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I think that the whole dialog was rather humorous. In reading his replies, I think that he might be one of those bosses that might be a psychopath.
See http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.h tml for the article,
and http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss-q uiz.html for the quiz.
Without having met Mr. Taylor, I can only give him full points on a couple of questions, but I suspect that he'd get points on several others. I can rationalize 8 points, which puts him in the "Be Afraid" category.

I think that the whole dialog was rather humorous. In reading his replies, I think that he might be one of those bosses that might be a psychopath.
See http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.h tml for the article,
and http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss-q uiz.html for the quiz.
Without having met Mr. Taylor, I can only give him full points on a couple of questions, but I suspect that he'd get points on several others. I can rationalize 8 points, which puts him in the "Be Afraid" category.

Seriously, could one of the Slashdot editors please clear this up? The article ends with:

From THE WAL-MART EFFECT by Charles Fishman. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Charles Fishman, 2006. Charles is a senior writer for Fast Company magazine.

So, is this a direct plagirism from Fast Company magazine? Is this used by permission from Charles Fishman? Is this a joint venture between Slashdot and Fast Company magazine?

It's not quite a direct copy of the Fast Company version - they changed it from using HTML paragraph tags to misusing the <br> tag.

So - what's up? Where did the article come from? Fast Company? The book's author? The publisher? A complete and total ripoff? What?

This is actually a word-for-word duplicate of the FC article here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html It's ALSO from back in January. Hemos needs to wake up...

On the other hand, how can projects like the Apollo Space Program succeed?

You might check out this article that was written in 1996 talking about the on-board shuttle group, the people responsible for the code that flies the STS. Pretty interesting article.

Microsoft could take a page from these people's books. We all could.

Wal-Mart is so big and powerful, that most companies have no leverage when trying to make a deal with them. Wal-Mart can dictate the terms of most contracts.

For a great example, read http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l

Why would a chinese or indian buy an American product when they can buy something made in their own country by people making one tenth what our workers make?

"Cheaper" is only one criterion that people use when shopping. Another is "better". Most of the MP3 players are cheaper than the iPod. Which one do people buy?

Interestingly, a similar things applies to factory labor. Their workers may make 10% of what our factory workers do, but they are a fair bit less productive because they're not as well educated. For example, read about GE's best aircraft engine factory.

We can't beat them at low-end manufacturing. But if we keep investing in education, in creativity, in continuous improvement, we can beat them in other ways. And everybody wins thereby.

"Wal-Mart [...] has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States."

"Wal-Mart has a very close relationship with China," says Duke University Professor Gary Gereffi. "China is the largest exporter to the U.S. economy in virtually all consumer goods categories. Wal-Mart is the leading retailer in the U.S. economy in virtually all consumer goods categories. Wal-Mart and China are a joint venture."

Unique and irreproducible combination of circumstances, eh?

Follow NASA's advice... http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml [fastcompany.com]

Your post should have been ranked informative +10 and is underrated. Those that think they are "professional" programmers aught to read this and memorize it. This thread has so much BS about what is right for making code stable it just shows how many poorly qualified people there are out there. But for other readers---

I have been in both kind of shops, dime a dozen out of control cowboy mentality workshops, and a few others with high standards in planing, process, controls and testing procedures. The later produces better software that is not only less flawed and runs better, but costs less in the long term as you don't need an army to program it or to support it's quirks.

Lets dispell some myths:

• At minimum, one hour of rational planning and engineering with save 100 hours of programming and 10000 hours of support.
• Bad code is bad code, it does not mater if it is C, C++, Java, Python, C#, J# or whatever. Adding another langauge will add complexity but solve nothing. If you want to fix it you need a real software engineer and not a programmer.
• 9 of 10 programmers are incompetant, at best. If they were compared to brick layers, 9 of 10 could not make a straight or vertical wall. Same goes for software managers. This is the real reason of outsourcing.
• Those that do know how to code either work alone or in qualified shops with diciplined processses. The later being the best.
• Most I/T shops have the incorrect attitude, "we are not going to kill people by rushing this, so quicly do it". The truth is they don't know how and are incapable of doing it right the first time and have come to accept the high maintenance costs associated with sloppy computing practices. As their user perception deteriorates, another reason to outsource.
• Ever notice how I/T vendors bypass techs? Don't trust those who do. If you have a wizard on staff that is socialble, use them but don't abuse them or they will leave. If they are anti-social, loos them.
• Management is shallow in their vision, look at the long term in team development and raising the bar of the quality of software products. There will be less to worry about when you sleep.
• The act of making the programming changes should be mechanical, repeatable and quick if planning and engineering are functioning correctly. If your programmers need spend more than 8 hours overtime per month your engineering and planning needs development. Also, if you have more programmers than engineers your resource base is out of whack.
• Want to manage your project for success? Work the process not the technology.

