True. Someone once said software engineers are like craftsmen, but they should be more like production line workers (nasty as that sounds...)
A problem I see is a lack of common work practices and coding standards. Sure, there's quite a few standards out there, but there are perhaps too many, and new ones are devised almost weekly it seems. When a programmer joins a development team, how often is that programmer already familiar with the team's coding standards and work practices? Not very often, even when the people involved all work for the same software company.
Programming still needs to mature as a profession. A thing that stands in the way of that is the lack of good senior programmers, who are allowed time to coach and structure the way the juniors work. Yes, even in the current crappy economic situation, there's still a shortage of such people, both on the job market and within companies. Reasons:
- "Senior programmer" is not a viable career in many companies. Such people become designers or managers. It certainly isn't a sexy profession, many people look down on it even in technically oriented companies.
- The shortage of good programmers is such that those few are often too busy coding to concern themselves with coaching and work practices. Also, companies are often unwilling to invest in this and make sure that the senior programmers have time to spare for these things.
Until programmers are taught and coached properly on the job, they are left to discover things for themselves and take a wild stab themselves at developing something resembling good working practices. This way, the profession of software development will not mature.
Different for the reasons I pointed out. The main problem is the unknowns one comes across in design and planning. What are these unknowns? A few examples
- It is hard to estimate how long a certain bit of software takes to write. Most planners take a stab at it and hope the averages even out across the entire project.
- It is often hard to understand and translate a functional specification into a technical specification.
- Well-documented 3rd party code that turns out to be not-so-well-documented.
- Integrating off-the-shelf software with the bespoke system you are developing turns out to be rather hard, unlike what the sales guy told you. Also some functionality may not work as documented.
Such unknowns are largely (but not completely) absent from construction or automobile manufacturing. Why? Because the guys that build our houses and cars have build many of those before, and those houses and cars were very similar to the ones they are building for you. In other words, in most industries most knowledge is re-used and built upon. In the software industry, re-use is not common despite our best efforts. Off-the-shelf products or libraries don't do quite what you need, or are too expensive or poorly documented, and you end up rolling your own. A lot of software is built almost from scratch, leading to the multitude of unknowns.
So, in the face of liability suits, can these unknowns not be investigated up front, before actual coding starts? Sure. There are areas such as missile guidance, avionics or aerospace where rigorous design and coding practices are common. But for most applications, such practices would make the software prohibitively expensive. You want a bug-free Windows? Fine, but be expected to pay twice as much. That is, provided you pay for your copy of course.
The use of open source and free (as in speech or beer) software is still a hard sell in many companies. I have been into this discussion many times with managers. They claim: "Yes but it's made by a bunch of geeks in their spare time! If it is faulty, I have no recourse!"
Currently that is a false statement. Or rather it is true, but if software from, say, Microsoft turns out to be faulty, you have no recourse either. However, if liability comes into play, this changes. Free software such as Linux will probably be exempt from liability, since it is released "as is" and for free, to be used at ones own risk. Commercial software will not be exempt. This means that commercial software will, from a manager's standpoint, always be the safe choice! After all if it goes poof, you can sue! Remember the saying "No one has ever been fired for buying IBM"? This will be the same, and will effectively kill commercial use of free software.
Writing software is not like construction work. The famous analogy, about buildings being constructed like our software is, is false. Software is a lot more complex, and the unknowns in design and planning are numerous. Think... how many software projects are actually on time? And of those, how did they make the deadline? Exactly, by cutting corners and sacrificing quality.
Time, money and quality are important to both the customer and the contractor, not just quality alone. The old saying about being able to meet only two of these three requirements holds true most of the time. So... demanding that your product is bug free will mean it will either be late, or have a budget overrun. And trying to compete in the market with a product that is late or more expensive than its competitors will simply not work.
Holding software developers liable for damage caused by bugs sounds marvellous, especially when one thinks of Microsoft, but it is unfair. Also, I fear the truth in the comment about only big corporations having the means to deal with liability on this scale. Liability laws will kill the small firms with big clients.
