A group of AT&T researchers broke WEP security (even the 128 bit version). See paper here. They recommend treating 802.11 connections as open and using things like SSL and SSH to protect sensitive data.
SW development is still more of an art than a science. That said, I've seen several fairly common causes for late software:
1) Lack of up front planning - too many projects fail to do proper initial planning - specifically defining the problem to be solved, producing detailed product requirements, and a detailed project plan (and then sticking to it).
2) Late (or incomplete) requirements - if you went to an architect half way through home construction and wanted to change the design of a house; you wouldn't be surprised if it fell behind schedule and went over cost.
3) Poor risk management - failure to track dependencies, too many high risk dependencies ("we'll build it on the next OS release, with the new compiler, and that SW package that our start-up partner will finish next month"), failure to make and execute contingency plans.
4) Failure to heed Brook's Law ("Adding software developers to a late project - makes it later.")
5) Failure to have read Deming ("You cannot test quality into a product").
6) General design failures - not assuring that product is scalable, reliable, testable, etc.
7) Failure to place a senior developer on the team that knows about the previous issues.
Twas a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury and
signifying nothing.
Re: Opposing Opinions of Open Source
on
Opposing Open Source?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
No, I was serious. Microsoft is the most vocal opponent of
Open Source (see citations below). If I was looking for
an opposing view point, I'd start with Microsoft. There
main points seem to be that open source is a threat to
the software industries profitability (hint: look up
Microsofts profitability at http://finance.yahoo.com/)
and that Open Source uses an inferior software development
methodology and software project management resulting in
an inferior product (Hint: see http://www3.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=340962& acsFlg=accessBought)
See http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/exec/craig/05-0 3sharedsource.asp
where Craig Mundie states:
"The phrase "open source software," or OSS, is often used
as an umbrella term for a collection of product
development, distribution and licensing practices, many of
which have existed individually since the early days of
computing. There are actually a number of different
approaches within this community, but the common traits are
providing people with access to source code and allowing
others to modify and redistribute that code.
As a result of Microsoft's statement of position today,
many people will attempt to say that Shared Source is
Microsoft's failed attempt at being an Open Source Company.
This could not be a more incorrect statement. Shared Source
is not Open Source. We recognize that OSS has some
benefits, such as the fostering of community, improved
feedback and augmented debugging. We are always looking for
ways to improve our products and make our customers more
successful, and to that end we have incorporated these
positive OSS elements in Shared Source. But there are
significant drawbacks to OSS as well.
The OSS development model leads to a strong possibility of
unhealthy "forking" of a code base, resulting in the
development of multiple incompatible versions of programs,
weakened interoperability, product instability, and
hindering businesses' ability to strategically plan for the
future. Furthermore, it has inherent security risks and can
force intellectual property into the public domain."
or
http://www.microsoft.com/LICENSING/sharedsource/ ss faq.asp
which contains this:
"Software providers need to assess the different business
models to determine how sustainable, growth-oriented
business can be built. Businesses built around a strong
intellectual property (IP) base have a much greater chance
to thrive. The contraction in the dot-com industry over the
past few months came about, in part, due to the pervasive
model of companies giving away valuable asset, like
content, with the hope of making money selling something
else later. The GNU General Public License (GPL), one of
the most widely used OSS licenses, poses a significant
threat to the IP base of companies seeking to build a
business around GPL-covered software. Even businesses who
may believe they are "mere users" of GPL software are
threatened since they combine what they believe to be
separate applications with GPL code. This licensing model
has the effect of foreclosing a business's choice of what
IP to share with the community and on what terms."
Finally, there's an article in an old CACM which describes Microsoft's (closed source) development methodology. The primary focus is on testing. Contrast this with OSS which concentrates on public code reviews.
I've been out of school for over 20 years. My B.A. and M.S. are both in Computer Science. Along the way I took some business courses (about 1/3 of an MBA) and some non-tech courses. My experience is that except for the most fundamental technical courses, the knowledge gained from my computer science courses went stale fairly fast. When I was in school, I was taught "structured programming" on a mainframe. After school, I picked up OO programming, Unix, Linux, C, C++, X-Windows, and Java. If I have any regrets, it's that I wish I'd taken MORE non-tech courses. Business classes have been extremely useful as a foundation for post-university education. I do regret not taking a language in school. I've made several attempts since, to learn Japanese, with minimal success. Bottom line - computer science courses will be useful to your career - short term. Courses in business, the arts, world history, etc., will enrich your life. (As will travel). Of course, you've got to fulfill the technical requirements for your major, but as Mark Twain put it "Don't let school get in the way of your education".
