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the site's already slow with images, here's the link to the text version: http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/fast-talk-ex tra.html

Actually, I totally agree--for certain problem domains. Hardware would actually be one of them. Since the requirements for a particular piece of hardware are very limited, and in most cases are well understood, then it should be possible to not only write the end-user documentation first, but also to write formal specifications for that documentation using a language like Z, and prove their correctness. Look at how the space shuttle's on-board group does development, for example.

Unfortunately for more complex systems, up front documentation simply costs too much, unless it's a safety-critical system, since complex systems often have many requirements changes throughout the development cycle. If you require up front documentation for those systems, you end up never writing any code, because every time you finish the docs, you get a change request:)

It is a fact that the original draft of the DoI talked about wealth, not happiness. It was pressure from the liberals in the founding fathers that had the word changed.

Wal-Mart had no chance in succeding in this market to begin with. The reason they are so huge in retail and goods trade is because they buy in such huge volume that they can virtualy control the companies who supply their stores.

Vlasic Pickles was an unfortunate tragedy of the Wal-Mart Empire.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l

It's good to see them lose some ground either way.

this is totally untrue.

Ford is developing the WHOLE system in house this time around, the reason: they don't want to buy old technology

read the whole development process here, it's quite interesting.

"Try to draw a vague parallel to some guy writing code for the space shuttle. There's more at stake when you're sending humans up in a rocket, but the mentality can be the same. We want to get this right, on the first try"

You reminded me of an article, which I found with Google:

They Write the Right Stuff

You've just described how the folks who program the Space Shuttle's computers code. Unfortunately, convincing management of the wisdom of this approach will be difficult.

There was a slashdot article on this a long, long ago...this might be it (not original, however):

They Write The Right Stuff

It's a must read for programmers at mission critical stuff.

There is reasonable and there is crazy. For example there was a recent story about the gallon jar of pickles. (Reference)

Short end of it is that Walmart forced the US suppliers of pickles to drop thier prices so low that those that didn't go out of business were forced to buy from outside the US. To sell a product that is too cheap for general use (Typical family could not eat the lot before it spoiled).

Apologies!!! The firefox got in the hrefhouse.

crack

write stuff

Something I've always wondered about is whether very professional organizations (e.g. NASA) operate in the same way as software developers. Because when someone involved in Software says to the press, "We're prepared for launch," it usually means something a little different.

Not for all software organizations... just the ones that don't build critical systems. There are methods for building software that either doesn't contain bugs, or handles bugs gracefully... the problem is that they're extremely expensive (i.e. they take a lot of time) and only really work on systems that are extremely well understood.

Most software that people are aware of using doesn't fall into the critical category... generally, it's ok for it to have a few bugs, as long as it's cheap. The problem comes when people start using software that was never meant to be used in a critical system (e.g. Windows) in systems that are really critical systems (e.g. warships).

What has to be done when establishing a software product is to define what an acceptable number of defects is and what an acceptable recovery time for failures is, and then hit those targets. There are statistical methods for determining what percentage of defects have been removed (defect seeding) as well as methods for ensuring they don't get there in the first place (structured walkthroughs, formal methods). Again, these methods cost money and time, so you only want to apply a level of rigor that's necessary to meet your quality goals.

In the case of NASA, for their critical (read life-risking) systems, they will accept 0 bugs. And so their process reflects that. Granted, that's just one small group at NASA, but if they know how to do it anywhere, then, where it's necessary, they can do it for other projects as well.

The proportion of men to women on the team which writes the highly reliable software for the space shuttle is roughly 50/50. http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml
Results count for more than studies.

Here's the article They Write the Right Stuff.

I'm not sure what you mean by unit testing since the article doesn't go into that and it talks about 15% of errors making it out of development into production, but you got the gist right.

Is there anything to these rumors of a Silicon Valley resurrection? Or has my week simply been filled with coincidences? What's going on?

Specifically look at the 8th paragraph after the "Software for Grown-Ups" heading, though I'd encourage you to read the whole article.

Women aren't so much not interested in IT, as not interested in the unprofessional, hanging-on-by-our-fingertips, fly-by-night project 'management' that is so endemic in the industry.