Meldrum, 50, a US citizen, faces a charge of abusing journalistic privilege, by publishing falsehoods
Does it really matter what laws such countries with questionable legislation say about Internet publishing? If this fails, they'd just make it illegal to publish "lies" outside Zimbabwe too
Aye, I found this article rather odd, since the news yesterday was that KPNQWest customers had promised to pay their bills for this month or made ironclad promises to do so, which was good enough to keep the network up to at least the end of the month ("For 3 weeks"), giving those looking to buy KPNQWest a bit more time. This from a reputable Dutch newspaper (no link, their news archive is only available to subscribers...).
In the Netherlands, practically all roads have wire loops in them every few 100 meters, and a central traffic system measures traffic speed and density. A much, much more accurate system, and one that doesn't give away drivers' identities either.
The system already diverts traffic by advising drivers about jams, on matrix signs over the roads. The real challenge of such is to provide motorists with this accurate and up-to-date information, for example by updating their car navigation computers, or sending messages to cellphones.
Large, because your backing up everything. Also... when you have to restore a certain file for a user, you'll have to hunt around for it in all the various backups. Great fun if your users move around a lot (hot desking). Often, it is not a machine you need to resture, but documents or even just a single document for a user.
Much better to have all users save documents in a network drive, and back that drive up. This is what most companies do. Experience tells us that users do not need much encouragements or instructions to make the use the networked drive.
It is not the last stretch of cable to your home that is the problem (okay with cable, perhaps it is an additional problem since it is a shared link)
Broadband subscribers using bandwith on the copper loop do not incur costs for the ISP (except degraded servcie for the shared cable loop). It is the traffic on the ISP's backbone net, and the traffic to the rest of the Internat, that the ISP has to pay for. Wireless service faces the same costs.
Flat-rate as we know it is coming to an end. The only thing ISP's can do is
a) Spread the costs over all subscribers so that the total traffic costs are covered. With bandwidth usage rising, ISP's are already raising the rates of their services.
b) Implement a limit and charge for the overage, or throttle the bandwidth upon exceeding the limit.
c) Offer different services with varying bandwidths and limits. Some ISP's offer both a cheap limited service and a more expensive flat rate one.
In Europe options b and c are the norm, and I think it is only fair that we pay for the bandwidth we use. Some people want to be always on and have a superfast connection, but just download the occasional file. They should not have to pay the same as those who download MP3's all day.
I don't mind paying for services I use but I want plenty of options in that case, and not pay for things I don't use. My ISP seems to get it, and offer 4 basic ADSL packages. My $100/month gets me 8Mb down, 2Mb up, 100GB per month limit. I can connect as many computers as I like, run a server, and generally do whatever the hell I want with my link. They also offer extra static IP's, extra webspace or mailbox space, and other things, at a modest monthly fee.
$170.000, riiiight. They probably figured these "pirates" had access to all premium channels, and were watching them all at once, 24x7. Next, they'll claim these modded boxes were somehow being used to fund terrorism.
Some may argue that this is a punitive fine, but even so it is excessive. Yes, these "pirates" deserve some sort of punishment, but the punishment must fit the crime. Excessive or random punishment is detrimental to a lawful society, as people lose respect for all the Law.
Those who stop to think if they should...
on
Techno Teddy
·
· Score: 1
rarely move beyond that. Unless it is to tell everyone else to stop moving as well.
or at least an inaccurate comparison. Many managers ask "Yeah, if it's open sourced, what guarantees do I get?" Well, ask yourself what guarantees you get from regular software companies. They go out of business, discontinue products or force you into an upgrade path that you might not be able to afford. In the software business you as a customer have very little recourse.
Also consider this: after a company has developed a piece of software and sold it, the team working on it (or a different team) goes into maintenance mode. Now, most programmers dislike maintenance work, especially on products they have not developed themselves. Meanwhile, the original programmers may have left the company, making the job even less desirable.