I've always found this article to most insightful with regard to the sort of effort you are describing: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml At the least, it will open you eyes to the amount of effort required, if you really are serious about this. Good luck to you.

If you don't have enough knowledge to know how to approach this now (it's obvious you don't) then you are bound to not get it right for several iterations. Writing reliable software is going to take a lot of experience so you really get your head around how thorough you need to be.

Can your task afford to have a very long period of non-productivity while you play around with ideas and learn the rather hard lessons of writing high-reliability software?

Ideas that spring to mind:

- NASA and their shuttle software. They have enormous resources and get it right by being very careful and formal. Go read about it. Starting point:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

- Formal methods. Proving your design. Or at least formal coding/testing of the interfaces.

- Aerospace software. Like the fly-by-wire systems. They have less resources than the shuttle and make occasional mistakes.

Also, I would reexamine your requirements. Is it medical? Do people's lives depend on it? If not, it seems like someone is overstating the need for reliability.

Finally, I have had some small experience with people attempting to "add" reliability to a system - like automatic restarting of modules. The usual result is to make the system MORE complex, and LESS reliable, or prone to fail in more severe ways, because simple ideas don't have the effect you'd think.

Follow NASA's advice... http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

Looks more like a business relationship to me, actually. They have a storefront hosted at stores.yahoo.com that appears identical to www.despair.com, and they have several examples of partnership scattered around other areas of Yahoo, including anti-greeting cards. Yahoo billed them as a cool site a while back, which hints at some sort of vested interest.

&laz;

You can't photograph the Eiffel Tower either. At least not at night.
This is just yet another nail in the coffin of freedom, in another (once democratic) country.

In school, this article was required reading for our class. It addresses the same topic as TFA.

The essential point being there is a trade-off between quality and quantity and each organization/project needs to decide how far they want to lean in either direction.

Actually, it's you that's woefully uninformed. In case you missed it, I was talking about Wal-Mart from a supplier's point of view. If you want to be a whore and shop there, more power to you. But before you accuse people of not knowing what they're talking about, you should read a bit of business fact.

Job offers have been coming in from Internet companies impressed by a young man who managed to figure out an original way to make money online.

...I've only just passed my driving test...

Yes, he made a significant amount of money in a short time, which seems to be the model the new economy is adopting, but it's not sustainable business. In 2 months, who is going to care about a site full of ads with no content?

The kid had a good idea, and got lucky, but that doesn't make him anything special, and given the nature of the money (i.e. accrued with very little effort on his part), I don't think he gained any experience that will make him an asset to any of these companies offering him a job. This is winning the lottery, not entrepreneurial success (not to say there isn't a lot of luck in entrepreneurship).

This is not news, it's barely human interest, and its not anything anyone will care about even next week (except the people seeing the dupe for the first time).

Nothing to see here, please move along.

Dell assembles 80,000 computers every 24 hours. In 2002 it chartered eighteen 747's to keep supplies flowing to the states during a dockworker's strike. "(A) veteran builder can piece together a Dell OptiPlex or Dimension PC in three minutes." Living in Dell Tine

Has the city of Paris really copyrighted the Eiffel Tower as it looks lit up at night, meaning that anyone (including a tourist) who takes a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night has to get permission and pay a fee before publishing that picture? As bizarre as it sounds, apparently this is true. Even if you wanted to post your holiday photos of the 'Eiffel Tower by night' on the web, you would technically have to get permission first. The Eiffel Tower itself was built in 1889, and therefore its likeness entered the public domain long ago, but the Parisian authorities sneaked around this fact by copyrighting the lights on the Tower. They did this in 2003. That's why the copyright issue only applies to the Eiffel Tower at night. So technically it's not the tower itself that is copyrighted. It's the lights on the tower. But you can hardly photograph the tower without getting the lights. This is the kind of thing that sounds so stupid you suspect it has to be false, but David-Michel Davies who's written about this over at FastCompany http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/02/02/ei ffel_tower_repossessed.html appears to have done his homework, so I'm inclined to believe him. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments /2417/

Take this quote by Steve Dobbins, the CEO of Carolina Mills, which provides textile supplies. "People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."