The trade press uses a hype / bash cycle to attract readers and sell
advertising. Think about the headlines you've seen on WAP, Java, or
for that matter Linux. WAP is an emerging technology - first gen
wireless Web enabled phones have limited display areas and limited
input capabilities. By analogy, think back to 1994, and browsers
like "Mosaic", "Cello", and "Netscape 0.92". Then take a look at
what's being currently coming to market - Kyocera has a very nice
phone that combines a phone with a Palm, Nokia has phones that open
up to reveal larger color screens and small keyboards. WAP is
evolving and adding functionality. And companies are developing real
and useful applications for these devices. Wireless devices are not
going to replace the Web anytime soon (probably never). They will
supplement the Web, particularly dealing with time-sensitive data
and transactions. Wireless devices are well suited for handling
time-sensitive information and tasks. For consumers, think
financial and travel related transactions. For businesses, think of
technical data, sales information, and messaging to employees in the
field. Neither WAP, nor any technology will live up to it's early
hype in the trade press. But I think wireless devices and WAP will
grow, evolve, and find important mainstream applications.
My cable modem is currently blinking furiously as infected "Code Red" hosts scan it. Being constantly scanned by hosts infected with a "good" worm would definitely not be an improvement. What I'd like to see, if ISP's scanning their customers machines for known vulnerabilities and then sending the customer an E-mail with fix (patch) info. A periodic scan from an ISP would be useful, a DoS attack from a "good" worm is not.
I've been using CRU's - http://www.cruinc.com Dataport IV for a few months. Comes as two components - one is a receiving slot that fits into your PC. It hooks up to your IDE or SCSI cable and contains a fan and lock mechanism. The second is a cartridge that holds a 3.5" drive. I have different cartridges containing different OS's. The only drawbacks I've seen is the fan is a little noisy and cartridges are not hot-swappable. (I used to work on Tandem Unix boxes with mirrored hot-swappable disks. You could yank a drive with the root partition and the box would keep running!)
Let's see - 30 million i-mode users out of a population of 125 million. 3G (broadband) wireless access in progress, while the U.S. is still arguing over which part of the spectrum to allocate.
I simply avoid products (and retailers) that offer
mail-in rebates. From my experience, about half the time I either never receive the rebate, or get only a fraction of the rebated amount. I now view mail-in rebates as a scam and refuse to play the game. If enough folks stop going along with this, perhaps the vendors would offer discounts rather than rebates.
Just remember the Golden rule of management - watch your back - no, seriously: try to be the type of manager YOU'D want to work for. And remember, the only thing harder than being a new manager is working for one. You'll do fine.
I must respectfully disagree with CmdrTaco. The news is certainly relevant to the technical community. If you're an employee of a start-up and suddenly need Robert Ballard to locate your stock options - that's significant. High-tech start-ups can't afford high salaries - they run on stock options. VC's expect to recoup their investments (and a whole lot more) from the IPO. The IPO also funds the start-up to go to the next stage (and perhaps even make a profit - naah!). That all came to a stop on Friday. IPO's are being cancelled, options have lost their cachet. If this is a temporary dip - no problem, otherwise...
Well, that would certainly explain Gates refusal to make Windows open source. I guess the guys from Fort Meade need to have a talk with Janet Reno. Only thing it doesn't explain is the black helicopter hovering outside my window.:-)
On my last job I had a Sun workstation on my desk. Over six years, the only time it was down was when we lost power, or one occasion when the hard drive crashed. I now have an NT box on my desk (NT4.0 Service Pack 5). It crashes (BSOD) or locks up at least once a week. Worst case (last month) was three times in a day.
I guess there are now four kinds of lies:
1) Lies 2) Damned lies 3) Statistics 4) Microsoft FUD
Hey, maybe we talk Mindcraft into running their NT vs. Linux benchmark on the Argonne cluster. And don't forget to include "total cost of ownership".:~)
Slashdot Mirror
A group of AT&T researchers broke WEP security (even the 128 bit version). See paper here. They recommend treating 802.11 connections as open and using things like SSL and SSH to protect sensitive data.
SW development is still more of an art than a science. That said, I've seen several fairly common causes for late software:
1) Lack of up front planning - too many projects fail to do proper initial planning - specifically defining the problem to be solved, producing detailed product requirements, and a detailed project plan (and then sticking to it).