Now... would you put your trust in a product whose developers are motivated to maintain support for it because it is their brainchild, developed as a labour of love? Or do you trust the developers who are demotivatedby being forced to do something they dislike, and stay on the job purely because of their paychecks?
As a system integrator dealing with various "external" products, I have seen some fine open-source products, and some rather slipshod commercial software. The converse is also true. If you denounce open software for a belief that only money will motivate people, or that people will do good things only for money because "they need to feed their families after all", think again.
Or for other multiplayer game for that matter. You did it to stop them from cheating, fine. But in these games, especially the ones with many players, there is always the grief element
Grievers like nothing better than to ruin other people's game. For them, it's not the winning, it's knowing they caused someone else discomfort. Many who have played MMORPG's will know what I mean. If they find how they can crash the server, they cheerfully will.
In the words of Richard Garriot: "The client is in the hands of the enemy". In other words, leave nothing in the gamers hands. Self policing like you did, peer ratings like some suggested, all that stuff will not work. As opposed to real governments, and contrary to popular opinion here, these game worlds need a very strong central authority, and rules enforced with an iron hand. That authority rests with whoever runs the server: the game company, or a game master
one of the techs was drinking beer from a longneck bottle!
Same beer as the regular kind but less of it, at a higher price. Longnecks, pfft.
Unbreakable Linux... is that like my ol'...
on
'Unbreakable Linux'
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
unbreakable protractor? In the end, it turns out these things are not so unbreakable after all...
Kind of like calling a ship "The unsinkable". We all know how well that works.
I agree. I don't think much of transferring copyright as it happens in the music industry, either to heirs or to the record companies. But that does not give me license to copy their songs without payment.
There probably is another, more secret, document floating around Europol. In this document, they ask for
- Every EU citizen submitting a full report each month about all Internet activity they had that month;
- Each of those reports to be compared against the actual internet usage, by a bunch of underpaid exploited 3rd world country workers
- Any activity unaccounted-for punished by a slap in the face with a largeish wet fish.
When this highly secret document makes it into a proposal for EU legislation, then I'll start to petition against the proposal. Gah... If i had to worry about every little paper that fell off some clerk's desk...
Thievery, hmm. Yes, the taking of information (music, movies) is a grey area. But I think the moral issue is pretty much clear cut. Someone made a movie, and expects people to pay to see it. You copy it and watch it without paying. Are you going to buy the movie later? Is this helping their profits? You ar not taking anything physical from them? Even if the answer is "yes" to all of these, I still think you are wrong. You are not a "thief" or a "pirate" perhaps, but you are still morally wrong. It is their movie, to be distributed and sold as they please, at the price they want
Yes, movie and record companies are gouching the customers and I dislike it as much as the next guy. I also dislike the way they are denying our basic rights, by putting content control and copy protecting in everything. But denying companies the intellectual rights to their own work, means denying anyone those rights. Some people are happy to forego payment for their work, but I'll be damned if that means that anyone should do likewise!
You don't like their price? Don't buy their wares. But don't copy them either. You are not depriving them of anything physical, but you are not any better than someone shoplifting a few DVD's because he thinks they are too expensive.
"I use my PC for everything, including sound that would even be pleasing to audiophiles who didn't know where it was coming from" (italics mine). That last bit is quite telling. If you have a friend who is an audiophile, do a few tests with him!
Audiophiles usually have good hearing, and they can tell the difference between the sound color produced by two different amps. Do a blind test with your audiophile friend and a couple of high end and mid-range amps/speakers, and ask him to give each a rating. At some point throw your computer into the mix and see what rating it gets. I got my speakers from a shop that works like this: they let you hear the speakers first and ask which ones you preferred, and only then did they start to talk prices. You'll find that the audiophile often will not pick out the most ridiculously priced equipment as "best".
