID. You may also want to edit the "ignore words" list, which contains those words that are ignored in the top list of search words.
   

Usage

1. View your statistics by visiting the directory you created on your web server, and visiting view.php.

Please use the comments for support or questions.

It is only a few years ago since I learned about Jürgen Habermas' division of statements into constative, normative, and expressive statements, and today I wish this would be mandatory education in school. I often engage in debates, but more often than not, the debate falls apart because people apply normative or expressive values in constative utterances, and one just can't use morals or personal taste in fields that deal with cold facts.

To briefly summarize, the statements can be classified as follows:

Constative statements—which can be objectively evaluated as true or false. For example, the statements: "the light is on" or "the Moon is made of cheese" can be determined to be right or wrong no matter what people might think of it.

Normative statements—whose truthfulness require a consensus among a group of people. For example, to determine whether the statements: "murder is bad" or "Republicans do good for the country" are true or false, you must consult the opinion formed by a group of people.

Expressive statements—which are a matter of personal taste. For example, the statements: "I like strawberries" or "I believe in fate" are statements whose truthfulness depend just on the person making the statements. It would not matter if most people thought strawberries tasted awful, or if science could somehow define an objective metric for good taste, because this person would still like strawberries.

There is nothing wrong with supporting normative or expressive statements with constative knowledge. For example, one may argue that cooperation is beneficial (a normative, subjective statement) because game theory indicates that cooperative strategies are advantageous (an objective, constative statement). People often back their opinions with facts that they believe support their opinions.

Problems arise when it turns out that their original, constative statement, which they thought proved their opinion beyond doubt, can be refuted. Then they quickly find another "final" constative argument that "proves" their opinion right. After just two or three attempts where their constative statements backing their normative statements have been rejected, it is clear that all they had was an opinion, and never really had any reason for having that opinon.

If one's morals or ethics (which one might refer to as "normative behavior" or "normative opinion") are to be based on axioms or "natural" causes, then they must necessarily be corollaries of constative statements. If one takes the opposite direction—that is, if one attempts to find constative statements that support a normative opinion—then one attempts to alter reality to fit one's opinions.

There is probably nothing wrong with having opinions that are just that. It is just frustrating to engage in a debate with people with unfounded opinions who misuse the realm of constative statements to argue that their personal tastes express objective or general truths.

P. T. Barnum once said that no-one has gone bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the American people. But, even if you are no fool, people will attempt to separate you from your money, time, or indulgences—deliberately or accidentally. The following tips may be an aid in our current civilization.

1. Trust no-one

You may trust yourself, but others would hardly be wise to trust you. It works both ways, which is why you should not trust others. Even someone that prefers to behave trust-worthy is loyal primarily to himself, or at least to his perception of what he is, and you'll come second.

2. Do not assume that someone will do anything to help you, even if they offer to

At best, they are attending their own agenda, but often they have malicious intentions and simply aim to harm you. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and anything that appears free has strings attached.

3. The more people know about you, the more they can use against you

It would be self-destructive to provide your enemy with information about yourself that may be used against you. And remember, today's friend is tomorrow's enemy. Those that you trust today may eventually turn on you, either because of you or because of them.

4. Never make yourself dependent on someone else's promises

If you make yourself dependent on someone else's promise, you're dependent on this person to fulfill this promise. The person may have only an insignificant influence, but if you make yourself dependent of this person's promises, suddenly this person has a means to control you.

5. Never make yourself dependent on someone else's power

A person that has power over you can make you do things you would not otherwise have done. This may range from neglect of those that deserve your attention to criminal offenses. This is why intelligence agencies try to determine your self-dependency when they assess your trustworthiness in security matters.

Making yourself independent on others' powers can be difficult if you're employed and hence dependent of your employer. If you have a job, make sure you can sustain yourself for months without getting a paycheck.

6. If you make plans that involve other people, never assume that they will do their duty

Do not assume that people have a strong incentive to do what is essentially your work for you. If the responsibility for solving a task lies in your hands, other hands won't solve the task, and even if responsibility lies in the hands of others, don't assume that those people are responsible. Try to plan around those people if possible, or make a back-up solution.

7. Listen to your own heart

Never ignore your gut feeling. If something feels wrong in your stomach, then it means you don't have sufficient control. But be aware of the caveat that you may have learned to appreciate what others have told you to appreciate.

8. If someone makes a statement that may impact you, verify the statement yourself before you adjust your life according to the statement

If someone tells you something, he or she does so for a reason, and the reason is usually to manipulate you in one way or another. It may not be straight-forward to determine whether a statement is true or false. If you verify the statement, you'll know.

9. Remember that people don't change

Very severe actions are required to change someone's personality, so unless you own a brainwashing facility, don't expect that anyone will alter his or her behavior. An asshole will always be an asshole, no matter if he promises to be nice. People often find different names for their behaviors, convictions, and philosophies, but they don't change.

10. Never acquire something that will cause you more grief to depart with than the joy it brings you to own it

Remember that anything you own will own you back. You may have to make periodic payments to keep it working in which case the item requires you to work for it, or you may be afraid it might be stolen. If you acquire something, make sure it is worth it.

11. Alway solve the present problems, and only those

A potential problem is not a problem until it becomes present. This does not imply that one should wait until the last minute to solve a problem. Instead, it means that one should not worry until one knows that there's something to worry about.

Once a problem exists, take action to solve it. A problem will always solve itself if left unattended, but the solution will seldom be to your advantage unless you take control.

12. Do not expect to own something until it is in your possession

If you expect someone to give you something, you do not have it until it is in your hands. Nothing weighs less than a promise.

Imagine that you've provided some content for download that you'll provide for free, but you want to know where it's going and who is downloading it. Or, you may want to draw traffic to your web site by preventing others from hosting the content and thus gain the attention. You can find out who might have downloaded the content by requiring user registration, which will also indicate to other would-be hosts that they shouldn't host the files.

Arvin Satyanarayan provides a privacy plug-in, but unfortunately it seems to work only with dynamically published pages.

It doesn't have to be difficult, though. In fact, it took me just about an hour to write a simple "hack" consisting of a file that you upload to your published blog. The "register to download" hack verifies that the user is logged in before providing access to a specified file.

Requirements: Movable Type 4.

Installation

1. Download download.php for Movable Type.
2. Edit the file so that $blogId is set to the value of your blog ID.
3. Create a directory in the root directory of your published blog named "registered".
4. Create a .htaccess file in the newly created directory that prevents users from accessing the directory. For example, the .htaccess file may look like this:
   

<Files .htaccess>
  order allow,deny
  deny from all
</Files>

order allow,deny
deny from all

IndexIgnore */*

5. Upload download.php to the root directory of your published blog. (Actually, any web accessible place on your server that hosts the files for download will do, but probably somewhere in your published blog is easiest.)
6. Optional: you can edit download.php to refer to a directory that is not web-accessible and thus avoid the use of a .htaccess file to prevent access to the directory, or to refer to a directory that isn't placed in the root folder of your published blog. Have a look at the comments in download.php which explain what must be changed.
   

Usage

1. Upload your file to the registered directory using Movable Type 4 asset manager.
2. Insert the file into your entry using the "Insert File" button.
3. Change to a HTML view of your entry, and modify the <a href="..."> reference to the file so that instead of referring to ".../registered/filename", it refers to ".../download.php?f=filename".
   

Known Issues: download.php is developed for a Unix system. I've no idea how it will work on a Windows server.

Note: to use this hack for Movable Type, you must place a link to this blog page on your own blog on all pages where download.php is used to require user registration for download.

Please use the comments for support or questions.

My change from Windows to Linux wasn't based on ideological feelings against Microsoft or for Linux: It was a simple question of my getting tired of having to reinstall Windows every half a year because Windows had slown to a crawl. In addition, I've seen what I need to know about Vista by now, and wouldn't dream of upgrading the hardware all of the computers in our home to run an expensive operating system.

At the same time Linux is maturing. My current suite of applications that replace my usual Windows suite of applications include the following applications, most of which are free in my Kubuntu 7.04 installation (that is, Ubuntu with KDE as desktop):

A colleague of mine once introduced me to a term that I've found very useful in terms of employment and other involvement. My colleague called it a "goodwill account."

As empyer and employee you don't owe each other anything over extended periods--after all, that's why employees are paid regularly (although of course one should not forget that if the company profits, then it is because its employees are not paid the full value of their work). It isn't only the salary that influences the choice of work place. It also the nature of the work, the work environment, treatment of the employees, etc. This is where the term "goodwill account" becomes useful.

Think of it as a bank account. When you start in a new position, presumably you chose the job for other reasons that salary alone. This means you have a certain amount of goodwill towards this work place. This amount of goodwill is a positive balance on your goodwill account.

The work place can withdraw from the goodwill account until the funds are depleted and other companies begin to seem more attractive. Alternatively, your employer may deposit funds on your goodwill account through work environment improvals, more reasonable treatment of his employees, etc.

In rare cases a goodwill account can be overdrawn without causing you to leave. This happens if in some way you're forced to stay in your position. Your children may have certain daycare requirements; you or your partner may have competences that prevent mobility; you may need to stabilize your resume after a number of job changes, etc.

What is your position on the clock?

A great deal of you have already asked yourself that question upon reading Anton LaVey's The Compleat Witch or the second edition, entitled The Satanic Witch. when LaVey presented his so-called “LaVey Personality Synthesizer work.”

It is also fair to assume that most of you were surprised or even offended at first by the observations and techniques presented by Anton LaVey. For most of you, the surprise or offense quickly wore off, however, and the contents of The Satanic Witch were soon accepted as either fact or interesting fiction. The witches (according to the definition in the book) among you who did not just read the book and agreed with it but also realized and applied the suggested principles can acknowledge the profound effects of utilizing the tools of lesser magic.

But, despite its usefulness, The Satanic Witch leaves a question unanswered. The answer to the unanswered—and unasked—question will reveal that The Satanic Witch addresses a much larger scope than the apparent question of “how do I get laid,” which some readers think is the main teaching of the book. The question is: “why does the LaVey Personality Synthesizer work?”

If you happen to belong to those witches who know their positions on the clock and fiercely maintain that this is how they have always been, then the answer will be quite unpleasant; therefore, I urge you to remember that you were likely surprised or offended on your first read-through of The Satanic Witch. In particular, the answer will not please the many Satanists who envision themselves as twelve-o'clock supermen and master race.

Firstly, recall that the Anton LaVey uses the LaVey Personality Synthesizer to systemize the large variety of personalities found in the Western world by projecting the personality characteristics onto a clock face. There are four main classifications of personalities: the twelve-o'clock personality is the aggressive-male character and the six-o'clock his opposite, the passive-feminine character; the nine-o'clock is the bodily-oriented, obsessive type and the three-o'clock his opposite, the nerd. Anton LaVey subdivides the personalities characteristics further so that we have, e.g., four-o'clock persons that represent a middle way between the passive-feminine six-o'clock and the analytical three-o'clock, leaning towards the three-o'clock type. This subdivision is a sufficient granularity in most cases.