2) Late (or incomplete) requirements - if you went to an architect half way through home construction and wanted to change the design of a house; you wouldn't be surprised if it fell behind schedule and went over cost.
3) Poor risk management - failure to track dependencies, too many high risk dependencies ("we'll build it on the next OS release, with the new compiler, and that SW package that our start-up partner will finish next month"), failure to make and execute contingency plans.
4) Failure to heed Brook's Law ("Adding software developers to a late project - makes it later.")
5) Failure to have read Deming ("You cannot test quality into a product").
6) General design failures - not assuring that product is scalable, reliable, testable, etc.
7) Failure to place a senior developer on the team that knows about the previous issues.
Twas a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury and
signifying nothing.
No, I was serious. Microsoft is the most vocal opponent of& acsFlg=accessBought)
0 3sharedsource.asp
/ ss faq.asp
Open Source (see citations below). If I was looking for
an opposing view point, I'd start with Microsoft. There
main points seem to be that open source is a threat to
the software industries profitability (hint: look up
Microsofts profitability at http://finance.yahoo.com/)
and that Open Source uses an inferior software development
methodology and software project management resulting in
an inferior product (Hint: see http://www3.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=340962
See http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/exec/craig/05-
where Craig Mundie states:
"The phrase "open source software," or OSS, is often used
as an umbrella term for a collection of product
development, distribution and licensing practices, many of
which have existed individually since the early days of
computing. There are actually a number of different
approaches within this community, but the common traits are
providing people with access to source code and allowing
others to modify and redistribute that code.
As a result of Microsoft's statement of position today,
many people will attempt to say that Shared Source is
Microsoft's failed attempt at being an Open Source Company.
This could not be a more incorrect statement. Shared Source
is not Open Source. We recognize that OSS has some
benefits, such as the fostering of community, improved
feedback and augmented debugging. We are always looking for
ways to improve our products and make our customers more
successful, and to that end we have incorporated these
positive OSS elements in Shared Source. But there are
significant drawbacks to OSS as well.
The OSS development model leads to a strong possibility of
unhealthy "forking" of a code base, resulting in the
development of multiple incompatible versions of programs,
weakened interoperability, product instability, and
hindering businesses' ability to strategically plan for the
future. Furthermore, it has inherent security risks and can
force intellectual property into the public domain."
or
http://www.microsoft.com/LICENSING/sharedsource
which contains this:
"Software providers need to assess the different business
models to determine how sustainable, growth-oriented
business can be built. Businesses built around a strong
intellectual property (IP) base have a much greater chance
to thrive. The contraction in the dot-com industry over the
past few months came about, in part, due to the pervasive
model of companies giving away valuable asset, like
content, with the hope of making money selling something
else later. The GNU General Public License (GPL), one of
the most widely used OSS licenses, poses a significant
threat to the IP base of companies seeking to build a
business around GPL-covered software. Even businesses who
may believe they are "mere users" of GPL software are
threatened since they combine what they believe to be
separate applications with GPL code. This licensing model
has the effect of foreclosing a business's choice of what
IP to share with the community and on what terms."
Finally, there's an article in an old CACM which describes Microsoft's (closed source) development methodology. The primary focus is on testing. Contrast this with OSS which concentrates on public code reviews.
Gee, I'd start with www.microsoft.com ...
Pinky: What are we going to do tonight Bill?
Bill: Same thing as every night Pinky, try to take over the Internet.
I've been out of school for over 20 years. My B.A. and M.S. are both in Computer Science. Along the way I took some business courses (about 1/3 of an MBA) and some non-tech courses. My experience is that except for the most fundamental technical courses, the knowledge gained from my computer science courses went stale fairly fast. When I was in school, I was taught "structured programming" on a mainframe. After school, I picked up OO programming, Unix, Linux, C, C++, X-Windows, and Java. If I have any regrets, it's that I wish I'd taken MORE non-tech courses. Business classes have been extremely useful as a foundation for post-university education. I do regret not taking a language in school. I've made several attempts since, to learn Japanese, with minimal success. Bottom line - computer science courses will be useful to your career - short term. Courses in business, the arts, world history, etc., will enrich your life. (As will travel). Of course, you've got to fulfill the technical requirements for your major, but as Mark Twain put it "Don't let school get in the way of your education".