Which is why large corporations tend to hire Quality Assurance people.

Speaking of someone who builds GSE (ie non flight ground support equipment), I can assure you that JPL/NASA have world-class QA inspectors. FAR better than anything you find in 'business'. I've personally had many a miserable day because an 'i' wasnt dotted or a 't' wasnt crossed which was found by these QA folks. And I 'only' build the non-flight stuff!

If there's already a QA group for the project (which I am hoping/assuming there is), then you hire a second group to QA the first QA groups results. You can never have too many people reviewing your results, if perfection is your goal.

HOLY CRAP! That is -not- the way to QA! Too many review cycles stagnates into a complete inabaility to get anything done. What you describe is the way that 'modern' software companies try to do QA- and they fail miserably.

The way to good QA is to have a good production process with adequate double-checks in the process reviewed by an independant QA inspection team. The QA process works in a feedback loop that incoroporates lessons learned back into the process such that the process doesn't make those mistakes again. Good QA is about getting the production -process- right, not about putting unending numbers of inspectors into the mix! Actually, in situations like this that QA feedback loop encompases the design, fabrication, test, and operations portion of the mission.

It would be analagous in the software world to requiring you to design your software before ever writing a line of code, then having peer review and QA approve your design, and only then do you get to write code (and only to the approved design). Then, the QA team would look at the crap code that you wrote and reject it; requiring you to start over and write it correctly to the design. Interestingly enough, the people who write flight software for the shuttle work exactly that way, and they are the best the world has ever seen.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

For example, the probe going into Saturns moons didn't run some tests because it was never turned on before it was launched.

Your example demonstrates that you have no clue! You see, that prope called Huygens was an ESA built probe hitching a ride on a NASA spacecraft called Cassini. The Cassini recievers were not on because the commands sent to the spacecraft, which were supplied to NASA -by the ESA- only commanded ONE of the two ESA-provided recievers on. In other words, it wasn't a NASA screwup, but an ESA one! Oh, and it turns out that the data comms system based on those recievers wouldn't have worked at all because of a major major screw up by the ESA... and one determined engineer saved the friggin day on that one. Look for yourself: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature /oct04/1004titan.html

Well, that's how you're supposed to do things.

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

I believe that commercial software is, and should be treated as, an engineering discipline. Similarly, I think we need to accumulate some "best practices" that require commercial software to meet standards of robustness, stability, and functionality. We then need to crush, kill, and destroy anyone who fails to meet those standards.

Software's not a game teenagers play in their basements anymore; it's used on airliners, in cars, in hospitals, and all sorts of other places where a system crash is Not Acceptable. While you can find rare examples of folks who are willing to stick their companies on the line when it comes to the stability of their software, this is the exception, not the rule. Accepting financial liability for bugs in software is a good start. It's also, interestingly, something that only a commercial entity can do.

I wish I could put my hands on an article I read a couple years back on the code in the Space Shuttle. They go at that code base with an attitude that makes the average paranoid look happy-go-lucky. In fact, they approach software engineering kind of like other engineers do -- as if lives depended on it. It's old, it's slow, and it works. (Oh, wait, here it is.) That's how code is maintained.

Eiffel Tower:
(copied from Wikipedia)

Images of the Eiffel Tower have long been in the public domain; however in 2003, the operating company SNTE installed a new lighting display on the tower, which they then copyrighted. The effect is to put the night-time image of the tower under copyright. It follows that it is no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower without permission. The imposition of copyright is not without some controversy. The Director of Documentation for SNTE, Stéphane Dieu, commented in January 2005 "It is really just a way to manage commercial use of the image, so that it isn't used in ways we don't approve". However techically it also applies to tourist photographs of the tower. external link

Also see the Eiffel Tower FAQ

Funny you should mention the Eiffel Tower...

"The Eiffel Tower's likeness had long since been part of the public domain, when in 2003, it was abruptly repossessed by the city of Paris. That's the year that the SNTE, the company charged with maintaining the tower, adorned it with a distinctive lighting display, copyrighted the design, and in one feel swoop, reclaimed the nighttime image and likeness of the most popular monument on earth. In short: they changed the actual likeness of the tower, and then copyrighted that.