Secondly, revisiting briefly The Satanic Bible, also by Anton LaVey, remember that in the mind-sets of the inhabitants of Western societies, the Devil is considered the adversary. While only few people still believe in a literal Devil, the Devil is archetypically encoded in their minds: it is the concept of some adversary or some opposition that threatens one's being and which one must defend oneself against. By successfully defending oneself against the adversary (be that an existing adversary or not), one feels reinforced. This is essentially what the ninth Statement of The Satanic Bible says, and it also describes the way a person's personality is built up in the Western part of the world.

Every individual has natural drives, instincts, that ideally guide her or him through life. These instincts represent the core personality of a person, according to psychologist Wilhelm Reich, who first suggested the basic principle behind the LaVey Personality Synthesizer. If the core drives were allowed to flow unhindered through the person and manifest themselves in the person's actions, the human animal would display the same fashion as we observe in the realm of non-human, non-domesticated animals.

Unfortunately, centuries of oppression of man's natural drives has conditioned man to disallow the core personality to become manifest: analogously with the traditional conception of the Devil, a person's core self represents the person's “inner adversary” that he unconsciously attempts to defeat. Thus, on top of the core self there exists a mechanism that continuously attempts to defeat the core impulses. The outer layer, the apparent self, which is mapped onto a clock face, is therefore not a reflection of the core personality, but rather the manifest of a defense against the person's core personality. A person's apparent self is therefore but the person's visible armor against this inner adversary. The demonic self is the mechanism that builds the apparent self by attempting to destroy the core impulses.

This explanation of the defensive behavior is not obvious and can be illustrated by the following simplified, Freudian view; and because Freudian teachings have now been rendered obsolete by better explanations, the example only serves to illustrate the mechanism of defense against oneself which has not necessarily changed: consider a male child who, due to ill treatment, has developed an unconscious desire to eliminate his father's power. Since the desire to destroy his father means that his father becomes a dangerous enemy, the child's aggression is frightening to the child; also, the child would lose his father's protection. (Per the child's view, the father stands as both an enemy and a protector). As a defensive measure against this aggression which (if practiced) would only destroy the child (because the father is much stronger, and because the child is dependent on the father), the child becomes afraid of any authority that appears as a potential destroyer (as well as a protector), not just his father. However, fearing to be destroyed requires that the child fight back, and as he grows older he develops an aggressive attitude against authorities (usually teachers, priests, police, or politicians). Unfortunately, this doesn't help the child, because now he has even more enemies, and their immense combined power gives the child an inferiority complex. The child's defense against his feeling inferior is a craving for power.

The lesson to be learned from the above, simplified example is that the child's aggressive apparent self becomes manifest through a series of defensive counter-measures. The similarity between the defensive counter-measure and the traditional rejection of the Devil should now be evident: both are a person's attempt to deny his own, carnal feelings. Ironically, it is in the very rejection of the Devil in the form of natural urges that the demonic self is formed as a personality that displays the characteristics (destructiveness, sadism, etc.) that are usually attributed to the Devil! Anton LaVey is therefore eminently correct in designating the defensive counter-measure a person's demonic self, even if a person's demonic self is not a personality per se.

It is important to note that not only does a person develop an armor that wards off the feelings originating within himself; the armor also protects the core self from any external events that might stimulate the core self and cause it to become consciously known. The demonic self thus exists as a literal barrier, or split, between the core self and apparent self, which in other animals are united.

Thus, for example, a twelve-o'clock, authoritarian personality may be a reaction against the person's feeling inferior. Or, a two-o'clock, cynical personality may be an ultimate result of the person being frightened of having sexual intercourse rather than, as the two-o'clock would prefer to use as an excuse, that “he just doesn't need that sort of thing.”

In short, the LaVey Personality Synthesizer determines how individuals' neuroses manifest themselves. By noticing how straight-forward it is to pinpoint the positions of a large selection of the Western world's population on the clock, this is also to say that most of the Western civilization suffers from more or less severe neuroses. This will be a bitter pill to swallow for the witches who have recognized their positions on the clock.

It is worth noting for those who have been introduced to Freud's model that in The Satanic Witch Anton LaVey uses a later model that solves a number of problems in the model that Freud originally proposed. However, Anton LaVey does not address the causes of neuroses but rather discusses the results and how to take advantage of them; the knowledge that, e.g., a particular neurosis began in a person's “anal stage” is not interesting for such purposes. Thus, generally speaking, The Satanic Witch does not contradict Freud's original model, essentially because such a discussion is beyond the scope of the book.

I do not intend to imply that, say, all male authorities have developed their authority due to a castration anxiety. Indeed, different persons ward off their core feelings in different ways depending on a variety of conditions such as the environment in which they were raised, their physical make-up, etc. The fact remains, however, that everyone wards off their core feelings somehow, and that the ultimate result can be projected onto the clock face of the LaVey Personality Synthesizer. One who does not suffer from neuroses does not fit well on the LaVey Personality Synthesizer. Since such a person does not have inhibitions that prevent her from choosing—versus unconsciously forcing herself into—any position she pleases, she may choose to adopt a stereotypical personality, depending on what kind of persons she intends to interact with.

If a person meets someone who represents his opposite personality in terms of the LaVey Personality Synthesizer, he will meet a full-blown representation of that which he seeks to avoid. That might imply that he would be repelled by the person of opposite personality, but only to a certain degree. The problem is that these people are repelled by the opposite, but also attracted.

The reason is that familiarity breeds contempt for most of these neurotic people. What people hate most in their own friends (not just lovers) is the ego projection of themselves, that very unconscious self that they do not even realize they have. If a person meets his opposite personality in terms of the LaVey Personality Synthesizer, there is little familiarity and the ego projection will reveal an image of himself that is less terrifying than if the person had seen someone similar to himself. Thus, in meeting his opposite personality, his ego projection does not reveal himself, and he is therefore more likely to choose a person with an opposite personality as a friend or lover than someone with his own personality. Simply put, what people see in their opposites is an ego projection that they hate less than they hate themselves and their likes.

For example, a male with an abstaining personality will be attracted to a woman with a “promiscuous” personality. With his abstaining, “virtuous” apparent self, he intellectually dislikes her for her promiscuous appearance. However, in his ego projection onto her, he does not directly see himself and in that sense does not get repelled by her. Also, his demonic self, which contrasts his apparent self as a lascivious beast, desires her. (This is why many “romantic” relationships in the West are often referred to as “love/hate” relationships.) I am, of course, not implying here that two attractions outweigh one repulsion. I am rather stating that people get less repelled by opposite personalities than by similar personalities.

Other than clinging to a person that represents the personality opposite to himself, a person will cling to his fetish. The fetish can represent something in which the person does not see himself and therefore is something that the person fears less than most other things. Alternatively, the fetish can represent something that the neurotic person likes and can seek a refuge with, and which does not threaten his personality with a rigidified armor to follow. (As often as not, neurotic individuals tend to have a collection mania. John Fowles' masterpiece The Collector comes to mind.) In both cases, a person's fetish represents something that essentially sums up his entire neurosis and which does not require the person to ward off his impulses, strengthening his armor. (The fetish, to this person, is safe sex.)

Two persons forming an opposite-positions couple are exposed to a personality in whom they do not easily recognize themselves in their ego projections, and they will initially each feel well in the other's presence. For two neurotic persons, this would be a combination that initially is successful per society's standards. A witch may apply the principle to find herself a man, but, over time, he would eventually prefer to spend his time with her friends rather than with her. For non-neurotic persons, the idea that one should seek out one's diametrical opposite as one's boyfriend may therefore not be correct. Furthermore, being able to categorize oneself by use of the LaVey Personality Synthesizer indicates that one suffers from a neurosis.

Peter Gilmore, the current High Prist of the Church of Satan, reminded me that Anton LaVey had suggested that instead of considering the neurosis a “hang-up,” one could transform it into a “hang-on” and enjoy it, as per of the original philosophy of Anton LaVey's organization. While this is an option, I would tend to disagree: I have seen my share of members of his organization assuming the label “Satanist” only as an excuse to continue those of their practices that had been warped during their upbringing: to them, the Church of Satan represents freedom, but only to practice what they learned in a prison.

People do hang on to their neuroses, but not because they really want to. They do it because they are terrified to face their real, inner feelings, to dig deep into their own hearts and see and remember what caused the split between their core and apparent selves. As such, they retreat into the Church of Satan, where they feel they can hang on to the very thing that represents their own broken nature—they are still clinging to their fetish (refer to Anton LaVey's article, The Fetish Fetish, in issue 128 of The Cloven Hoof). The armor they put on, the apparent self, is the opposite of what they really are. They try to convince themselves that they really are their apparent selves, but their evasions prove that somehow they know their true nature and are terrified by the thought that someone—a witch—can see through them as if they had no armor on. Christians often talk of coats of armor, spiritual armor or physical armor. But well-developed human beings do not need such armor, although they can pretend so it they must manipulate another person. Witches do not need coats of armor, although of old they would have done well to have had some weapons against their murderers!

It is compelling (especially to those who can use it as a defense) to argue that the personality is determined by other aspects than mental composition. For example, the nine-o'clock personality is characterized by a “Teddy bear”-like statute. This is a true, but not a contradictory, statement. Someone may indeed be assumed to have developed his mental state due to his bodily composition, but over some generations the offspring's physical make-up will be the result of inherited physical and mental states. The crux of the matter is simply that body and mind are inseparable, as Wilhelm Reich was one of the first psychologists to realize.

With the above study in mind, the principles of spellcasting operate as follows. When the witch casts a spell on a person by means of lesser magic, she first charms her quarry by “polishing” his armor. More specifically, the process of charming consists of living up to all his ideals of the imperfect, displaying interest in his fetish, etc., so that he will not be afraid to see his ego projection onto her reveal himself. This has been described in detail in The Satanic Witch and needs no elaboration. The effect on the quarry is that by stimulating the person's apparent self or armor and ultimately being the person's armor, the quarry feels comfortable: he does not need to defend himself, and his defensive armor is momentarily softened.

At the moment when the quarry is most vulnerable to penetrations of his armor, as Anton LaVey describes, the witch delivers her load. Whatever the witch's intent, she will be speaking directly to the quarry's core self that the quarry normally attempts to reject. Since his personality is formed by his demonic self as described above, it follows that by speaking directly to his core self (which is impossible unless his armor is penetrated), his future personality will be altered as a direct consequence of his demonic self having to counteract the recently exposed core.