Here's the link . Why are less people employed? WMT drives many companies our of business by putting so low a profit margin that companies cannot afford to pay their workers satisfactorily. Hence, millions of American jobs are lost as the suppliers cut costs by moving off-shore. Or cut corners elsewhere by lowering wages and/or reducing health care.

So, hence the generally accepted claim that Americans are putting themselves out of work by shopping at WMT. So you say it's good we're saving $50 billion, but on the other hand we're losing millions of jobs, and important benefits like health-care. Which is worse? And when off-shore products are no longer as cheap to produce (eg when China decides to stop buying American debt), where will we be because most of our manufacturing jobs and plants have moved elsewhere?

Read that link for mor information about companies that got destroyed by WMT. Includes the story of the above company that prospered while he sold products to people producing for WMT, but then when companies moved overseas and underpriced him he couldn't compete even if he didn't pay any of the workers! Similar thing for Vlasic pickles. I saw another similar story on Rubbermaid on a PBS documentary on WMT. The list goes on and on.

But hey, you love WMT because they save money. As long as you can buy a gallon of pickles for $3 who cares if people lose jobs?

All kidding aside. Parent post actually highlights characteristics of many successful executives. Check out the following article: Is Your Boss a Psychopath?.

Here's an interesting snippet:

I hope such business practices find themselves increasingly marginalized over the next few decades, because it bloody stinks. Yeah, well Steve Jobs may have a compelling vision, but I wonder how many people who have worked with him actually enjoyed the journey? I really hope Google is different, and even if they may not succeed in the end - hard to be the first of your kind - may be a new breed of companies not governed by sociopaths, can show us a better way forward.

I'm heading a little off topic, but I do find what makes a person tick interesting. Here's another account that reveals a little bit more about the richest man in the world (especially if it's true): Bill Gates and Petals Around the Rose.

Why not tell them to shove off? clearly you are going to go out of business.

Increased volume. With the economics of scale, you could lose money at your current price point but you'll gain it back by selling through the worlds largest retailer. Or that's how it works in theory anyway, and it might in practice...until Wal-Mart demands you lower your prices again a year later. That's what sunk Vlasic.

Speaking as a developer starting out, and having just joined a startup myself, I believe if your project is cool enough, people will be willing to work with you. And what's more, the people you'll attract will most likely be the ones who stand to contribute most to the project. The converse is also true. Startups have succeeded and and failed according to this rule.

Motivation is a key factor among geeks. Spread awareness of the project, show people that it's worth something, and that its success is in their best interests, and you can stand back and watch the magic. Of course, that's easier said than done. Learn to manage your geeks.

First, the scrum book, by its co-creator ken schwaber http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735 61993X/ref=pd_sim_b_4/103-6526029-2864653?_encodin g=UTF8&v=glance interestingly enough, its published by MS Press Second: what people seem to be missing in this thread is that scrum is essentially a anarchist/communist/utopian project management technique. there are no bosses telling you what to do. teams are self-organizing and autonomous. this is a _radically_ different project management technique -- no folks, its not about the daily meetings. it's about being bossless. A buddy of mine went through scrum training with schwaber, and he had them do an interesting exercise. teams of two were instructed to walk exactly 300 paces in exactly 2 minutes. each team was composed of a boss and a walker. the walker was told by the boss to take a step, slow down, or go faster. _none_ of the teams successfully walked the 300 paces in the time period. so they were broken up such that each person had no boss, and simply had to walk the 300 paces. _every_ person completed the task. lesson: micro-managing bosses just slow you down. third: a very interesting practical example of this sort of project management technique is the GE jet engine plant in durham, NC. http://www.fastcompany.com/online/28/ge.html This shop is organized around a bossless culture. They are the most successful and productive jet engine manufacturer in the world. A great example of how this sort of technique isn't just for pot smoking hippies. Finally: the essential thing that binds all of these agile/xp/scrum-ish like techniques together is TESTING. No code can be written without unit tests. All requirements have a direct mapping to a suite of acceptance tests (written, say, using fitnesse -- www.fitnesse.org). There are three types of developers in this world: those that test first (the ones I want to work with), those that have never tested at all, and don't want to (stay away from these ones), and those that have read/heard about test first and want to try it out (these can be saved). --sozin