As a result, it's no longer legal to publish current photographs of the Eiffel Tower at night without permission."

http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/02/02/ei ffel_tower_repossessed.html

The light display on the Eiffel Tower at night is copyrighted by SNTE, the company that maintains it. They require fees for the right to publish photos taken at night. You can find more info in the story here and at the official site's FAQ.

It is obvious that we need to pick one way for these laws to go and stick with it. I just hope that we don't need to get a license for things that are today accepted as normal behavior. Like: taking a family photo at a ski slope; taking a group photo at a local restaurant; a photo of Mt. Rushmore or the various other national parks in the US; or, even taking a photo of your family inside your family home when something that is copyright is visible through a window. It is truly terrifying to imagine what could come next: copyrighting proper names? consumer products? or perhaps even a thought. Imagine taking a photo of Bono wearing an Ipod in front of Buckingham Palace wearing a tee shirt that says "Think Peace". That is four distinct copyright violations: The name Bono; The Ipod device; the landmark Buckingham Palace; and, the tee shirt slogan "Think Peace". Where will it stop?

Announcer: The referee is down and Walmart is going for a chair...no wait, what is that?! Oh my God, ladies and gentlemen is a Gallon sized jar of Vlasic pickles. Someone stop him!

If Apple is really the brains of the industry--if its products are so much better than Microsoft's or Dell's or IBM's or Hewlett-Packard's--then why is the company so damned small? ... The father of the PC--and, remember, the industry's number-one vendor in 1980--has since sunk to a lowly ninth, behind competitors Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, just for starters. Sadly, Apple is also behind such no-namers as Acer (seventh) and Legend (eighth). So much for innovation and creativity.

Thanks for clearing that up, I first thought it was a reference to some connotations on this page

This might be the case. Mapquest has a company do something simular, drive around and take notes on EVERY intersection, ramp, road construction, and whatever else. They do it slowly, and I imagine its boreing as hell.

information here

Great link, but slashdot mangles plaintext urls.

Here is the correct link.

I think that one of the final sentences is telling;

"And money is not the critical constraint: the groups $35 million per year budget is a trivial slice of the NASA pie, but on a dollars-per-line basis, it makes the group among the nation's most expensive software organizations."

Government enviroments (unless it's a contactor) will always have better resources and a more comfortable envirment than a game company (e.g. EA) trying to push stuff (usually crap) out the door.

This is also probably a large part of the motivation of outsourcing software to India (more people working on software for less money).

I think above user is referring to:

Front Line: Is Wal-mart Good for America?
Fast Company: The Wal-mart You Don't Know
NY Times: Ideas & Trends: Discount Nation; Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Seriously, I feel bad for whoever is putting these together for WalMart. They just got a hugenormous client (WalMart) who will be both the best and worst thing that ever happened to them.

Where I work we split our time between trying to provide excellent service to our non-WalMart customers while keeping WalMart happy because they account for such a huge chunk of our revenue it's not even funny. And that's pretty normal for any company WalMart does business with.

If your business model is based on a secret then you end up spending more on protecting the secret than developing new products.

Exactly. Excellent article today posted on FastCompany details just this point.

Short version: Microsoft has spent A WHOLE BUNCH of money in the past decade and half protecting existing markets rather than innovating new ones. Their R&D dollars go into incremental changes in existing products, rather than the development of new technologies.

Agile works when you are local timezones. Far-flung teams can be more productive than co-located groups. Which would you rather do, share a monitor or VNC? Stretching across timezones has led offshore development to develop rich competencies in more traditional software project management. When outsourcing you can't embrace change, you have to specify against it, and contracted companies then focus on Taylorist execution. I'd suggest that developing competence in agile methodologies is the greatest advantage US teams can gain in light of offshoring. But that does not mean the team has to be in one place.