When the quarry is later removed from the comforting company of the witch, he will be his “good old” self again. By spellbinding one's quarry, one does not change his fundamental personality—the core personality remains mostly the same. The six-o'clock male, for example, will still be the same obedient, conscientious work-horse as he was before. But, when the witch has cast a spell, the person will reveal a slight change. The core self, which is usually protected by the quarry's demonic self, has been temporarily been exposed to the quarry. The quarry will now persistently (or even increasingly) unconsciously attempt to “patch” the armor, not knowing that by his very attempts to cancel your spell, he will eventually carry it out.

What used to be simple, carnal instincts have been negated by culture and religious teaching to a degree that has caused a mass neurosis. But, at the same time, it has enabled the use of the very art they are trying to resist: genuine witchcraft!

Another question remains, however. In this article, I have attempted to explain why one can be a complete witch according to LaVey's definition, but The Satanic Witch was written almost forty years ago when women could only accomplish something if they could coerce men to do it for them. Thus, by controlling men, women would ultimately be in control. The means of control was sex: expecting sex as a reward, men would obey the witches.
But times are changing, and even if human nature can't keep up with cultural development, social necessities change: young women are entering colleges to learn, not to find themselves a male who will feed them in return for sex. Women work in society and can earn their own living. Only in terms of children are women still partly at men's will, but that is only as long as states does not provide sufficient child care. Women are finally capable of earning their own education and their own living; they do not need a male to survive any longer. Women now have other choices than to become either a wife or a prostitute.

Witches of 1970 when the book was written had to draw on men's power by means of sexual suggestions. Witches of today have that power. Witches of today have no reason to let men demand sex as payment for services that the witches themselves are fully capable of providing. Women can now have sex for their own pleasure. Men are merely tools for that pleasure. If a tool cannot perform well enough, then replace the tool with a better one: you do not owe it your life any more. In fact, there is no excuse for witches of today to rely on men to help.

Moreover, using sex as payment for a share of men's power does not remove men from their respective positions of authority; in fact, by continuing to play their game, there is a foundation for them to stay in power. If women extended their liberation into sexual liberation, sex would no longer be valid as payment. Since the patriarchal society, with its male authorities, is founded—and survives—on sexually suppressed female slaves, such a sexual revolution would mean the total collapse of the patriarchal society. This greater sexual magic is already being practiced by women who never read The Satanic Witch or even heard of the Church of Satan. Maybe it is about time that also the compleat witches finally get rid of the spelling error and become complete witches.

It wasn't until I had already gotten my first iPod about a month ago (in black, of course, because if you're anything like me, you know that black isn't a color but an attitude) that I discovered its audio book support. Audio books can be read aloud via the iPod at normal rate or at a slightly reduced or increased rate without changing the speach pitch. The iPod also remembers where I left off in an audio book, resuming from that position the next time I decide to listen to the audio book.

Since we have a number of audio books in tape or CD format for our kids, it only made sense to convert them to audio book format for the iPod to bring along on long rides by car, for example.

The creation of an audio book from existing files isn't straightforward, unfortunately, as the iPod audio book format relies on Apple's proprietary formats.

It took me a while of searching and reading online until I learned how to easily convert a collection of MP3 files into an audio book suitable for an iPod.

First, get the following support software:

• mp3wrap, for combining multiple MP3 files into one,
  
• mplayer, for decoding MP3 files to PCM format, and
  
• faac, for converting audio to the audio book format.

Use your Linux distribution's preferred method for downloading and installing these free (of course!) utilities. On my Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 distribution, aptitude was able to locate, download, and install all three utilities.

You probably have multiple chapters or books in MP3 format from your CD or tape rip of the audiobook. Make sure they're named sequentially, e.g., "chapter001.mp3," "chapter002.mp3," etc. Combine these MP3 files into one single MP3 file using mp3wrap as follows:

mp3wrap outputfilename *.mp3

where outputfilename is the name of the combined MP3 files. You could call it "audiobook," for example.

Next, convert the file to PCM. This requires lots of disk space:

mplayer -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:nowaveheader:fast:file=outputfilename.pcm \
  outputfilename_MP3WRAP.mp3

where outputfilename is the same name as you chose for the mp3wrap utility. I'm using mplayer for the conversion, because several other MP3-to-PCM conversion utilities fail as soon as the PCM file size exceeds two Gigabytes.

When you start mplayer, look for a line in the status output that looks something like this:

AO: [alsa] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)

This output indicates that the audio is output at a sample rate of 44,100 Hz (the sample rate of an audio CD), has two channels (i.e., it's stereo), and that sample in each channel is encoded in 16 bits, or 2 bytes, as "little-endian" (Intel mode).

Assuming that the parameters are 44,100 Hz, two channels, and 16 bits per sample, convert the PCM file to an audio book using faac:

faac -R 44100 -B 16 -C 2 -X -w -q 80 --artist "author" --album "title" \
  --title "title" --track "1" --genre "Spoken Word" --year "year" \
  -o outputfilename.m4b outputfilename.pcm

Again, outputfilename is your audio book filename. You probably want to rename it to reflect the title of the book by now if you didn't already specify that as an output filename. In the above syntax, author, title, and year are the author, the title, and the year of publishing of the book. You can put anything as genre, but "Spoken Word" is probably a good choice.

If the output of mplayer says anything else than 44,100 Hz, 2 ch, and s16le, such as 22050 Hz or 1 ch, then you must modify the appropriate parameters for faac. Instead of specifying "-R 44100," specify "-R 22050" in case the sample rate was 22050 Hz, and "-C 1" in case there was only one channel (1 ch) in the above command line example.

Once faac has finished encoding, which is by far the most time consuming part of the conversion process, you may safely delete outfilename.pcm. You can also delete your MP3 files, but you may want to hold on to the original MP3 files.

Audio books can be purchased and downloaded from a variety of online stores, but you might want to see if you can get one for free first. Check out Librivox, Project Gutenberg, Free Classic Audio Books, or Audiobooks.org for free audio books. These were just some of the suppliers of free audio books that came up on a Google search, so perhaps you'd like to add additional sources of free audio books in the comments?

Burgers from McDonalds and Burger King are greasy and gross, and any self-respecting mom knows that she can cook a burger that is much healthier and which tastes better... unless you ask for the children's opinion. If nothing beats mom's food, burgers are the exception that proves the rule. Children don't like mom's burgers.

Single dads can take advantage of that. Here comes the secret behind making a home-made burger so greasy and unhealthy that moms will hate them and kids will love them. It is the kind of burger that only a single dad would make.

The beef recipe is straight-forward. It's simple, because good burgers aren't supposed to be good. Make the burger beef by mixing two pounds of ground meat, a spoonful of flour, two spoonfuls of water, half a minced onion, a teaspoon salt, and some fresh-ground pepper. This servers about six burgers. Make sure you mix the ingredients well. Don't be afraid to use your hands for the job.

The first secret lies in the frying technique. First, form pancakes out of the meat, making each burger beef about twice the diameter of the bun, and as flat as possible. Get your frying pan, and turn up the heat to almost maximum. Leave the frying pan completely dry without the use of fats, and put the burger beef onto the pan once it's hot. Within half a minute the beef will have reduced to the size of the bun. Press the beef hard against the pan with a flat knife. When the beef is done on one side, turn it around, and press it hard against the pan. For the last thirty seconds of frying, put a small amount of butter onto the beef, and let it melt.

As soon as you remove the beef from the frying pan, put a slice of cheese on each of them. You should use the kind of cheese that you use for toasts.

The buns themselves are purchased pre-baked. Now the second secret: don't put the buns on a toaster, because this will make them appear dry and fresh. Instead, put them in the microwave for little less than a minute so they will become hot and moist.

Assemble the burger from bun, ketchup, beef and various salads, and then top it off with Thousand Island dressing and the top of the bun. The third and last of the secrets is a psychological trick that reminds the children of the greasy burgers at McDonalds and Burger King. The secret is to include a pickle and a piece of salad that the children can complain about and remove from the burger before eating it.

Ask any Christian about democracy today, and chances are he or she will tell you that democracy is part of the Christian tradition and that without Christianity there would be no democracy.

They are free to claim anything they want, of course, but one has to be unusually uneducated or religious (which happen to correlate well) to make such a claim.

No Christian country was democratic until a few centuries ago. Before that time, most of them were kingdoms where the church and the royal court had a well-functioning relationship, except in financial matters. After all, the king held his position by the grace of God.

Any insurgencies attempting to introduce semi-democratic kingdoms were quickly crushed as heretic. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, made his position perfectly clear in my country, which is today considered one of the best democracies in the world: when the peasant insurgents rose against absolute monarchy, Luther recommended that they be "slain as rabid dogs" for daring to oppose the god-given power of the king.

It is only within recent History that the Church has spoken for the people, and we need not go far back until the Church was opposed to the power of the people. Under the French Revolution, it was the priests and the royal people that lost their heads--the people was fully aware of its enemies.

One might argue that these examples aren't up to date, of course, so how about democracy in its original context? Well, that was in Greece: at that time, a non-Christian, polytheistic society, long before anyone had thought of Jesus.

Granted, that is long ago albeit quite authentic in terms of democracy, so perhaps a few visits to current or very recent Christian states where democracy thus must be guaranteed (were the Christian claims of democratic tradition true) are appropriate.

We can find interesting experiments in an African country where an army general insists on using the Ten Commandments as law, and where child soldiers are mutilated under a terrible dictatorship. In Chile, Pinochet was a sworn Christian, and near the cradle of democracy we have found Slobodan Milosevich, who was the son of a Christian priest and Christian himself. Perhaps these people had fallen by the wayside according to Christian self-righteousness, but how about a peaceful state such as the Vatican then? No, it certainly doesn't adhere to principles of democracy either.

But then perhaps at least the opposite is true: if we find democracy somewhere, then certainly that would imply the existence of a Christian state? Again, the answer is no. Turkey is a democratic state but Muslem. Thailand, Taiwan, and Japan are democratic states but buddhist. Israel is a democracy, but they're Jewish.

In short, Christianity is neither sufficient for democracy, nor necessary. It is a mixture of religion and politics when people equate Christianity and democracy or claim that democracy requires Christianity.

We can easily recognize the combination of religion and politics in the Middle East, but claiming to rule a country according to the will of Allah is no better nor worse than to equate democracy with Christianity. As long as democracy is equated with a specific religion, the peoples of the Middle East are going to view democracy not only as a change of politics, which is difficult enough, but also as a change of religion. Equating Christianity with democracy, Christians turn the conflict of a change of government into a religious conflict as well.