We already know Wal-Mart is bad for small business, merchant exploitation, competition, and even larger suppliers, so I am in favor of anything that might allow good companies like Vlasic retain their ability to meet profit margins and pay their workers. I personally abhor and refuse to visit any of the Wally World constructs (or any of the other Mega-Lo-Marts) in favor of internet shopping and my wife's constant pursuit of the 1/2 price grocery store trip via coupon and sale shopping (not there yet, but getting closer). I also encourage anyone I work with or hang with to do the same, pointing out the examples above and following with the straight-forward explanation of how our family manages to avoid the ninth level of Hell.

Actually, web servers are far more complicated.

Cars: one ignition, one steering wheel, brakes, clutch.
Webserver: basic configuration, chroots, security, modules, CGI, permissions, access control (who, when, from where, to where), updates, other addons, DNS, .....

No, cars are a LOT more complicated than a general-purpose computer. The average person could not ever learn to assemble a car (which can contain up to a couple dozen computers, all with specialized code), but high-school kids make money by assembling computers at the local store after school.

Computers are not devices, which do one thing and do it well. Computers are complex systems which can do a lot of things.

You are confusing computers with the software that runs on them. Computers ARE single-purpose devices - they have only one function - execute a series of instructions and generate outputs, with flow altered based on various input. That is IT.

Cars, on the other hand, have to start and run at anywhere between -50 and +150 F, have to ensure the survival of their occupants in real crashes (not "computer crashes"), have to generate their own power, have to keep their users comfortable, etc. And they have to do this for at least 10 years with no updates, no rebuilding everything from scratch, etc. Just replacing a spark plugs, tires, brakes, filters and oil - stuff anyone can do.

Software is complicated. It is hard to create good software. Secure software is even harder.

Most software is not held to the same standards as cars are. For example, Microsoft could never make a car - the quality would be too low. The thing would crash regularly, would require special proprietary roads, have to be patched every week, and rebuilt every 3 months. Even then, your mileage would continue to deteriorate.

Contrast that to todays cars (particularly the japanese) - they run for years with only an oil change or two. They don't crash by themselves. If YOU crash it, it will protect you (seat belts, air bags) even sacrificing itself (crumple zones). When something goes wrong with the engine, it will even tell you WHAT went wrong (diagnostic codes). And, on top of that, it has resale value.

Its also possible to write bug-free software. NASA does it.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

The problem is that people accept shit from commercial programs. The EXPECT it to have bugs. If your toilet overflowed as often as the average Windows box crashes, you'd shoot the plumber. If your fridge failed as often, you'd go back to a box with a chunk of ice, just to save money by not having your food rot on you unexpectedly. If your TV or radio b0rked as often as that, you'd return it and demand a refund. If your wife or kid went all stupid as often, you'd take them to a doctor. If your dick stopped working as often, YOU would see a doctor. If the company you worked for forgot to pay you as often, you'd quit. If your ... well, you get the point. This is the ONLY area where people accept such shit.

Perhaps you missed the fact that spam today comes from compromised machines. 419 scams often originate from webservers with unpatched web applications. And the load of spam is enough to d

The problem is, managers should reads books, and studinig this situations, the job of them to solve it and not yours..
There are many books around it, but I believe, you should give books into your boss's hands, and wait for his reaction, if any..
Like one of the best for it about how things going on nasa software teams.. why could they write the Level5 code, with 99% of bugfree code.. and timelines, whatever.. and mostly how to manage the employee to do good job..

Check out:
They Write the Right Stuff (goolge)
(http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.h tml)

If your boss do not care about it, why would you? Just leave him in peace.. And now you know, what sould you first check about a new boss ;)

Look, while I recognize that it would be nice to put a boot up most vendors' behinds to write less buggy code, imposing product liability -- with its standard of perfection -- would simply bankrupt all private software companies. If you haven't read this article about the best software currently written, you should.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

It's written about a small company that writes the software to run the space shuttle. They do it amazingly well -- their 420 KLOC program has had only one error each for the last three versions. However, this is the work of TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY people. It takes that many people and they still have bugs! Not many, but some. This quantity of effort simply doesn't scale to current requirements for commercial code -- we ask programs to do so many things that they simply can't possibly be done with such a small program. Hell, I'd bet winamp is bigger than that, and all it does is play music files. If we impose this sort of requirements on software, we'll be jumping back to the 80s.

earl

Pure Poppycock!