The trade press uses a hype / bash cycle to attract readers and sell
advertising. Think about the headlines you've seen on WAP, Java, or
for that matter Linux. WAP is an emerging technology - first gen
wireless Web enabled phones have limited display areas and limited
input capabilities. By analogy, think back to 1994, and browsers
like "Mosaic", "Cello", and "Netscape 0.92". Then take a look at
what's being currently coming to market - Kyocera has a very nice
phone that combines a phone with a Palm, Nokia has phones that open
up to reveal larger color screens and small keyboards. WAP is
evolving and adding functionality. And companies are developing real
and useful applications for these devices. Wireless devices are not
going to replace the Web anytime soon (probably never). They will
supplement the Web, particularly dealing with time-sensitive data
and transactions. Wireless devices are well suited for handling
time-sensitive information and tasks. For consumers, think
financial and travel related transactions. For businesses, think of
technical data, sales information, and messaging to employees in the
field. Neither WAP, nor any technology will live up to it's early
hype in the trade press. But I think wireless devices and WAP will
grow, evolve, and find important mainstream applications.
Bob Platt
Senior Architect
CheckFree Corp.
My cable modem is currently blinking furiously as infected "Code Red" hosts scan it. Being constantly scanned by hosts infected with a "good" worm would definitely not be an improvement. What I'd like to see, if ISP's scanning their customers machines for known vulnerabilities and then sending the customer an E-mail with fix (patch) info. A periodic scan from an ISP would be useful, a DoS attack from a "good" worm is not.
I've been using CRU's - http://www.cruinc.com Dataport IV for a few months. Comes as two components - one is a receiving slot that fits into your PC. It hooks up to your IDE or SCSI cable and contains a fan and lock mechanism. The second is a cartridge that holds a 3.5" drive. I have different cartridges containing different OS's. The only drawbacks I've seen is the fan is a little noisy and cartridges are not hot-swappable. (I used to work on Tandem Unix boxes with mirrored hot-swappable disks. You could yank a drive with the root partition and the box would keep running!)
Let's see - 30 million i-mode users out of a population of 125 million. 3G (broadband) wireless access in progress, while the U.S. is still arguing over which part of the spectrum to allocate.
Embrace, extend, ... and extinguish
I simply avoid products (and retailers) that offer
mail-in rebates. From my experience, about half the time I either never receive the rebate, or get only a fraction of the rebated amount. I now view mail-in rebates as a scam and refuse to play the game. If enough folks stop going along with this, perhaps the vendors would offer discounts rather than rebates.
Clearly Unix is NOT an operating system. To
quote from the Book of Redmond:
Operating System (OS): a fat bloated buggy piece
of software with a browser embedded in it.
Just remember the Golden rule of management - watch your back - no, seriously: try to be the type of manager YOU'D want to work for. And remember, the only thing harder than being a new manager is working for one. You'll do fine.
I hereby nominate Jon Katz for the ICANN ...
board of directors
I must respectfully disagree with CmdrTaco. The news is certainly relevant to the technical community. If you're an employee of a start-up and suddenly need Robert Ballard to locate your stock options - that's significant. High-tech start-ups can't afford high salaries - they run on stock options. VC's expect to recoup their investments (and a whole lot more) from the IPO. The IPO also funds the start-up to go to the next stage (and perhaps even make a profit - naah!). That all came to a stop on Friday. IPO's are being cancelled, options have lost their cachet. If this is a temporary dip - no problem, otherwise ...
Looks like once again the DOJ is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Hey Paramount - want a good new ST series - let JMS (B5, Crusade) write / direct.
Well, that would certainly explain Gates refusal to make Windows open source. I guess the guys from Fort Meade need to have a talk with Janet Reno. Only thing it doesn't explain is the black helicopter hovering outside my window. :-)
On my last job I had a Sun workstation on my desk. Over six years, the only time it was down was when we lost power, or one occasion when the hard drive crashed. I now have an NT box on my desk (NT4.0 Service Pack 5). It crashes (BSOD) or locks up at least once a week. Worst case (last month) was three times in a day.
I guess there are now four kinds of lies:
1) Lies
2) Damned lies
3) Statistics
4) Microsoft FUD
(With apologies to Mark Twain)
Actually, the full rebuttal text can be found here:
Did not!
:-)
Hey, maybe we talk Mindcraft into running their :~)
NT vs. Linux benchmark on the Argonne cluster.
And don't forget to include "total cost of
ownership".
Having just finished Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", I find this vaguely disturbing ...
Since the NSA is reading and parsing our mail :-)
anyway, they could detect messages that contain
spam and automatically delete them.