Christians of the West may consider that a dual victory, of course, but to an atheist democracy is incompatible with any authoritative religion. Democracy means that the mandate is given to the people. If one believes that metaphysical entities can overrule laws made by human hands, and that the rules set by these metaphysical entities are known by a theocratic elite that has convinced the people that they derive their authority from a higher being, then one rejects the core democratic principle of government by the people.

Replacing Islam with Christianity will be just as contradictory to democratic principles. It does not matter who you place above human beings, but whether you invoke such an authority at all.

Joomsayer is a plug-in for Movable Type 4 that enables you to display quotations in a very catchy quote box. Joomsayer has two special features:

Firstly, it displays two quote marks; one in the upper left corner, and one in the lower right corner. This may not sound special, but since neither HTML nor stylesheets allow images to be aligned to the bottom right corner, it is a very challenging task for webmasters to achieve this alignment.

Secondly, it relies almost excusively on stylesheets for display. The default stylesheet leads to a quotation box such as the one shown below:
The default stylesheet allows you to position the quotation box centered as above, or floating to the left or to the right in your entry, letting your text flow down on the other side of the box.

The stylesheets allow you to customize the output with a high degree of freedom. For example, you can get an output such as shown in the following screen-shot merely by changing the style sheet:

Requirements

• Movable Type 4
• Template Installer

Installation (for upgrading, see below)

1. Download Joomsayer for Movable Type, and extract the archive file.
   
2. Upload the contents of the archive to the "plugins" folder in your Movable Type installation. (There should now be a directory called "Joomsayer" in the plugins directory.)
3. Go to Preferences -> Plugins for each of the blogs where you want to enable Joomsayer.
4. Go to the Joomsayer plug-in, press "Settings," and click on the "Install Templates" button. This will install the necessary Javascript and stylesheet templates. Please note that you must have the Template Installer installed.
   
5. Go to the templates list, and rebuild the "Joomsayer stylesheet" and "Joomsayer JavaScript" templates.
6. Go back to the Joomsayer settings, check the "Enable" box, and click "Save Changes."
7. For each template for which you plan to use Joomsayer, add the following line between the <head> and </head> tags (if you are using the MT4 default templates, go to the Template Modules and edit the "Header" template):

<$MTJoomsayer$>

8. Edit the templates that display entries (in the MT4 default templates, those would be the "Entry Detail" and the "Entry Summary" template modules), adding the tag modifier show_joomsayer="1" to the <$MTEntryBody$> and <$MTEntryMore$> tags; for example:

<$MTEntryBody show_joomsayer="1"$>

9. Add a link to the Joomsayer for Movable Type page on your own blog on all pages where Joomsayer displays quotation boxes. The software is free of charge, but you must add a link.

Usage

To have something quoted as a Joomsayer, simply press the indentation button once over the paragraph to quote. (Hovering the mouse over the button should display the help text: "Begin Blockquote.") This will cause the text to be encoded as a "blockquote" in HTML terms. On publishing, the Joomsayer plug-in scans all top-level blockquotes and automatically converts them to Joomsayer quotes without changing your original entry.

To add a source for your quote, make sure that the last text in the quoted section is written between '[' and ']', for example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. [Lipsum Generator]

To convert the source into a URL link, mark it as a link the way you're used to.

Upgrading

Remove the Joomsayer from the plug-ins installation before installing.

No templates have changed, so if you've already inserted the <$MTJoomsayer$> in the heading and installed the template, you may skip these parts of the installation.

You'll note that the Joomsayer button has disappeared from the editor. Instead, you'll just mark the section to quote by indenting it using the "Begin Blockquote" button.

Old Joomsayer from version 0.1 were "hardcoded" into the entries when you inserted them, so they will stay in place.

Known Issues

1. As the Joomsayer converts all top-level "blockquote" sections to Joomsayer quotes, this means that anywhere in your entries where you've used the "blockquote" for simple indentation formattion, you'll have a nice quote instead. You may want to revisit these entries.
2. I'm not a style sheet wizard, so the quotation boxes will display slightly differently in different browsers and desktop environments.

Note: to use Joomsayer for Movable Type, you must place a link to the Joomsayer for Movable Type page on your own blog on all pages where Joomsayer is used to display quotation boxes.

Please use the comment for bug reports and feature requests.

Joomsayer for Joomla is also available as a Joomla plug-in; hence the name.

Joomsayer is a plug-in (formerly known as a "mambot") for Joomla, a popular, free open-source content-management system (CMS).

The plug-in lets you show beautiful quotes on your site. Joomsayer's special feature is that the layout relies almost completely on style sheets, and that the quotation marks are shown in the upper left corner and the lower right corner, regardless of text size, a task that poses serious challenge to most webmasters.

A built-in style sheet allows centered, left-aligned, or right-aligned positioning of each quote, and offers customization of colors and text style. (The image to the right is an actual screenshot of Joomsayer in action using a customized style sheet.)

Note that although Joomsayer includes a built-in stylesheet enabling you to start quickly, familiarity with style sheets is required in order to take full advantage of the plug-in.

Get the plug-in here: plugin_joomsayer-0.6b.zip. Note: please do not host this plug-in on your own site, but feel free to link to this blog entry.

This is the official home of the Joomsayer plug-in. Please use the comments for support and suggestions.

Installation Instructions

1. Install the plug-in via Joomla's mambot installer by browsing to the Joomsayer zip file that you downloaded, and press the "Upload and install" button.
2. Go to the site mambots menu, and publish the plug-in.
3. Configure the plug-in's use of style sheets according to your needs; hover the mouse over the configuration parameters for explanations.

Usage

Create your quote by inserting a Joomsayer tag in your content as follows:

{joomsay [suffix=class_suffix] [link=url] [Source]}The text that is to be quoted{/joomsay}

This will render "Text that is to be quoted" in a quote box in your content. The box will include the left quote and right quote characters that you enter in the Parameters list on the right.

If the optional Source (plain text) is specified, this will be shown as the source of the quote. If the optional link=url (with an URL to a web page) is specified, the Source is shown as a link to that page.

The optional suffix=class_suffix is used to assign individual styles to the quotes. The default value for class_suffix is "_wrapper", leading to the full style sheet class name 'joomsayer_wrapper' for the outer <div> tag of the quote. Use the style sheets to customize the Joomsayer appearence for your own choice of class suffixes. (Hint: for the built-in style sheet, you may omit the suffix, or set it to suffix=_left or suffix=_right.)

Hint: to create your own style sheet, first specify "built-in" in the style sheet selection in the Parameters list. Then view the source code of the your web page as it appears on the site. The built-in style sheet will be inserted in the <head> section of the web page.

Remember to publish the Joomsayer plug-in.

As you may know, Movable Type 4 allows you to schedule entries for future posting so that when the time comes, they're automatically posted to your blog site.

This allows you to:

1. Publish your entries at a steady state even if you're not at the computer; for example by writing a number of entries in advance, and have them published automatically after you've gone on vacation, or
2. Write your entries while at work, scheduling them for publishing after you've come home. (Not that I'd recommend this, but your mileage in terms of job security may vary.)
   

I won't go into detail how to configure your MT4, because this is already documented at Moveabletype.org, save to say that it requires you to run a script named "run-periodic-tasks" periodically.

Unfortunately, not all web hosts allow you to open a shell to start the "run-periodic-tasks" script as a daemon, nor do all web hosts allow you to add cron job scripts.

Your web host may instead allow you to specify a web address to visit at specific intervals. With the following short little script, you can call MT4's "run-periodic-tasks" script whenever the script is visited as a web page:

<?
passthru( "cd MT/tools; ./run-periodic-tasks -verbose" );
?>

Yes, it's that short. Name it "MT-run-periodic-tasks.php" (or whatever suits you best), and place it in the root folder of your blog so that "MT," the directory where MT4 is installed, is a subdirectory. You can actually place "MT-run-periodic-tasks.php" anywhere you like as long as it's accessible from a web browser, but then you'll have to change the path in the above script.

If your path to MT4 is www.example.com/MT/, then you should now be able to execute the scheduling script by visiting www.example.com/MT-run-periodic-tasks.php. This is also the URL you insert in your web host's periodically visited web address, if your web host provides such a service.

You can use this trick even if your web host doesn't offer any kind of cron job service whatsoever. Just find a free cron job service online, such as WebCron, Web Service Scheduler, or remote-CRON, or pay a limited amount for a similar service at, e.g., WebBasedCron, and have this service call your script.

Last Saturday a friend of mine gave me a special gift: "The Source", a hot sauce from Original Juan Specialty Foods, who claims this product as the world's hottest hot sauce. According to legend as told by Original Juan Specialty Foods, the god that held the Source of all energy had to protect this source from other gods quarreling about it, and hid it so well that eventually it became nothing more than a legend--until now.

The 1 oz bottle is beautifully packaged in a box with a fetish figure on the outside, stating that "All things good or bad are driven by energy," implying that that this hot sauce is the source of this energy. It isn't really a sauce but a chili paste for those that like hot food.

We're used to hot food in our family. Tonight we had pumpkin soup by request of our daughter, and both of our children aged three and eight ask for chili sauce for their soup.

Pumpkin soup also means hot chili sauce to me, and preferably much hotter than requested by our children, so today was a perfect day to try The Source, which until now had been confined to a shelf out of children's reach.

Upon opening the box, I received the first indication of just how hot The Source might be. You rarely find foods with liability release labels, but the back label of the bottle made it explicit that:


An appropriate warning for a bottle claiming to contain hot sauce equivalent to 7.1 million Scoville units, meaning that it will have to be diluted 7.1 million times before the irritant active component causing chili to feel hot is undetectable, or about thirty times hotter than the hottest chili. In other words, whatever The Source is, it must have come straight from Hell.

The contents, a maroon paste, was to be applied with a plastic spatula. Wise from experience with hot chili, I scraped a barely visible amount off the spatula and mixed it into my bowl of soup.

It tasted wonderful. It was truly a great taste of fine chili, but as chili lovers can tell you, if hot chili feels hot right off the bat, get ready to burn, baby.

The sensation of a lit fuse came almost immediately. And it became hot. Burning, freaking hot. My nose started to run, and my eyes watered. If I had put anything more than just a pinch of the paste into my full bowl of soup, I swear I'd have had to see a doctor.

Yet the taste is addictive. I can't wait to experiment with this product in a dish that requires chili as a critical ingredient. I'm not sure which god held The Source, but I suspect he is to be found among those with horns and cloven hoofs.

A few years ago a CEO asked me how I was able to beat her entire company and any other mention of her on the Google searches with a single blog entry on my other (Danish) blog that wasn't too flattering as it was a powerful (but civil) retort against an interview she had given in a local newspaper.