Oh and don't get me started on cabling. Show me the person who can justify (or distinguish in a blind test), the $500 cinch leads to connect equipment, or the $150-a-meter loudspeaker cable, as opposed to a good $20 cinch lead and simple LS cable.
"They want choice?! If people had choice, then they'd take all of three seconds to decide they like the free stuff better than our OS". Bill slammed his hand on the table of the boardroom, waking up a grougy Balmer who had slept through the whole meeting, tired after last nights piss-up with the pretty lasses from Marketing
A young excecutive raised his hand, hesitating. "But... people who use Windows may prefer to use a different browser or e-mail client. Why not give them that choice? They...". Bill looked at him and the executive fell silent. "You assume they know what is good for them. Pah! Besides, have you forgotten our deal with the RIAA and the MPAA? They will push our standards and products, and we will put in suitable content copy protection.". He put his fists on the table, leaned forward and looked around the assembled executives. "Don't forget this, gentlemen. Soon, we will control all sides of the equation. Choice, gentlemen, is our enemy."
The devil gazed down through the clouds upon his most faithful minion, and smiled.
Of course, these are often a lot better than English written by most Japanese
English written (or spoken) by most Japanese is, well.. it isn't. I found that there are very few Japanese who have even basic mastery of the English language, and most travellers (like myself) to Japan do not know any Japanese. If you think that these translation engines "will get most ideas across" as you put it, they will be a huge boon to foreigners in Japan, or Japanese travelling abroad.
In many cases, consessions for exploitation are only obtained after ascertaining the presence of whatever it is your after. Drilling for oil comes to mind. In such cases it is naturally vital to keep your data secret, as you don't want any competitors moving in and reaping the rewards of your hard work.
You could make the chip lock out after three tries (which is what happens on the debit card), or stop accepting new data for a long time (1 day perhaps).
I believe some Israeli guy cracked the Dutch debit card by sticking it in a microwave(!), briefly forcing logic states that normally should never occur, allowing him to get the data out of the memory.
You cannot get the info back, but you can use it for something or get feedback on it. The feedback is not the actual data, but comes in the form of "the data currently on the bus matches / doesn't match what I have stored internally"
The data is compared against the memory inside the IC device. From outside the device the memory can be written to, but the data cannot be read back so it is write-only for all intends and purposes (one could possibly drill into the IC package and get at the memory).
I believe the more common term for this is a black box, but I've heard such device being referred to as having write-only memory.
Slashdot Mirror
True. Someone once said software engineers are like craftsmen, but they should be more like production line workers (nasty as that sounds...)
A problem I see is a lack of common work practices and coding standards. Sure, there's quite a few standards out there, but there are perhaps too many, and new ones are devised almost weekly it seems. When a programmer joins a development team, how often is that programmer already familiar with the team's coding standards and work practices? Not very often, even when the people involved all work for the same software company.
Programming still needs to mature as a profession. A thing that stands in the way of that is the lack of good senior programmers, who are allowed time to coach and structure the way the juniors work. Yes, even in the current crappy economic situation, there's still a shortage of such people, both on the job market and within companies. Reasons:
- "Senior programmer" is not a viable career in many companies. Such people become designers or managers. It certainly isn't a sexy profession, many people look down on it even in technically oriented companies.
- The shortage of good programmers is such that those few are often too busy coding to concern themselves with coaching and work practices. Also, companies are often unwilling to invest in this and make sure that the senior programmers have time to spare for these things.
Until programmers are taught and coached properly on the job, they are left to discover things for themselves and take a wild stab themselves at developing something resembling good working practices. This way, the profession of software development will not mature.
Different for the reasons I pointed out. The main problem is the unknowns one comes across in design and planning. What are these unknowns? A few examples
- It is hard to estimate how long a certain bit of software takes to write. Most planners take a stab at it and hope the averages even out across the entire project.
- It is often hard to understand and translate a functional specification into a technical specification.
- Well-documented 3rd party code that turns out to be not-so-well-documented.