In that case I'm sure NASA would be very interested in being told where the bugs in the Shuttle's control software is situated.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

It's all down to economics and greed. With $50,000,000,000.00 in the bank Microsoft have the money to do the job properly, but without legislation they are not going to spend any of it to perfect their product.

Near perfect software is possible:
They Write the Right Stuff (I got it from here: Space Shuttle Software: Not For Hacks)

Yes, it takes time and money but it isn't unthinkable to change how software is written. Fully understand your customer, and justification for EVERY code change. Code reviews aren't important, they're everything. When the way we think about writing code changes and the procedures become commonplace it won't cost so much to do it this way.

I'd agree that you want to do some reading outside programming but related to the industry you're working in. Outside of technical knowledge, you can advance your career knowing two more things -
*By better understanding your industry and its current climate, you can provide technical solutions that better meet your employer's needs. If you're a contractor, your clients will appreciate it if you understand some basics about their industry.
*By knowing about other players in your field, you can better identify opportunities both inside and outside your organization. Inside your company, you can better identify projects that will really affect the company (and provide you with opportunities for advancement). If you decide to change jobs, knowing your industry will let you find employers that have a strong business and may be doing things that interest you.

On the business side, CIO magazine's good (and CFO isn't bad if you work in the financial industry). While it's a little fluffy, Fast Company is both informative and entertaining. If your local paper has a well-edited business section, that can be useful as well. I also like The Economist both for it's general and business news.

It's an old article, but:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

And yes I have worked for companies that could deliver the high quality maintainable software on time.
The problem was that it meant it was at least an order of magnitude more expensive to deliver per LOC.
It was also quite a frustrating place to work, if for no other reason than there was little room for initiative unless you were one of the 3 main architects (and they were constrained by the ITU specs), oh and there were 5 layers of management in a team of about 160 people. There were more managers on the project than engineers. And this is just engineering managers.

But it is possible if you design it carefully enough and review things well. Specs are an invaluable part of this.

Now I work for a different company with a different philosophy similar to the one you propose - but you pay your money you take your choice.

At the on-board shuttle group, about one-third of the process of writing software happens before anyone writes a line of code. NASA and the Lockheed Martin group agree in the most minute detail about everything the new code is supposed to do -- and they commit that understanding to paper, with the kind of specificity and precision usually found in blueprints. Nothing in the specs is changed without agreement and understanding from both sides. And no coder changes a single line of code without specs carefully outlining the change. Take the upgrade of the software to permit the shuttle to navigate with Global Positioning Satellites, a change that involves just 1.5% of the program, or 6,366 lines of code. The specs for that one change run 2,500 pages, a volume thicker than a phone book. The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages.

News flash: companies and the senior managers that run them are psychopathic. As long as you keep that in mind and manage your relationship with them the same was as you'd manage your interactions with Hannibal Lector, you'll avoid serious trauma.

The reason it takes a LONG time to write safety-critical (not enterprise-critical) code is that test environment you mention. It takes weeks or months to create the perfect test environment.

Fast Company did an article on how NASA does the coding process here. It's not fast. It's not glamorous. It's demanding, complicated, and hostile.

You want a word processor that works perfectly, ever single time? To follow the "safety-critical" model and still make it happen quickly you would need a system that was designed from the blueprints up to service that precise need in those precise conditions. Every line in the code must line up perfectly with the requirements. Independent inspection is required.

The zOS stuff and the Alpha systems were examples of this. You will use ONLY the correct peripheral, and ONLY when it has been installed by authorized personnel. You will NOT deviate from this. The software will be ONLY the software certified to run there. ONLY in the combinations that are supported. In return, you will have a rep from the company there (virtually or physically) to help you in minutes. I think our record was physical, in-person assistance on an OS/390 issue within 30 minutes. You also pay an amazing amount for it. The FAA for example requires that a product be certified as a whole. OS, hardware, software, the works.