I didn't reply to neither her question nor her invitation to come by for a chat in case I happened to be in town, primarily because I didn't feel like debating the issue with her. It seemed to me that she would just repeat her request to have the entry removed. I also refrained from mentioning to her that I was very often in town, and that in fact I happened to work just one level downstairs in the same building as her company.

I did wonder why I'd be the top search match on Google, though. There were no links to the blog entry from other pages. I think my blog had a reasonable page rank for a somewhat obscure blog at that time, but her company name and her own name could hardly have been less known on Google than my blog.

Even today the pages on my other blog are found much higher on the Google search results than I'd imagine. None of the usual explanations about page ranking algorithms seem to apply. I never even paid attention to keywords or "tags" for my entries. What do my entries have that other entries don't have?

Okay, I presume my entries have the envy of a few bloggers and the resentment of at least one CEO out there, but that's not what I meant.

I don't have the answer to what my entries have, but I do have a few observations on what top Google search results don't have that my high scoring entries also don't have.

• Pornography. Granted, many of the search phrases seem to concentrate on just that, and several of my blog entries do contain phrases that could have sexual connotations causing the search hits. (I suppose that by writing entries that are reached by searches for sexual content, perhaps I should reconsider my mental health according to Freudian theory.) There's no explicit sexual content in the top search results, however, but hints are fine, and people appear to search for that.
  
• Illegal software. Microsoft does seem to consider any software not written by Microsoft to be of dubious nature and approaches open-source software as criminal activity, but this trend probably hasn't caught on at Google. Downright illegal software, or "warez," doesn't seem to reach the top of the searches, though. (Speaking of Freudian, what is one to think of a person's libido if he calls his company micro-soft?)
• Bad grammar and spelling. Do a Google search for something, and check the top results for language quality. There are few spelling and grammar mistakes. (You may now add "anal" to my use of Freudian theory on blog content.)
• The entry is short. (Er, let's just stop mentioning Freud now.) Most entries appearing in Google searches have a reasonable length. Terse comments don't show in the search results unless you're searching for a unique phrase that is found only in a short note.
  
• Unconventional terminology. If the article uses the same field-specific terms in the discussion of a topic as other articles, the article can draw some authority from field conventions. It would be fair to assume that an article is not relevant if it uses terms that are absent in most other articles discussing that topic. The ability to use correct terminology probably correlates with the ability to write reasonably lenghty articles, so maybe this is sheer coincidence from a Google search point of view.

The general picture is that a Google search may not yield what you were looking for, but Google searches rarely return material that would rate as complete junk to an intelligent mind.

I'm sure that Google suppresses web pages with pornographic or evidently illegal content, but in addition to that I suspect that Google applies some content analysis algorithms that benchmark the language quality and content coverage of the articles when the articles are sorted for relevance. I haven't been able to verify this suspicion, but it does appear that top search results do share some quality characteristics.

In the above is even remotely true, then the corollary is clear: to make your entries come up early in the Google searches, make sure they're well-written, of reasonable length, and that they apply proper terminology as applicable to the topic. And, make sure to add some Freudian slips to your content, making sure that when you say one thing, you mean your mother.

Are you considering CMMI in your company, and are you new to CMMI? In that case this article may be just what you need to get started.

Somehow I think we need a "CMMI for Dummies," which appears to be one of the few "____ for Dummies" books yet to be written. But then again, real dummies probably wouldn't read books on neither CMMI nor any of the related fields such as process identification, process improvement, and enterprise architecture. You could of course sign up for SEI's Introduction to CMMI seminar and take the accompanying book, CMMI--Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement, with you home, but in my opinion this wouldn't provide you with sufficient knowledge about CMMI. Don't get me wrong: SEI's introduction seminar and this CMMI book are both excellent and practically vital (the introduction seminar is in fact required for participation in the SCAMPI appraisal team that you'll assemble when your company is to be appraised for the next CMMI level), but they're certainly not enough. I'll refer to CMMI--Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement as the "CMMI book" from now on.

I've worked with CMMI and process improvement for several years now, and I'd like to share some of my experiences and opinions with you. Keep in mind, however, that the following may not apply to your company. Good communication with your CMMI assessor is key to a successful appraisal. It is for the same reason I'm not going to cover the topic of the actual assessment, which your assessor can prepare you for much better than I can do here.

Capability and Maturity

CMMI is an acronym for "Capability Maturity Model Integrated." The last word basically means that CMMI is a fusion of best practices from a number of different capability maturity models that were eventually combined into a single model that is reminicent of the CMM.

So, CMMI is a capability maturity model. I think many of those who embark on the CMMI journey read the word "capability" and forget the word "maturity," and soon the company's CMMI sponsorship is directed towards specific IT systems or specific project lifecycles. This perspective is equivalent to viewing all problems as nails and then believing that maturity means buying a bigger hammer. I'm sorry to say it, but thinking you can "tool" yourself to maturity is the level of maturity of the young male that pimps his ride.

Maturity means that whatever the company is doing, the company does it in a way that is well-documented, where everyone knows what is expected of them and perform accordingly, where performance is not dependent on heroes, and where decisions are made on proper analysis of the situation.

Maturity does not refer to the use of specific tools or methods, but on how you work. For example, you can apply a project management method such as SCRUM both maturely, taking advantage of its potential to provide high visibility in terms of planning and status, its requirements management scheme, and its risk reduction advantages. But you can also apply SCRUM immaturely where the project manager neglects his or her responsibilities, operating at CMMI level 1 with a mostly unmanaged development group that relies on heroes for performance and sheer guesswork for planning. (Believing that a specific management model will make you mature is just another way of tooling yourself to maturity, since project management models and project lifecycles are just tools in your product development toolbox.)

This doesn't mean that capability does not matter, of course, and capability is closely connected with maturity. You'll need to solve your problems with proper tools, and if a different hammer is really needed, by all means go and get one. The use of proper tools is an indication of potential capability, but how you use the tools, and for what purpose, is an indication of your level of maturity: you hand out sharp knives to children only when they are mature enough to use them.

Remember, it's only a model, and as industrial statistician George Box once said, all models are wrong, but some are useful. It means that in the end, your company processes should be clearly recognizable as CMMI compliant, but they certainly don't have to look like the process areas that the CMMI describes. The CMMI "processes" are referred to as process areas, indicating that the "processes" described in the CMMI documentation are not really to be thought of as processes, but rather as containers for elements that should be found in the work processes of a company that meets the CMMI requirements. It is possible to grab the CMMI book and basically copy the process areas and make a one-to-one relationship between the CMMI process areas and your company processes. It is not necessary, however, and it probably makes much more sense to identify your company processes and then fit the elements of the CMMI process areas into your company processes. I'll get back to this later.

How fast does one mature on the CMMI scale? The SEI states that progressing from one maturity level to the next takes about 18 to 24 months from when a company starts with no processes and until it is ready for an assessment. The figure depends highly on your company, but if you have little experience with process improvement work, don't expect to be better than most others. One CEO who had been directly involved in the CMM (not CMMI) level 2 efforts in his company insisted that they had become CMM level 2 ISO certified within two calendar weeks, and hence progressing to CMMI level 2 or 3 would be a simple task for a company that capable. When we investigated the time sheets, we discovered that this figure was grossly understated: somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 hours had been spent on the CMM level 2 preparations, and would have required everyone in the company to have put in 90 hours per week. It's good to be optimistic, but don't be delusional.

As you begin, you'll invariably be asked the question: "how much will it save us?" There's no way to answer that question up front, because in order to answer it, you would have to know how much the company is wasting on immature processes and work flows, and how much of that waste can be eliminated. As an expert enterprise architect once told me, just tell them "23%." It's a number that sounds appealing and not too sales-like, and the true figure your company can expect will be anyone's guess anyway.

Levels of Maturity

Search for CMMI on the web, and you'll find the five levels of CMMI:

1. Performed. This is where everyone starts: your company is making products and you're earning money, so evidently you're doing something right. But you'd have a hard time describing precisely how you're doing it. Your project teams may be managing by the book, but they certainly can't tell you which book. You're performing, but you don't really know why or how well.
   
2. Managed. At this level, your company's project teams are well-functioning according to ordered methods that are well-documented. There's no guarantee that one project team is managed by the same methods as another team, however, and each time a new project is started, you may find the team reinventing the wheel.
3. Defined. This is where all of the methods are well-defined across your company, and all of the projects perform according to those methods rather than figuring them out on their own.
   
4. Quantatively Managed. The projects perform according to the same methods as at the "defined" level, but at the quantitatively managed level the projects will have plenty of hard data to back their decisions and performance. This enables the projects to make sound decisions and quickly identify deviations, and it obviously requires that the defined processes have been followed for a while.
   
5. Optimizing. At the last level, the organization continuously focuses on optimizing its work processes. This requires plenty of statistics from the quantitatively managed level.

As an aside, you may want to read Tom Schorsch's Capability Im-Maturity Model (CIMM). It's a tounge in cheek proposal that describes hopelessly immature companies, but I'm afraid Tom Schorsch is right on the money on quite a few companies out there. If your company exhibits any of the traits identified by Tom Schorsch, you should seriously consider pursuing your career as responsible for CMMI somewhere else.

Since all companies start at level 1, the CMMI model doesn't state any requirements below level 2. Level 2 is concerned with project planning and processes for managing projects, requirements, and suppliers, and introduces "support" processes that are vital for further maturity: configuration management, metrics and analysis, and quality assurance.

Level 3 introduces a large number of processes. Risk management is added to the project management toolbox, and the project management processes are expanded with processes for integrating separated teams in the management. This level also introduces three processes aimed at defining processes at company level rather than project level. Level 3 also involves processes for constructing products according to well-developed requirements, and for verifying and validating the products.

Level 4 adds processes for assessing objectively how the various processes perform, and for managing according to objective metrics and statistics.

Finally, level 5 provides processes for maintaining an organizational environment for innovation and for identifying and correcting the cause of problems and inefficiencies in the processes.

At each level, all of the processes for that level (and previous levels) must be institutionalized in the company. This means that the processes must become second nature to everyone involved in the processes, much like your morning ritual is probably second nature to you; it's a sequence of tasks that you perform and objects that you use without really thinking about it.

Institutionalization doesn't occur overnight. It takes a while for the employees in a company to get used to new processes to the extent where they believe this is what they've always done. Take note of this, because it means that progressing to the next CMMI level can easily take years.

I've avoided the discussion about continuous vs. staged representation until now. The two approaches aren't really that different, and I think they primarily indicate different company objectives with the CMMI. The staged representation organizes process requirements according to maturity while the continuous representation organizes process requirements according to capabilities. The continuous representation is a recommended order of introducing capability oriented CMMI practices (more on practices later) in order to also reach maturity. Since maturity and capability should go hand in hand, I think the difference is mostly a question of how the CMMI implementation is organized in the company.

