I’ve taken a pass through the blogroll and freshened things up a little, and tried to roughly classify the entries. Click on the banner to get to the main page containing the blogroll.
Please let me know if you have any other generally useful business rules related blogs that you read — I’d love to hear about them.
Enjoy!
The papers have been filled with scientific, and not so scientific, stories about the Large Hadron Collider. It sounds (to my ignorant mind) like fascinating science and the project is a real testament to man’s (and woman’s) incredibly stubborn quest for answers. Like a bookish three year-old we are constantly asking “…but why?”.
There is a very tenuous ILOG link to this post because Nicolas Sauterey informed me last week that many years ago, while the LHC was in the planning phase, we were approached by the LHC team and asked if we could pattern match against the particle events generated by the collider, to help determine which were worthy of more in-depth analysis. The data volume is enormous (27 TB per day of raw data!) so it is no surprise that we weren’t able to help back then. Talk about Complex Event Processing! 
He also mentioned they were originally intending to use EJBs, but that may have been sarcasm! LHC now uses a very sophisticated grid architecture to distribute the compute load across academic institutions and even home users.
In case you are worried that an LHC induced particle collision may create a black hole, hastening the end of the world — some wag has created a web site just for you! Check it in the morning before you head off to work…
People often ask me what ILOG does (or frequently iLOG or Ilog!) and beyond our marketing tag line the answer can become a little verbose. It’s therefore great to be able to link to a very nice article written by Simon Holloway (Senior Analyst for Bloor Research) for IT Director. I’m looking forward to your follow up Simon!
Today I thought I’d take the opportunity to publicize a Java Developer position I need to fill in my team. The job is based in beautiful Paris and we are looking for a real Java expert to work on our Eclipse-based Rule Studio for Java product. The French job description is available online, and loosely translates as:
The ILOG R&D department is looking for a Java Software Engineer to work on Rule Studio for Java. As a member of the RS4J team you will be responsible for ongoing maintenance and development of a major Eclipse-based Java product. The job is based in Paris, France.
Candidate Profile
- Computer science degree (or equivalent experience)
- 4+ years Java development experience
- Experience of full-lifecycle product development using an agile methodology desired
- Knowledge of XML and XML Schema a plus
- Good English language skills, with fluent spoken French a plus
If this sounds like your cup of tea, please submit your resume/CV through the ILOG website.
Worldwide, ILOG has over 50 positions to fill across 8 countries:
The jobs vary from SAP Integration Specialist to an intern for supply chain planning applications, to a Shanghai-based Marketing Executive, and everything in between. Come help us change the rules of business! 
Today ILOG launched the BRMS Resource Center, along with this blog. I hope that the BRMS Resource Center will become your one-stop-shop as you evaluate business rules technology in general, and ILOG JRules or Rules for .NET in particular. We’ve pulled together a great initial collection of material as well as making it much easier for you to download and evaluate our BRMS products at your own pace.
I will use this blog to give you a “sneak peek” at some of the amazing innovations being worked on within ILOG Rules R&D, as well as shining a light on technology, tools and best/worst practices that you can use with ILOG’s BRMS products. It should be a fun ride!
One of the benefits of working during the August lull is that one gets to stretch the brain with ideas that are typically outside the realm of the day-to-day. One example I came across this week is a fascinating article on the psychology of security written by Bruce Schneier. The article was discussed on an IT security mailing list, however Schneier writes essentially about the psychology of risk. A large part of the job of a Product Manager deals with evaluating risk, from analyzing competitors’ behavior, to SWOT analysis of market trends, estimating the impact of product defects as well as the potential for project slippage.
While we all think we are so reasonable, all the experimental evidence points to the contrary. Human decision making is extremely complex and may be influenced by many irrational factors. Ed: Not mine, however, obviously!
Dealing with risks is always about making the right trade-off. Schneier states that the following five aspects are vulnerable to poor decision making:
The essay is full of fascinating information, but I pulled out a couple of nuggets for reference.
Considering a particular outcome in one’s imagination makes it appear more likely later.
The moral here is that people will be persuaded more by a vivid, personal story than they will by bland statistics and facts, possibly solely due to the fact that they remember vivid arguments better.
An outcome that is difficult to imagine may actually appear to be less likely.
The most extreme example of a class of things tends to come to mind when thinking about the class.
I have seen the availability heuristic at work in myself, and dare I say, my colleagues? After a customer visit, or a discussion with a pre-sales engineer, I tend to prioritize their wishes/bug reports higher than I might otherwise, even if this is the only customer to register this particular product wish. This behavior is also typical when dealing with internal and external users of the product - they tend to prioritize their current issues much higher, even if they saw more severe issues in a project 3 months ago. To counter this tendency Product Managers collect “evidence” for wishes (from customer visits and the votes within the wish database) and try to use this information for rational decision making.
Long-range planning is also particularly sensitive to the availability heuristic. When making a three year strategic plan it is very easy to be unduly biased by the competitive event that happened last week.
- Question 1: Should divorce in this country be easier to obtain, more difficult to obtain, or stay as it is now?
- Question 2: Should divorce in this country be easier to obtain, stay as it is now, or be more difficult to obtain?
In response to the first question, 23% of the subjects chose easier divorce laws, 36% chose more difficult divorce laws, and 41% said that the status quo was fine. In response to the second question, 26% chose easier divorce laws, 46% chose more difficult divorce laws, and 29% chose the status quo. Yes, the order in which the alternatives are listed affects the results.
People are more likely to notice evidence that supports a previously held position than evidence that discredits it. Even worse, people who support position A sometimes mistakenly believe that anti-A evidence actually supports that position.
So perhaps by coming to a deeper understanding of how our brain reacts to risks we can make better decisions? We may also be better equipped to detect when unscrupulous people are attempting to manipulate our perception of risk to influence our decision making. Buddhists call this approach to life Mindfulness.
Daniel Gilbert is also eminent in this field. He wrote the article “If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming” which must be one of the best headlines ever!