People don't think MS Word is worth $60k per seat, and they probably would be pissed if MS said "You can't install MS Word on the IBM T42... it is only supported on the T40 and T41 so far".

Oh, and I would be pretty impressed if Java were ever life/safety certified . It would require some amazing JRE, that's for sure. I'd expect to see a Perl script certified long before.

BTW, I would personally love to find some more OSS software products that were more or less DO-178A/B certified (on specific hardware, obviously). There is a version of linux that is. Even on IA-32 architecture.

-WS

From FastCompany

Meanwhile, the $15 million or so that iTunes has generated in revenue thus far is statistically meaningless even for Apple. Case closed, indeed.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml well, TFA is about the space shuttle, but i'd guess it applies to other space gadgets, too. "Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors."

Yes, it is.

They Write the Right Stuff

Problem is not the "game industry", problem is with those that run things, which are not game developers. Those that run the big publishing houses, big hollywood studios, etc etc, they are BUSINESS PEOPLE, NOT CREATIVE PEOPLE. They dont give bananas about creativity, they want the fattest bank account they can get, and that means appeasing shareholders, which means keeping the company profits high, which means throwing out the same old BS that the ma$$es want. Some of these not-creative-business-people can even be called PSYCOPATHS! (Have i heard someone saying Jim Caparro?)

There are no more "game developers" running the "game industry"!

The software in the space shuttle cannot fail. billions of dollars and people's lives are on the line, so it cannot fail.

At CMM level 5, you don't fix the bug when you find it. You fix the process that let the bug happen in the first place.

CMM Level 1 is no process. anything goes, really.

CMM Level 2 is fixing the bug and documenting that you found it. That more or less boils down to using a bug tracking system, keeping good version control, and everyone following this process.

CMM Level 3 is the software engineering level. that basically means that everyone in your organization builds their software similarly (software design and documented use of design patterns is good here).

Levels 4 and 5 is all about keeping a database of your processes and fixing your processes. Process flaws cause bugs, not code errors. You don't fix your code, you fix your process.

It's important to note the budget for the team writing the space shuttle code. Lots and lots of money and lots and lots of time go into that software. Ordinary application writers like us don't get that luxury.

What makes you say that Creative's product was clearly flawed? Perhaps the virus was introduced by the CD manufacturer right before it went golden master. Perhaps they ran antivirus scans but--due to a subtle interaction b/t a bug in the antivirus product and a temporary network glitch--the latest virus definitions were not used. Perhaps Creative did due diligence at every step of the way, only to have their product intentionally compromised by a disgruntled employee with a bump key.

That said, let me approach this from another angle. The average commercial software ships with ~3000 bugs in it. Most of them don't matter, but you will occassionaly encounter some that do. Pain, frustration, and potiential monetary loss will result. We could avert this with extensive over-engineering (like we do for the space shuttle), but as a result we would not have all the great functionality that's readily available on today's computers. Imagine: the web might not exist within your lifetime. Militarily, industrially, and socially, we'd still be stuck in the 70's or 80's. With no economies of scale, computers would still be rare and expensive.

Fortunately, the market is smarter than you (not you specifically, but people who advocate software liability for non-critical systems)... the market has rewarded vendors who produce more functionality at lower quality. That's not to say that the market has got it perfect, but there are reasos for why things are balanced they way they are. (As an aside, I would argue that open source software--not being so strictly subject to traditonal market pressures--can occupy a wider range of the quality curve. That's probably a part of why it's so successful in the server market.)

I think the ideal solution to this would be to have a set of methodology standards which software vendors could claim their software adheres to. E.g., the consumer could determine for themselves if they want to buy a grade-B word processor or a cheaper grade-C word processor. The vendor would only be liable for not following the methodology they claimed. It would be difficult to set up such a system without locking developers into specific metholodogies though, and there's no guarantee that methodologies produce software of uniform quality across different software markets. (E.g., the methodology you would use to design a high-quality automotive subsystem probably doesn't have the amount of user-interface testing you would want if trying to design a high-quality video game.)

Mitnick is, simply put, a psychopath. The white collar kind, not the chainsaw murderer type. As described here and linked to on Slashdot today.

Read that link, in case you haven't, and see how he has _all_ the traits described there. In spades. (Including reinventing his past as he sees fit, and the social engineering part, and generally everything.)