Proprietary Language

One of the first things you should learn is the CMMI glossary. Many expressions and terms, e.g., "as appropriate," "establish and maintain," "adequate," "as needed," "consistently," "defined process," etc., may seem intuitively understandable, but have a very specific meaning in the CMMI context.

The CMMI book fortunately includes a glossary of the terms, but its descriptions are somewhat terse and in my opinion do not always clarify the terms.

For example, the explanation of "as appropriate" states that you should interpret CMMI goals and practices so that they work for your organization. This sounds easy enough, but it lends itself to another question: within what limits can I interpret the goals and practices? For such terms, it is a question of getting a proper feel for the needs of your company and making sure you do "not too little, and certainly not too much."

Striking a balance between "too little" and "too much" in terms of company needs versus processes is highly dependent on the nature of your company and I'm afraid also on the personal tastes of the various stakeholders. Too many process improvements projects have leaned towards the "too much" side, and as the one in charge of identifying and defining processes, it is easy to overdo the processes, making them too complicated for the target audience. It depends entirely on your company needs which metrics and which level of measurement granularity to use, what a particular CMMI practices means in your company (for example, SP 2.1, "Review Interface Descriptions for Completeness" in the product integration process area isn't quite the same to a software vendor as it is to a hardware vendor), etc.

For other terms it is easy to miss the point. For example, the term "establish and maintain" is so prone to misunderstanding it that the glossary actually states that the term connotes a meaning behind the words.

You'll find these terms throughout all the CMMI documentation, and if in doubt, always consult the CMMI book, and never assume you can figure out the meaning on your own. This is also true if you're ever in doubt or if you ever forget what some CMMI practice means: consult the book.

Policies, Processes, Procedures, Guidelines, Process Assets, and Tailoring

Much of the CMMI documentation discusses processes and makes little mention of procedures, perhaps in an attempt to avoid the rather frequent discussion of procedures in the CMM (the main predecessor of the CMMI) that had made the CMM appear unapplicably rigid. Procedures are nonetheless the primary building blocks of the CMMI, in my opinion. The reason I think so will probably become clear as I try to structure the various levels of process documentation involved in the CMMI:

At the top level, you have policies. At CMMI level 3, the company must have a policy for each CMMI process area stating in brief terms what major company goals each CMMI process area should meet. In my opinion, you don't have to phrase the policies in CMMI terms, organizing the policies according to CMMI process areas. You may instead want to have policies stating, say, that you must be able to fully recreate all of your shipped product versions, in case of the configuration management process area. Various CMMI appraisers will have different opinions on this.

Next, you have the processes (that is, your actual processes, not CMMI process areas). Each process involves a number of tasks to solve in order to meet certain goals, and it describes which work products are required to perform the process as well as which work products are produced by following the process. It also describes who performs the tasks. There's more to a process than this, but I'm mostly trying to explain where in the big picture you find the process. The process description is kept at a rather high abstraction level, describing what is done; you wouldn't, and shouldn't, know how to perform the process merely by reading the process description.

Procedures clarify the processes, explaining how to perform each step in the process. Your company will soon need several different procedures for the same process step, depending on department needs or project characteristics. For example, one of the CMMI process area steps requires you to estimate the effort required to develop your work products. It obviously depends on the type of work product how you estimate its size and the effort required to develop it, so you'll have different procedures and tools for that same process area step.

The procedures are kept practical. As a rule of thumb, someone that has received training in the tasks described by a procedure should be able to follow the procedure. If a procedure requires rather elaborate instructions, such as the use of a particular tool, you'd refer to instructions in the procedure. Procedures also refer to tools, templates, and guidelines. Guidelines are basically rules of thumb that are used to, e.g., describe considerations that one should make for particular decisions that don't lend themselves well to proceduralization.

Think of the detail level of processes, procedures, and instructions as a match to the skill levels of your colleagues:

• Process descriptions are for the experts that have years of experience, and only need brief descriptions, templates, and checklists. (In my opinion, templates and checklists are invaluable tools for ensuring consistency and avoiding errors and omissions.)
• Procedure descriptions are for the average colleagues that need training before they can follow the process. The procedures describe in somewhat broad terms how to perform a task, in sufficient detail to follow the description with appropriate training.
• Instructions are for the novices, who need detailed step by step guidance.

The procedures, tools, templates, guidelines, instructions, and checklists are your process assets. Think of the process assets as your toolbox. Whenever you work on a something, you follow the processes using those tools from your toolbox that make the most sense on that task.

At CMMI level 2, you basically make up the processes, procedures, etc. yourself. Together, they comprise a business manual for your project detailing how your project team should work on your project.

Then there's a huge conceptual leap to level 3, because when you're moving to this level you should be able to unify the processes across your projects so that they follow the same processes in the sense that what they're doing is the same. All projects conform (mostly) to the same processes, and the company provides a number of process assets that is the company's toolbox for following the processes. You no longer make up the processes or the procedures yourself, and so you don't have your own toolbox anymore. Instead, you specify which process assets you need for each process based on the process assets made available by your company. Your choice of process assets is your business manual. This choice of assets is referred to as tailoring of the process.

Modify your processes and procedures too much at level 3, and it basically means you're moving back to level 2 or level 1. I've heard department managers state that they're just interested in high-level processes, because they don't want to get bogged down by lengthy procedures. They'll just take the processes as inspiration and modify them according to their needs; as they said, "we'll tailor the processes so we can use them so they're completely lean and agile" (or whichever buzzwords the department manager is fond of that makes it sound like he or she keeps a well-trimmed budget).

That's a bad approach for several reasons.

Firstly, the processes are supposed to have been created based on the project and company needs, so they shouldn't need modification. If the department manager says he or she will want to modify the processes, then you probably didn't have the necessary buy-in from this rather important stakeholder when the processes were created.

Secondly, processes state only what to do, not how to do it. For example, "Estimate the size of the work products" might be a good process level description, but as any skilled programmer can tell you, estimation is no trivial task, and it can be performed in many different ways. If the process is to ever be put into practical use, you'll have to know how to follow the process; in the case of estimation, you'll have to know which estimation method and tools to use, among other things. When these department managers don't want procedures, then they don't want their employees to know how to follow the processes, which in turns means that they are basically saying that they don't intend to follow the processes.

Thirdly, tailoring does not mean you eliminate or modify parts of a process as you see fit. Tailoring means selecting those procedures, guidelines, templates, tools, and other process assets that are the best way to follow the process on your project. It does not mean omitting procedures or modifying procedures at will, because that's reverting to level 2 or level 1. Procedures describe how to follow a process, and tailoring means finding the procedures with the best fit for your project. Following the process is mandatory, and your freedom lies in determining how to follow the process within the limits of the tailoring guidelines provided by your company.

You certainly don't do what one project manager I've met thought he could do. He had discovered a specific agile project management style and believed this project management style would allow him to "tailor" the project planning process to omit all of the project plans, including configuration management plans, requirements management plans, risk management plans, verification and validation plans, and quality assurance plans. In short, he was expecting to be the tailor of "the emperor's new process," which was to be so lean you couldn't even see it.

Beware also of the entrepreneurs. They are often highly motivated, but are also highly prone to ignoring processes and procedures, and want to focus on tools and tend to manage "their way," which in practice means a crude level 1 way. They can be problematic both when you identify and describe your processes, and when eventually you deploy the processes throughout your company.

I'm not very willing to accept arguments stating that you're a company with rather different types of projects, so you can't use the same processes in one department as in another. Yes, you'll have different ways of doing things in your projects. Most likely many of your procedures are going to be different. The processes are going to be mostly the same, however, and unless you want to fail the assessment, the CMMI process areas must be identifiable in your processes. Remember that probably much bigger companies than yours with highly complex products are able to follow the same processes throughout the respective companies, so if you think your company can't, then probably you don't have sufficient insight into either your own company, your processes, or the CMMI process areas.

There are times when a practice may be very significantly reduced in scope or in rare cases ignored. It seems reasonable that small companies will have processes and procedures that are relatively simple while large corporations will have a huge array of different procedures for following the processes.

You can't leave any process areas out, except the supplier agreement management process area in case you don't integrate components provided by other suppliers into your products.

Goals and Practices

Each CMMI process area aims to meet a few goals. These goals are mandatory: your company must demonstrate that those goals are met, or you will not be compliant with the process area.

The CMMI process area goals are met by following a number of specific practices (SP) and generic practices (GP). These practices are "recommended," which for all practical purposes means mandatory. It means you can omit a practice, but you had better have a very good reason for doing so, and you should describe what you're doing instead that's just as good. Finally, there are optional practices. I prefer to think of them as suggestions to what you might do, and they serve well as clarifications of the recommended practices.

Specific practices are relevant only for the particular process area. For example, SP 1.3, "Establish Verification Procedures and Criteria," of the verification process area, is obviously relevant for verification only.

Generic practices are practices that are essentially the same regardless of process area. For example, GP 2.8, "Monitor and Control the Process," states that the progress and performance of each process area should me monitored, and that corrective action should be taken if irregularities are detected. This is true for any process area, no matter if it's verification, configuration management, or project planning. You should, in fact, make sure that all of your processes are monitored and controlled this way, not just the process elements containing the CMMI process area elements.

Be careful with the generic practices. They are the same for all of the CMMI processes areas, and it's easy to think this means you have a small total of ten generic practices to follow (at CMMI level 2). That's an understatement, because you have seven process areas at level 2, and each of the ten generic practices applies to each process area. It's not true to say this yields 70 practices, though. For example, GP 2.5, "Train People," means that your company should train to people to follow the appropriate procedures, and while certainly proper training applies to all processes, you probably wouldn't add a training task in each process; instead, you would probably have some sections in some processes taking care that your employees receive the needed training.

Several of the generic practices will seem redundant or self-referencing. For example, GP 2.2, "Establish and maintain the plan for performing the process," means that each step in your process should be planned so you know how long it takes, when it is to be performed, and which resources it requires. This seems redundant for the project planning process area, because the project planning process area is concerned with just that: planning. But in fact the project planning process itself should also be planned; for example, part of the project planning process area includes estimation of the size of the work products to be developed. Estimation is not a trivial task, however, and may involve specific people whose time must be allocated. You therefore need to plan the estimation, and when you've planned the various tasks involved in the process planning process area, then you'll know the effort required by the initial planning phase of the project. You'll find similar apparent redundancies for project monitoring and control, configuration management, etc.

Document Your Existing Processes First

It is tempting to grab the CMMI book and apply the process areas as they are, that is, as if they were processes, to your company at the level of detail matching the requirements of your organization. This isn't entirely wrong, of course, and you can (mostly) follow each process linearly in a waterfall-like fashion. For example, the project planning CMMI process area involves a set of specific tasks that you'll most likely want to perform, and probably also roughly in the same order as the practices are described in the CMMI process area. I suspect it is the waterfall-like form of the CMMI process areas that have led to the myth that CMMI cannot be combined with various lean practices.