- Integrating off-the-shelf software with the bespoke system you are developing turns out to be rather hard, unlike what the sales guy told you. Also some functionality may not work as documented.
Such unknowns are largely (but not completely) absent from construction or automobile manufacturing. Why? Because the guys that build our houses and cars have build many of those before, and those houses and cars were very similar to the ones they are building for you. In other words, in most industries most knowledge is re-used and built upon. In the software industry, re-use is not common despite our best efforts. Off-the-shelf products or libraries don't do quite what you need, or are too expensive or poorly documented, and you end up rolling your own. A lot of software is built almost from scratch, leading to the multitude of unknowns.
So, in the face of liability suits, can these unknowns not be investigated up front, before actual coding starts? Sure. There are areas such as missile guidance, avionics or aerospace where rigorous design and coding practices are common. But for most applications, such practices would make the software prohibitively expensive. You want a bug-free Windows? Fine, but be expected to pay twice as much. That is, provided you pay for your copy of course.
The use of open source and free (as in speech or beer) software is still a hard sell in many companies. I have been into this discussion many times with managers. They claim: "Yes but it's made by a bunch of geeks in their spare time! If it is faulty, I have no recourse!"
Currently that is a false statement. Or rather it is true, but if software from, say, Microsoft turns out to be faulty, you have no recourse either. However, if liability comes into play, this changes. Free software such as Linux will probably be exempt from liability, since it is released "as is" and for free, to be used at ones own risk. Commercial software will not be exempt. This means that commercial software will, from a manager's standpoint, always be the safe choice! After all if it goes poof, you can sue! Remember the saying "No one has ever been fired for buying IBM"? This will be the same, and will effectively kill commercial use of free software.
Writing software is not like construction work. The famous analogy, about buildings being constructed like our software is, is false. Software is a lot more complex, and the unknowns in design and planning are numerous. Think... how many software projects are actually on time? And of those, how did they make the deadline? Exactly, by cutting corners and sacrificing quality.
Time, money and quality are important to both the customer and the contractor, not just quality alone. The old saying about being able to meet only two of these three requirements holds true most of the time. So... demanding that your product is bug free will mean it will either be late, or have a budget overrun. And trying to compete in the market with a product that is late or more expensive than its competitors will simply not work.
Holding software developers liable for damage caused by bugs sounds marvellous, especially when one thinks of Microsoft, but it is unfair. Also, I fear the truth in the comment about only big corporations having the means to deal with liability on this scale. Liability laws will kill the small firms with big clients.
Aye, I found this article rather odd, since the news yesterday was that KPNQWest customers had promised to pay their bills for this month or made ironclad promises to do so, which was good enough to keep the network up to at least the end of the month ("For 3 weeks"), giving those looking to buy KPNQWest a bit more time. This from a reputable Dutch newspaper (no link, their news archive is only available to subscribers...).
In the Netherlands, practically all roads have wire loops in them every few 100 meters, and a central traffic system measures traffic speed and density. A much, much more accurate system, and one that doesn't give away drivers' identities either.
The system already diverts traffic by advising drivers about jams, on matrix signs over the roads. The real challenge of such is to provide motorists with this accurate and up-to-date information, for example by updating their car navigation computers, or sending messages to cellphones.
Large, because your backing up everything. Also... when you have to restore a certain file for a user, you'll have to hunt around for it in all the various backups. Great fun if your users move around a lot (hot desking). Often, it is not a machine you need to resture, but documents or even just a single document for a user.
Much better to have all users save documents in a network drive, and back that drive up. This is what most companies do. Experience tells us that users do not need much encouragements or instructions to make the use the networked drive.
It is not the last stretch of cable to your home that is the problem (okay with cable, perhaps it is an additional problem since it is a shared link)
Broadband subscribers using bandwith on the copper loop do not incur costs for the ISP (except degraded servcie for the shared cable loop). It is the traffic on the ISP's backbone net, and the traffic to the rest of the Internat, that the ISP has to pay for. Wireless service faces the same costs.