Actually the grandparent is correct. Walmart puts so much pressure on their suppliers to actually drop prices every year (inflation is for sissies) that they drive small manufactures out of business. Not to mention the small businesses that it suffocates. There are towns that literally shop themselves out of a job. Heck. Walmart singled handedly put Vlassic in bankruptcy by forcing them to sell a gallon of pickles for $2.97 dollars. This is a facinating article about why we should all boycot the place.

Or are you expecting software to be 100% bug free?

Actually, for something as important as the National Election, yes, I am.

This isn't a Slashdot poll. It isn't voting for your favorite M&M color. It isn't the MTV Music Awards. It is deciding who will preside over our country, and even more importantly, represent us to the rest of the world for the next four years.

There are currently processes in place in the government to get as close as possible to error-free code. Take a look at the code running the NASA shuttles for an example.

When a person is elected to be our President, I want to know that we did everything we could to make it a fair and impartial fight (from the voting standpoint---campaigns are a very different issue). I don't want to hear about 50 thousand votes being lost or machines counting backwards.

Obviously electronic voting will be used, and I'm all for it. I just think we should turn it over to a group of NASA programmers, or programmers with the same mindset, procedures and policies in place, so we can rest easy, knowing we did all we could to make sure every one of our votes count.

I think that one thing that a lot of people are missing here is that most professional writers don't just throw down 50,000 words of sterling prose. Many professional writers have a habit of treating their writing as a business in which, at the end of the day, they have to produce some product.

In addition, I think one of the things that is killing the arts in the United States is a lack of appreciation for amateurism. Because we think that it is not worth doing anything if you are not the next Claude Monet, Tony Morrison, John Hooker, or Rachel Podger, we have a culture with both pathological stage fright but yet is willing to play armchair critic. In the arts, pro-ams provide important services as informed consumers promoting good works by word of mouth, and fund-raising boosters for art programs.

They aren't technically a monopoly, but they are huge and behave like one. Any time you want to know what they do, google for "walmart vlassic" to get here. Short version: they tell their vendors "keep bringing your prices, and therefore *your* profits down, or we'll quit selling you and the world will only know your competitor's name. Oh, you went under? Too bad." Seriously, read the article.

Anything Wal-mart can get cheaper will benefit consumers because then the consumers will get it cheaper. Granted Wal-mart's not doing it because they're some grand benefactor, but the end result helps consumers a bit.

Those outsourced factory jobs everyone is blaming on Bush? A goodly number of them can actually be laid at the feet of Wal-Mart and it's predatory practices. Look what they did to Levi-Strauss, and L-S bent over and took it to gain acess to Wal-Mart.

This story about Wal-mart frightens me greatly, and it's just one of many.

Here is a very interesting article on the way Wal-Mart works with suppliers. They have done similar things in other industries to what they're doing here, and really transformed the way business is done in some fields.

Walmart is so powerful it's scary.

Pressed for more detail on the nature of the conversion, Mr. Dyner referred to it electronic and as thermodynamic. After air is drawn into the machine, he said, it ''moves through a dozen metal plates and then comes out again.'' No moving parts are involved, he added.

He said the device works by creating a cloud of microscopic particles that make the air ''image-friendly.'' The machine, he asserted, uses no harmful gases or liquids, but he would not say whether it uses water. ''The ambient air is bottom-projected and illuminated, generating the free-space image that floats in midair,'' he said. At the demonstration, there was no odor in the air, and the area onto which the images were projected seemed dry to the touch.

With regard to 3dsolar, the article said

IO2 does not yet have a manufacturer for the Heliodisplay, but Mr. Dyner says he hopes production will begin in 2005

Here is another article with more info

Dyner bought a digital projector--the same kind used to display PowerPoint presentations--and took it apart. Inside was a micromirror system, a single chip that relies on a million tiny mirrors that tilt back and forth to create images. Dyner spent "seven days a week, 18 hours a day" trying to figure out "how to make the light stop in free space" using the micromirror system.

The key lay in using a fan to create a sheet of air that would reflect light projected at a given angle by the micromirror system. Dyner won't be too specific since his patents haven't yet been issued. But his first prototype made images from a computer hover in midair, something like a two-dimensional hologram. The nifty part: Sensors built into the box can tell when a user's hand (or an object used as a pointer) "touches" the image, allowing a finger to serve as a mouse.