I think there's a better approach, though, and I'll assume you're starting from scratch.

First of all, you need a group of people responsible for describing the company processes. This group must be assigned one hundred percent to this task, because otherwise they will soon find themselves working on other projects, neglecting the process work. In addition, the group must have full sponsorship from the company, which means time and resources must be allocated for the group. Nothing weights less than a promise.

I cannot stress the importance of sponsorship enough. There must be time and budget plans for the process improvement work and according allocation of resources. It is not possible to perform process improvement by assigning process improvement efforts as secondary tasks that are to be solved when occasionally there is a little spare time in the company during low-stress periods.

If your management won't allocate the necessary resources to your CMMI process improvement efforts, forget you even tried. Try to find out why your sponsor wants the CMMI. If your sponsor wants to improve your company's performance and maturity, then maybe your sponsor understands the importance and value of CMMI. But if your sponsor's primary goal is to receive a CMMI level 3 (or whatever) assessment for sales purposes, then probably you don't really have the sponsorship needed for your efforts. I think your sponsor should not only tell you about their commitment but also their customers and the general public. If they're willing to do that, then they'll have something at stake that may keep them motivated.

It does cost money to define, deploy, and institutionalize processes--both in terms of salaries, appraisal expenses, and opportunity cost, that is, the opportunities missed because key personnel was working on processes--but the payback should be obvious: reduced overhead, reduced defect rates, re-use, and better planning are just some of the benefits of well-defined processes. Think of it as an investment similar to education: if you think education is expensive, try stupidity.

Secondly, make contact to a CMMI appraiser who will perform the CMMI appraisal of your company. There are several advantages to getting in touch with him or her early. Firstly, the appraiser can help you interpret the CMMI, which can appear somewhat cryptic at times. Secondly, the appraiser can help you ensure that your processes meet the CMMI requirements so you won't discover until the time of the appraisal when process changes are going to be expensive compared to getting it right the first time. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, your appraiser will be familiar with your company processes, company needs, and your internal stakeholders, and will spend less time understanding your business and processes and learning to communicate efficiently with your colleagues.

The group should familiarize itself carefully with all of the CMMI goals and practices, including the optional practices that may not apply to your company. Make sure you understand what they all mean. You may think terms such as "GP 2.8, Monitor and Control the Process" for some process sound evident or easy to follow at the time you read the books, but did it occur to you that this could imply that project managers must track their progress in the process and take appropriate action if they're deviating from the planned progress, and that this tracking task must be added to the company processes? Similarly, "SP 1.2, Establish Estimates of Work Product and Task Attributes" may sound reasonably easy and intuitive, but do you know what is meant by work product and task attributes? And does "attributes" refer to both work products and tasks, or does it refer to just the tasks? Margaret Kulpa's and Kent Johnson's book, Interpreting the CMMI, provides an excellent walk-through of the various processes, and I recommend you buy it.

Once the process group understands in detail what all of the CMMI practices entail, forget about the CMMI processes for a little while. You're supposed to create processes that help your company, not to create a company that follows specific processes.

If your company is at a low level of maturity, don't expect that your colleagues will to be too happy with the prospect of procedures. Your successful implementation of processes and procedures depends on stakeholder buy-in. If a procedure involves a number of people, all of them must be able to see that the procedure is working to their advantage. They must understand why the procedure helps them directly or indirectly. If they feel the procedure is working against them or that the procedure is useless compared to whatever they happen to do instead, that is, if you put on the "the procedures aren't here to help you; you're here to follow the procedures" attitude, then they won't follow the procedure. The combination of will, violence, and vaseline may be required in some cases, but try to do this as little as you can.

Fortunately, you have somewhere to start. Recall that at level 1, your company is performing. You don't know exactly why or how, but something is evidently right somewhere. You probably have skilled colleagues working together, and somewhere in the team there has to be agreements and negotiations that lead to a product in the end. There's something behind their noisy work behavior that can be worked with, and that's your processes. Your task is to identify them and describe them.

In addition, you know which processes you should focus on, namely the ones that correspond to the CMMI level you're aiming for. If you're aiming for CMMI level 2, you should focus on managerial processes and "support" processes and try not to get too technical with the people that are constructing the products, because that's reserved for level 3.

The development of the process descriptions is possibly the second-most difficult task you'll face as responsible for CMMI in your company. It is largely a question of dealing with people, and it is a situation where everyone has an opinion that must not just be heard--it must be satisfied. Dealing with people can be a challenge in engineering environments. Books such as Kathleen Reardon's The Skilled Negotiator or Rick Brinkman's and Rick Kirschner's Dealing with People You Can't Stand may be helpful. (I'm not implying that engineers are people you can't stand, but they can be an opinionated bunch of people who will rather become grumpy afterwards than tell you what they think in terms of processes and procedures, and you'll have to deal with that.)

Alec Sharp's and Patrick McDermott's book, Workflow Modeling, is a very practical approach to process modeling. The other books I've read on process modeling have focused on how to describe the models in precise terms such as using UML diagrams, but I feel this is one of the less important aspects of process modeling when it comes to modeling the processes of how people work. Your focus should stay on making people understand the processes, not on the exactness of the format of the process description. Put a little bluntly, you model your company's processes because you want to communicate with the people performing the work, not because you want an accurate model useful for programming an army of robots.

Your colleagues know something, but they're not sure what it is, or how to say it. You don't know it, but with Workflow Modeling you'll have a significant number of skills and tools to find out exactly what your colleagues are doing as they develop the products.

Develop the process descriptions in enough detail so that your colleagues know what to do (the process), and to a reasonable extent how to do it (the procedures). You'll have to go all the way down to procedures in many cases, because otherwise you're going to miss some of those people that are involved in the process and must be satisfied. It won't be lost effort, because eventually you'll have described these procedures and put them to use anyway. (You know you've gone too far when you're writing "From the Tools menu, select Preferences ... .")

You don't want to consider specific instructions, guidelines, checklists, and templates at this stage, but you'll probably want to know the major features of the tools used. Just keep in mind that your current process is the one that you're about to improve, so don't get lost in details that are bound to change.

Make sure the process descriptions explain what your company is doing right now--this is the so-called "As-Is" process. If you're expected to measure whether applying CMMI to your company will optimize various key metrics, this is also a good time to introduce metrics in the As-Is processes provided your company is mature enough to gather such metrics. These metrics can be compared with the metrics after the processes have been improved, and you'll be able to see the result of the change in terms of these metrics.

You may want to get familiar with Enterprise Architecture, which is an excellent framework for modeling both business strategy, informations systems, processes, change management, and knowledge management. I haven't been able to locate any "perfect" book on Enterprise Architecture, but I suggest An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture by Scott A. Bernard.

After Documenting the As-Is Processes, Apply CMMI

Eventually you'll have documented your existing company processes, and the next step is relatively easy. Since you're familiar with the CMMI requirements at this point it should be fairly evident to you where the existing processes do not live up to the CMMI requirements. Workflow Modeling includes guidelines on how to improve existing processes, only do you not have to be particularly creative and innovative, because the CMMI model already states what's required, and the company policy for each CMMI process states which goals each process must meet.

But remember: no matter what you add to, or change in, the existing processes, all of the people affected must think it's a good idea.

It's easy to forget the company policies for CMMI processes, so remember to ask yourself the question: "does this new process description meet the goal that (insert policy for the appropriate process)?" If the process does not meet the company goal, the resulting procedures will cause the employees to work on something that deviates from the company goals, and you don't want that to happen.

Don't worry too much about "getting it right" the first time. You should avoid obvious errors and non-compliance with the CMMI practices, of course, but don't gold-plate the processes. Remember that no matter what you do, it will always be possible to improve the processes (after all, that's what level 5 is all about), and you can always fix minor issues or clarify procedures and instructions during what will hopefully be your periodical process adjustments. At some point, good enough is good enough, and going into too much detail may deviate too much from your current processes, making it cumbersome to deploy the process changes in the company. Change hurts, so don't change too much at a time lest your colleagues be writhing in regulative pains.

You may find that in many cases you can't describe the necessary procedures; for example, the CMMI book doesn't describe in detail how to estimate the size of a work product. This is where your colleagues must apply their professional skills, and where you may have to consult experts on a variety of methods. For example, the requirements development area may lead you to study use cases, joint application development, etc., which may require skills that you do not have in your organization. For software development companies, consider Steve McConnell's book, Rapid Development, your bible--it is a tutorial on most of what you'll need on the various development practices.

Various surveys indicate that the configuration management process area appears to be a rather neglected set of practices in many companies. Configuration management is also a generic practice for all processes. Be careful not to think that revision control using tools such as CVS, Subversion, SourceSafe, etc. will suffice. Revision control is vital for configuration management, but configuration management also involves lifecycles for changes and strict use of change control. Chances are that the configuration management process area is a good place to start in your company.

When you're about to move to level 3, I suggest you start with the CMMI processes areas named "Organizational Process Definition" and "Organizational Process Focus." These processes areas describe how your company will define your processes for use across the company, and how you'll maintain your processes, respectively.

This looks like a chicken-or-the-egg situation, because you're going to define your process by following the very process you're about to define. In practice it's not that bad. You're starting from scratch, and that means anything you do is your best bet on a process at the moment, so you have your egg right there. You probably can't find a proper place in the company processes for all of the organizational process definition and organizational process focus practices to begin with, but no-one says you must finish one process area completely before moving to another process area, so don't consider this a problem. Also, the other CMMI process areas can help you define the processes. If you think of your process definitions as work products that you're going to release, then identifying and writing the processes are related to the requirements development and technical solution process areas, and planning and maintaining the work are related to the process planning and process monitoring and control process areas. Deployment of the processes (more on that later) can be thought of as integration and configuration management process area tasks.

Next, work on the organizational training process area. This is the process area that will be used to train people throughout the company in your new processes and procedures, and at CMMI level 3 your colleagues will need lots of training owing to the large number of processes areas introduced at level 3. If you need other people to work on the process definition and process focus areas, you may consider working on the organizational training process before you even begin on the process definition and process focus processes. This is reasonably safe, because there is probably not going to be much variation across projects in terms of how organizational training works. (The organizational traning process area focuses on the organization's role in training, not on project specific training.)

Once the organizational process definition, organizational process focus, and organizational training process areas are reasonably finished--that is, when those that are responsible for the company processes meeting the requirements of these process areas know how to follow them--start on the remaining processes.