Flat-rate as we know it is coming to an end. The only thing ISP's can do is
a) Spread the costs over all subscribers so that the total traffic costs are covered. With bandwidth usage rising, ISP's are already raising the rates of their services.
b) Implement a limit and charge for the overage, or throttle the bandwidth upon exceeding the limit.
c) Offer different services with varying bandwidths and limits. Some ISP's offer both a cheap limited service and a more expensive flat rate one.
In Europe options b and c are the norm, and I think it is only fair that we pay for the bandwidth we use. Some people want to be always on and have a superfast connection, but just download the occasional file. They should not have to pay the same as those who download MP3's all day.
I don't mind paying for services I use but I want plenty of options in that case, and not pay for things I don't use. My ISP seems to get it, and offer 4 basic ADSL packages. My $100/month gets me 8Mb down, 2Mb up, 100GB per month limit. I can connect as many computers as I like, run a server, and generally do whatever the hell I want with my link. They also offer extra static IP's, extra webspace or mailbox space, and other things, at a modest monthly fee.
$170.000, riiiight. They probably figured these "pirates" had access to all premium channels, and were watching them all at once, 24x7. Next, they'll claim these modded boxes were somehow being used to fund terrorism.
Some may argue that this is a punitive fine, but even so it is excessive. Yes, these "pirates" deserve some sort of punishment, but the punishment must fit the crime. Excessive or random punishment is detrimental to a lawful society, as people lose respect for all the Law.
rarely move beyond that. Unless it is to tell everyone else to stop moving as well.
or at least an inaccurate comparison. Many managers ask "Yeah, if it's open sourced, what guarantees do I get?" Well, ask yourself what guarantees you get from regular software companies. They go out of business, discontinue products or force you into an upgrade path that you might not be able to afford. In the software business you as a customer have very little recourse.
Also consider this: after a company has developed a piece of software and sold it, the team working on it (or a different team) goes into maintenance mode. Now, most programmers dislike maintenance work, especially on products they have not developed themselves. Meanwhile, the original programmers may have left the company, making the job even less desirable.
Now... would you put your trust in a product whose developers are motivated to maintain support for it because it is their brainchild, developed as a labour of love? Or do you trust the developers who are demotivatedby being forced to do something they dislike, and stay on the job purely because of their paychecks?
As a system integrator dealing with various "external" products, I have seen some fine open-source products, and some rather slipshod commercial software. The converse is also true. If you denounce open software for a belief that only money will motivate people, or that people will do good things only for money because "they need to feed their families after all", think again.
Or for other multiplayer game for that matter. You did it to stop them from cheating, fine. But in these games, especially the ones with many players, there is always the grief element
Grievers like nothing better than to ruin other people's game. For them, it's not the winning, it's knowing they caused someone else discomfort. Many who have played MMORPG's will know what I mean. If they find how they can crash the server, they cheerfully will.
In the words of Richard Garriot: "The client is in the hands of the enemy". In other words, leave nothing in the gamers hands. Self policing like you did, peer ratings like some suggested, all that stuff will not work. As opposed to real governments, and contrary to popular opinion here, these game worlds need a very strong central authority, and rules enforced with an iron hand. That authority rests with whoever runs the server: the game company, or a game master
one of the techs was drinking beer from a longneck bottle!
Same beer as the regular kind but less of it, at a higher price. Longnecks, pfft.
unbreakable protractor? In the end, it turns out these things are not so unbreakable after all... Kind of like calling a ship "The unsinkable". We all know how well that works.
I agree. I don't think much of transferring copyright as it happens in the music industry, either to heirs or to the record companies. But that does not give me license to copy their songs without payment.
There probably is another, more secret, document floating around Europol. In this document, they ask for
- Every EU citizen submitting a full report each month about all Internet activity they had that month;
- Each of those reports to be compared against the actual internet usage, by a bunch of underpaid exploited 3rd world country workers
- Any activity unaccounted-for punished by a slap in the face with a largeish wet fish.