This is somewhat confusing. If the air was onized, then I would expect the room to smell of ozone. Is ionized air reflective? Can someone explain the physics?

I do believe I know of a manufacturing group who'se only customer is Wal-Mart in China, but don't have the english name or URL. I'll keep searching.

For people who don't believe Wal-Mart has such companies, this Fast Company article alludes to it too

"Eventually Wal-Mart became Lovable's biggest customer. "Wal-Mart has a big pencil," says Garson. "They have such awesome purchasing power that they write their own ticket. If they don't like your prices, they'll go vertical and do it themselves--or they'll find someone that will meet their terms.""

The fact is, their main edge over their competitors is their inventory management system (just-in-time, etc.). If they outsourced this, what is to stop their outsourcee to take the knowledge and then shop it around to Target, KMart, Sears, etc.? Such valuable knowledge must be kept in-house if you want to maintain the edge.

On the other hand, if it plain labor, then Walmart _encourages_ their suppliers to outsource. They keep asking for price cuts till the supplier has no choice. Read for yourself.

"The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?" : http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l

Love those pickles

Walmart, by itself, can combat inflation. However, at what cost?

I'd personally love it if they told Wal-Mart to go &%#@ themselves if they don't like the situation.

Sierra's in a situation where they should be able to tell Wal-Mart to take it or leave it. Wal-Mart ought respect it, given their "supplier strategies" (Force your suppliers to drop their prices continuously so you can drop yours, irregardless of whether it's healthy for your suppliers' health. Or so I've heard, or read.) Sierra has a unique product (Halflife 2), and one that isn't exactly an impulse buy currently. It's more of a "hardcore gamer - gotta go out and get my Halflife 2 fix right *now*" kind of buy. In other words, if it's not sold at Wal-Mart, I'd bet that most consumers will have no problem going to Best Buy or EB to pick it up... they'll be actively seeking it.

Give it a few months (or a year), let demand for it slide, and then it might be worth dickering with Wal-Mart.

On the other hand, I have zip, zero, and nada for marketing and supplying experience. Just the average consumer experience here. *shrug*

N.B.: By the way, I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart. I worked for them for a summer after highschool, in their Electronics Dep't, just for some extra cash. They treat their employees like crap, get anti-union rhetoric shoved in their face if they bring up their shoddy treatment if they bring it up in conversation, *and* have to deal with the type of customer that Wal-Mart's marketing strategy attracts on a daily basis. Their supplying strategy just irritates me further. So you could consider me biased :o)

If you think women have never avoided computer science because of such advances, you might want to consider the anecdotes from Microsoft's history: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/03/microsof.ht ml Granted, this was written in 1996, but I bet this stuff still happens, especially in smaller shops.

Take a look at the case of Jay Nelson. This Sal gentleman may face more than 5 years depending what he is doing with Justin's money etc.

Here's a link to the story and background.

Fast Company has an article talking about bringing the parts of the supply chain together.

Turns out they're not only looking to do warranty support, but they're looking to provide customer service and call center support. Everyone wants to be a global services kind of company nowadays :)

Fast Company has an article talking about bringing the parts of the supply chain together.

Turns out they're not only looking to do warranty support, but they're looking to provide customer service and call center support. Everyone wants to be a global services kind of company nowadays :)

This'll end up on the fourth screen of threads, but it's worth reading for those who find it. It's over seven years old, but essentially everything in it holds true today. (worth reading on various lists I don't have it bookmarked - I knew where it was.

"They Write The Right Stuff". I'm not even going to provide a summary of everything which is listed in the article. There are a lot of good lessons in well organized, well thought out explanations as to why the software doesn't shut down but how few errors are found.
There is a difference between a shuttle crew and standard users. 1) A shuttle crew is a smaller user body. 2) They're more likely to follow instructions ala "what happens if I hit this button?"

I've never sent a note to the author, but I think it would be a book as important as Writing Solid Code (is that the right one? (I've been up a little too long without a syringe.)