In my opinion, it is very important to work generic practices 2.8 and 2.9 into the processes as early as possible. GP 2.8 means you monitor how well the process itself performs; e.g., how much effort is spent on implementation versus effort planned, and taking corrective action when significant deviations are detected. GP 2.9 means you (or others) monitor how well you stick to the process and take corrective action if necessary. If you define good metrics for these generic practices (and that implies you'll have to work hard on the metrics and analysis process area as well), not only will it be readily apparent how well the processes are performing, it will also be your sponsor's tool for keeping focus on the processes, with help of generic practice 2.10, which states that upper management must be kept aware of the process performance.

Artifacts

A CMMI level assessment involves an inspection of your company's processes, most likely according to the so-called SCAMPI method. The goal is to determine whether the CMMI practices are described in your company's processes, and whether your company follows these processes. The former is easy enough, because that's basically your business manual. The latter is a little more involved, because your CMMI assessor will have to search for tangible evidence--the so-called artifacts.

An artifact in the CMMI context is something that proves that a particular CMMI practice has somehow been followed. For example, an issues list with action items assembled from a peer review of a document is (probably) evidence that SP 2.2, "Conduct Peer Reviews," of the verification process area has been followed.

For each CMMI practice, at least one direct artifact and at least one indirect artifact must be identified. Apparently many people are confused by the terms "direct" artifacts and "indirect" artifacts in the SCAMPI method. The distinction is somewhat unclear at times, but as a general rule, a direct artifact is a work product that is a directly desired output of a particular practice, and an indirect artifact is a work product that doesn't really have any value by itself, but which could only have been created as a byproduct of performing that particular practice.

For example, the call for review or the reviewers' time registrations indicating time spent on a review might quality as indirect artifacts, because the existence of such evidence wouldn't make sense unless the peer review practice had been followed. Hence, an indirect artifact can be a work product that was necessary to produce the direct artifact and useless for other purposes, an activity that wouldn't have made sense unless the practice was followed, or some secondary work product that would only appear if the procedure was followed.

CMMI SCAMPI Distilled by Dennis M. Ahern, Jim Armstrong, Aaron Clouse, Jack R. Ferguson, Will Hayes, and Kenneth E. Nidiffer explains the SCAMPI appraisal method and includes a long appendix with a list of example artifacts for each CMMI practice.

Deployment

Deployment means that your new processes are put to use in your company.

It is reasonably easy to deploy new processes and procedures in individual, independent projects, as is the case at CMMI level 2: you just state which processes and procedures are to be followed, and that's that. If this means you'll have to update work products from an earlier phase of the project, then these updates must be planned, of course.

It is much more complicated at level 3 where the same processes and procedures must be deployed throughout the company. The organizational process focus area requires you to plan the deployment, and there are several issues to be considered. Modeling the company according to an Enterprise Architecture framework pays off here.

If you expect most of your current projects to finish within a foreseeable future, maybe your deployment can simply state that: "All new project follow business manual version 2.1," but don't expect to be this lucky.

Most companies will have several active projects in different stages of completion. Some projects may not be expected to finish until years into the future. It is not necessarily desirable to rework all of the project's work products to comply with the new procedures, and you may even be contractually obliged to stick to a particular set of procedures. How does one deploy process changes to active projects that are following known procedures?

There's no simple answer to that question. You can probably deploy some process changes in some of your active projects, and although this will almost certainly help institutionalize the new processes, these projects won't otherwise help in your CMMI assessment, as the projects are not compliant with the next-level CMMI processes until all of the CMMI process areas for that level are found in the projects.

In a sense, it is all a question of configuration management and requirements management at project portfolio level where you'll have to evaluate the effect of the process changes on each project and maybe determine how a project should "branch" (in the language of configuration management) and subsequently "merge" at a later stage. Think of it as if you're maintaining different versions of your business manual at the same time.

Before you roll out changes throughout your company, conduct pilot runs. Try a new procedure on a guinea pig project where the risk of failure will not have significant impact, collect feedback on the effectiveness of the procedure, and then determine whether it should be changed before it is deployed throughout the company. Another pilot run may be necessary.

Monitor and help the test subjects carefully as they try to follow the new procedures. I find it advantageous to organize procedures meant for pilot runs as "checklists" where possible, in the sense that it should be possible to understand when some step in the procedure causes problems or should be changed or omitted, and in all cases why.

Also, remember that the project must receive sponsorship as the procedures can be expected to require some initial effort on the project. Time and resources for the pilot runs must be planned and allocated.

Sponsorship is also required on the actual deployment after the pilot run has completed successfully. The deployment will fail unless you obtain sponsorship for the effort required to deploy the processes.

Your sponsor may have found it acceptable to spend resources on the definition of processes, but the prospect of decreased productivity in the various departments while new processes are adopted may cause the sponsor to withdraw the funds allocated. Prepare your sponsor in the very beginning of the CMMI efforts that this will happen.

Sponsorship must also exist at the lower levels of management. The department managers are probably expected to maximize their earnings, and as long as their success is measured by that metric, then they won't spend effort elsewhere. A different metric must be introduced for the department managers' success: a metric indicating process compliance, and it must be more important to their sponsor than the earnings metric. This is one of the reasons why I stressed the importance of being able to monitor the processes in the discussion of the To-Be processes.

If the department manager truly wants process improvement and is willing to allocate the required resources, the department manager will also want to monitor the process compliance of his or her subordinate managers, who in turn will be motivated to monitor the process compliance of their teams.

Start early with the supplier management process if you want your level 2 assessment as soon as possible. This process may not be your most important process, but remember that the CMMI assessment requires you to demonstrate artifacts collected for several projects. This can be difficult if you have only a limited set of suppliers, or if only few projects make use of suppliers. Starting early with the supplier management process may help you gather enough artifacts for the assessment.

Institutionalization of the To-Be Processes

Institutionalization means that the processes should become second nature to all of the involved stakeholders. They must feel that this is how they've always done things in your company.

Institutionalization begins at the moment a process is deployed, because people will now begin using--and hence getting used to--the process. Successful institutionalization requires a bit more, however.

I believe institutionalization is the hardest part of the CMMI process improvement, primarily because it requires sponsorship over a long time with little sign of returns of the investment. You'll also have to convince your sponsor that his or her employees must receive training, and projects will have to change their plans according to the deployment plans. Again, the first keyword is sponsorship.

The second keyword is training. For each new procedure, the appropriate people must receive appropriate training. Note my use of "appropriate." It depends on both the role played by the various stakeholders, their levels of experience and expertise, and the nature of the procedure. For example, if a new peer review procedure is deployed, training may be a simple walk-through of the procedure, followed by reminders of the major steps in the procedure the first several times the procedure is used. If a new requirements development procedure calls for the use of use cases, perhaps the estimators must take classes to learn how to effectively apply use cases. (By the way, I highly recommend Use Case Modeling by Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence for that.)

In all cases, I think the relevant stakeholders should receive a class introducing the company processes, explaining why the processes are formed the way they are and which benefits they introduce. Make sure that each person understands why he or she is better off with the new processes. This can be a challenge in the early stages of maturity where your colleagues may not appreciate that the result of bureaucracy or an apparent inefficiency in one area is desirable if it increases overall efficiency. Part of the institutionalization at an early stage of maturity is a change in company values from hero worship to valuing compliance to processes. It is tempting to be happy with one man's superior performance, but an average team that works according to efficient processes is much more productive than a disorganized team with one hero. Such a change may be easier in some cultures than others. Expectations from the sponsor will trickle down through the company, so make sure the sponsor himself or herself desires this change of values.

Many procedures require specific skills, such as procedures for estimating, implementing the technical solution, planning, developing requirements, analyzing metrics, delivering training, etc., and many tools require training as well.

You don't necessarily have to organize all training as classes, of course, and you may instead find it advantageous to employ several training methods, including mentoring, workshops, e-learning, etc. I have found it very effective to briefly reiterate a procedure before it is put to use; for example, if a formal peer review procedure is followed, you might want to remind the reviewers of their tasks and remind them to consult to the procedure. Eventually they'll do it on their own.

But never expect people to "just know" how to follow the processes, or even to follow them at all, just because you tell them to. Putting a procedure to use isn't training but experience, just like one gets used to a tool.

Over time, hopefully everyone will become used to the processes to such a degree that the processes will not begin to fade or deteriorate as soon as management forgets to remind the employees of the importance of the processes. This is when you're ready for a CMMI assessment. Your assessor should be able to help you determine when you're ready.

Note: the author of this article is not affiliated with the SEI. Opinions expressed in this document are those of the author.

If one were to divide the time spent creating a document or otherwise operating the computer into different activites, operating the mouse would probably not score high, as much as we feel we use the mouse.

The mouse is nonetheless a nuisance to those of us who prefer to rest our hands on the keyboard as we type. Having to maneuvering the damn rodent around in order to, say, emphasize a word is perhaps easy on the memory, but it means you have to move your hand off the keyboard, onto the mouse, moving the mouse pointer to wherever it must be, marking the word, and then either finding the formatting option in a menu or in a toolbar.

I miss the days of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, which certainly had its shortcomings, but many of the often-used sequences were quickly built into our "hand memory," and any special mark-ups or changes was a question of pressing the 'F' and number keys in an appropriate order. It was somewhat user hostily for its non-intuitive approach, but mouse pains were unheard of, and using the keyboard was many times faster than today's mouse operations.

Dontclik.it also thinks that clicking around is a nuisance, and proposes a use of the mouse that eliminates the need for clicking. The flash interface on dontclick.it illustrates the concept neatly. The method is a combination of focus-following and mouse gestures.

Focus-following is well-known by seasoned Unix users since the early 1990es, and is a feature provided by the window manager where you simply hover the mouse above a window or entry field where you want your mouse or keyboard focus to be.

Mouse gestures, like focus-following, are also known on the most popular Linux desktops albeit perhaps less used. Mouse gestures is a technique where a certain motion of the mouse corresponds to a certain action. For example, a swift down motion of the mouse followed by an up motion might correspond to minimizing the window. Dontclick.it suggests that instead of clicking a button, you circle around it with the mouse, indicating that you want this button activated.

Unfortunately, the approach doesn't eliminate the mouse. I do mind clicking, but that's a lesser mouse evil. What I really hate about the mouse is having to take my hands off the keyboard, books, og whatever I'm using and use my hand for maneuvering the damn rodent around. Dontclick.it may solve the clicking part of using the mouse, but it still advocates using the mouse, offering no end of carpal tunnel syndromes caused by repetitive mouse usage.

What's worse, replacing a click with a circular movement of the mouse obviously means you can rest your index finger, but at the cost of making a circular movement that requires even more motion of your arm and hand. I'm afraid if this concept were to replace the conventional use of the mouse, pains related to mouse use would increase, and I don't see how the circular movement can somehow be faster or easier on the hand than a simple click.