When this highly secret document makes it into a proposal for EU legislation, then I'll start to petition against the proposal. Gah... If i had to worry about every little paper that fell off some clerk's desk...
Thievery, hmm. Yes, the taking of information (music, movies) is a grey area. But I think the moral issue is pretty much clear cut. Someone made a movie, and expects people to pay to see it. You copy it and watch it without paying. Are you going to buy the movie later? Is this helping their profits? You ar not taking anything physical from them? Even if the answer is "yes" to all of these, I still think you are wrong. You are not a "thief" or a "pirate" perhaps, but you are still morally wrong. It is their movie, to be distributed and sold as they please, at the price they want
Yes, movie and record companies are gouching the customers and I dislike it as much as the next guy. I also dislike the way they are denying our basic rights, by putting content control and copy protecting in everything. But denying companies the intellectual rights to their own work, means denying anyone those rights. Some people are happy to forego payment for their work, but I'll be damned if that means that anyone should do likewise!
You don't like their price? Don't buy their wares. But don't copy them either. You are not depriving them of anything physical, but you are not any better than someone shoplifting a few DVD's because he thinks they are too expensive.
"I use my PC for everything, including sound that would even be pleasing to audiophiles who didn't know where it was coming from" (italics mine). That last bit is quite telling. If you have a friend who is an audiophile, do a few tests with him!
Audiophiles usually have good hearing, and they can tell the difference between the sound color produced by two different amps. Do a blind test with your audiophile friend and a couple of high end and mid-range amps/speakers, and ask him to give each a rating. At some point throw your computer into the mix and see what rating it gets. I got my speakers from a shop that works like this: they let you hear the speakers first and ask which ones you preferred, and only then did they start to talk prices. You'll find that the audiophile often will not pick out the most ridiculously priced equipment as "best".
Oh and don't get me started on cabling. Show me the person who can justify (or distinguish in a blind test), the $500 cinch leads to connect equipment, or the $150-a-meter loudspeaker cable, as opposed to a good $20 cinch lead and simple LS cable.
"They want choice?! If people had choice, then they'd take all of three seconds to decide they like the free stuff better than our OS". Bill slammed his hand on the table of the boardroom, waking up a grougy Balmer who had slept through the whole meeting, tired after last nights piss-up with the pretty lasses from Marketing
A young excecutive raised his hand, hesitating. "But... people who use Windows may prefer to use a different browser or e-mail client. Why not give them that choice? They...". Bill looked at him and the executive fell silent. "You assume they know what is good for them. Pah! Besides, have you forgotten our deal with the RIAA and the MPAA? They will push our standards and products, and we will put in suitable content copy protection.". He put his fists on the table, leaned forward and looked around the assembled executives. "Don't forget this, gentlemen. Soon, we will control all sides of the equation. Choice, gentlemen, is our enemy."
The devil gazed down through the clouds upon his most faithful minion, and smiled.
In many cases, consessions for exploitation are only obtained after ascertaining the presence of whatever it is your after. Drilling for oil comes to mind. In such cases it is naturally vital to keep your data secret, as you don't want any competitors moving in and reaping the rewards of your hard work.
You could make the chip lock out after three tries (which is what happens on the debit card), or stop accepting new data for a long time (1 day perhaps).
I believe some Israeli guy cracked the Dutch debit card by sticking it in a microwave(!), briefly forcing logic states that normally should never occur, allowing him to get the data out of the memory.
You cannot get the info back, but you can use it for something or get feedback on it. The feedback is not the actual data, but comes in the form of "the data currently on the bus matches / doesn't match what I have stored internally"
The data is compared against the memory inside the IC device. From outside the device the memory can be written to, but the data cannot be read back so it is write-only for all intends and purposes (one could possibly drill into the IC package and get at the memory).
I believe the more common term for this is a black box, but I've heard such device being referred to as having write-only memory.