More than that, he's worked hard at proving to the judge that he's just that: a psychopath with zero empathy or remorse. In fact he still works at it.

So let me get this straight: so basically you're condemning a judge for keeping a _psychopath_ in custody?

Dunno, it seems to me like presenting yourself as a clear-cut psychopath to a judge is... anything but smart. That's just the kind of personality that justice is supposed to keep off the streets.

Seems to me like anyone making that case to a judge is _asking_ to be kept locked with no bail.

Questions taken from the Slashdot story: Is your boss a Psychopath?

How do you rate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? -- Questions for Questions:

Q: When he harms other people, does he feel a lack of remorse or guilt? A: Does killing people qualify as harming them?

Q: Does he lie habitually even though he can easily be found out? A: Does lying to start a war qualify as lying? A2: Does pretending that you have reduced the violence in another country, rather than increased it, qualify as lying?

Q: When he's exposed, does he still act unconcerned because he thinks he can weasel out of it? A: Does saying it's all fine qualify as being unconcerned?

Q: Is he concerned about himself rather than the wreckage he inflicts on others or society at large? A: Does worrying only about election results qualify as being concerned only about oneself?

Q: Does he use his skill at lying to cheat or manipulate other people in his quest for money? A: When both Bush and Cheney have a long history of oil and weapons investments among family and friends, does starting a war in the world's second most oil-rich country qualify as a quest for money?

Q: Does he cruelly mock others? A: Does George W. Bush calling his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, "turd blossom" qualify as cruelly mocking him? A2: Does giving people disrespectful nicknames qualify as mocking them?

Q: Is he callous and lacking in empathy? A: Does taking habitual risks with the lives of other people while driving qualify as lacking in empathy? A2: George W. Bush DUI, 1st record of arrest A3: George W. Bush DUI, 2nd record of arrest George W. Bush was arrested 2 other times in his life, also, for stunts that were not something a sober person would find interesting. A4: Dick Cheney DUI, record of 1st arrest A5: Dick Cheney DUI, record of 2nd arrest

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If your government chooses killing as policy, expect others to choose the same.

This guy did.

As usual, someone else does all the hard work, and Microsoft uses marketing to take all the credit.

Probably this, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.h tml

Temporary or not, the point is it fell and hit something.

If something has enough weight|heft to it it can hit something and cause damage as it falls, it should be secured.

NASA admitted after the fact, that until the foam hit the fan, they never perceived it to be a danger to the shuttle. Considering how many decimal points these guys use in their calculations (not to mention the quality of their software - mind you, this is eight 1/2 years old: They Write the Right Stuff: The right stuff kicks in at T-minus 31 seconds.), you'd think they were a bit more careful than to have oops! moments.

If something should happen, people will remember that cover falling, no matter who tries to explain it away or what they say in the process.

monitoring nuclear power plants

It's not just nuclear power plants.

The space shuttle has an amazing software development group as well.

Fast Company did an article on the team a while back. It was pretty cool reading.

I couldn't understand how property houses related to patents, but here's a useful link about Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos considers giving employees the freedom to choose the size of their house is considered as important to the company's future success as being able to file patents.

From this high lookout, Amazon's employees enjoy views of Puget Sound and the port, the downtown skyline, the two new stadiums built with the help of Microsoft money, the green hills of Seattle's residential neighborhoods, and the calm blue surface of Lake Washington, where Bezos lives on the Medina waterfront near Bill Gates's enormous $100 million house. Bezos, now worth $5 billion, has shed the modest lifestyle for the mogul lifestyle. Last year his lawyers successfully fought the town's effort to limit house sizes and expansions there, saying that it might restrict his plans. Bezos also owns three linked apartments in the Century, the landmark art deco tower on Manhattan's Central Park West, which he bought from Sony Music mogul Tommy Mottola for $7.7 million.

ihatewinXP writes "FastCompany.com has a behind the scenes article detailing Rio's (and others) attempts to differentiate hardware and compete in the digital music market against the iPod juggernaught. From the article: "We decided that we had to be radically different from Apple. Where Apple was sort of the ivory tower, we were going to be the dark rebel. Where Apple was very geometric, we were going to be smooth and curvy. Apple was so enamored with absolute pure, minimalist design that some designers may argue that ergonomics were compromised."