User: ahodgkinson

Re:Learning from decades-old code -Data not code!

On: Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective

Interesting in this thread is that most people are harping on comments and the style of code itself, with no attention is being spent on the data that the code is (presumably) moving around. The code can be found directly in the source files, but the enlightenment on the organization of the data can be spread over source files, include files, data specification files, etc.

In my experience (over 30 years), the effort that has the best pay-back in terms of reducing the risk and difficulty of new and maintenance programming is to design suitable (meaning appropriate given the tools, project size, and staff skills) data structures and data handling techniques, and communicate them effectively. The communicating part is best done in writing and this can be in design documents, README files, or as comments in the code itself. I've noticed that as I've aged, I have changed from attempting to write complete formal, well-formatted documents (which you never get to finish), over to informal README files and ascii documentation. The goal being to get something in writing for the next poor guy that's going to have to work on the code.

Picking on comments and coding styles, in my opinion, is a sign of lack of understanding. Sure there are crappy programming styles, and it's a shame when everyone on the team writes in their own personal style, but that's missing the big picture. While it's annoying, it's usually a sign of a much larger problem, namely that there's no thought behind the code and it's all a big hack.

Much more effort should be spent on documenting the data and data structures. In fact, early in my career I once heard an old timer say that if you understand the data and can invent sensible subroutine and variable names, the code more or less writes itself.

Wake up! Corporations are co-opting democracy

On: Gates tried to Blackmail Danish Government

This is what happens when multi-national corporations gain wealth approaching that of medium sized nations. They tend to start (mis-)using the power that wealth affords them to promote their own agenda. While this is done for financial gain and not as evil for evil's sake, the result is a disproportionate balance of power/rights to the favor of the corporation at the expense of the private citizen, with little regard for unintended consequences that the public might suffer.

Unfortunately, multi-national corporations have a great deal to gain with such practices, and their expected value is actually fairly high, even taking into account the legal fees, fines and embarrassment of getting caught now and again.

Unfortunately, the public, as compared to the vested business interests, is generally apathetic, since they have less to lose individually, than the corporations. This means that the corporations will merely continue their efforts until the public loses interest and they succeed in converting their selfish desires into government policy. This may take years, but they have the focus to see it through to the end.

In the particular case, software patents, there has been public outcry in Europe against them and the politicians have generally listened. Each time we think the issue is close some massive business entity resurrects the discussion, in spite of the public opinion. Obviously this hasn't yet met with success and now Microsoft is attempting some innovative (sic) and repulsive tactics.

What should we as individuals do?

• Spread the word and name names. Tell your friends, your co-workers, you boss, or even better, your neighbor the elected official, that Microsoft has attempted to co-opt the democratic process in Denmark.
• Wite letters to newspapers, journals, and elected officials explaining why software patents are a bad idea in Europe.
• Vote with your feet. Stop buying/using products from companies that engage in unfair business and political practices.
• Donate to the EFT, Groklaw and other similar institutions.
• Remain vigilant.

If you dont know much about the arguments surrounding software patents, have a look at: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com

Note: I'm not against big business, provided they play fair. Unfortunately, my experience has been that large corporations tend to use their size advantages in ways that make it difficult for smaller (and in many cases more innovative) business to compete. It's up to the small guy to fight back (in a fair way :).

Thy *BSD

On: Which Linux for Professional Admins?

Seriously, for a free (as in speach) distribution with the minimum of feature overload and ease of administration, *BSD is a very good choice.

If ease of administration, stability and security is more important that than latest versions of the latest applications and the ability to use the latest bleeding edge hardware, then the *BSD distributions (e.g. FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD) may be the answer. Granted, a fairly good understanding of UNIX will be required, but if you're fairly proficient at adminsitering one or more Linux distributions, then *BSD will be very easy to learn. Even better, the documentation is generally better written, more complete and more up to date than any Linux distribution that I've seen.

This answer may not be what you expect, but then again the question, as posted, deserves a thinking outside the box type of answer. You stated that you want the best of all worlds, and then mention file/printer server and database boxes. It sounds like you're more interested in servers than clients. *BSD is ideal in this regard.

Corporate Anti-Globalism

On: HP to Region-code Cartridges

HP is doing this because they feel that the economic damage caused by bad PR will be less that the regained 'lost profits' caused by geographical arbitrage . Corporations do this because they think it makes them more money. They want to be globalized on the cost side, but not allow their customers the same access to the benefits of globalization.

In short, HP has calculated that region coding their cartridges will pay. And it will, unless the public creates enough commotion to affect their bottom line and force a rethink of the region coding.

HP is restricting free the use of products that I own (or in this case, am likely to buy). As a proponent of Open Source I feel this is wrong. If you feel the same way, make your voice heard, either by boycotting the infringing products or helping to create awareness of these bad business practices.

MS Piracy != RIAA Piracy

On: Microsoft Replaces Your Pirated Windows, For Free

Microsoft operating system piracy is different from music piracy . Think about how the average person buys computers and music. Is it the same? Hardly.

When a normal user buys a computer, he expects some degree of guarantee and support. He'll probably buy an upgrade at some point too. This means there's likely to be an ongoing relationship between the customer and his hardware/software vendor(s). With music, you receive a CD and that's it. You never have to upgrade a CD.

This is why computer brand names still have value and why you probably don't know the 'brand name' (meaning the producers of the physical CD) of any of the CDs you own.

For Microsoft it means that it will have an easier time at catching the sellers of hardware then include illegal copies of their operating systems, because the computer vendors are more or less static in the market place. Think about the sales of illegally copied CDs, they tend to occur in open air markets and other non-official places of business rather than in shops.

Thus, the RIAA has a much more difficult task. Granted there are lots of mass producers of illegally copied CDs, but the average consumer is so far down in the supply chain that they won't have useful information to help eliminate the music pirates. Lots of music is pirated by end users and this has the RIAA much more worried.

In Microsoft's case, most OS sales are made via hardware vendors via the infamous Microsoft tax. This is why Microsoft is interesting in going after vendors selling illegal copies, namely because they can and perhaps also they rightly realize they will not greatly damage their name in the process.

Joseph Weizenbaum saw it coming in the 1970s

On: CIA Researching Automated IRC Spying

You may not remember but in the 1970s there was a professor at MIT named Joseph Weizenbaum who was worried about exactly these sorts of problems. In his case he largely refused to do research in the area of natural language comprehension, specifically speech recognition, because of his fears of government misuse. Further he recommended that scientists and researchers wake up and publicly discuss the negative implications of their work.

I find it ironic that for monitoring the Internet there is no need for speech recognition, and given its popularity as a communication medium, it has actually made the government's eavesdropping tasks that much easier.

Weizenbaum is also the author of the Eliza program, in which a person interacted via a keyboard with a simulation of a psychologist. It is considered the mother of all chatbots. Many people, including many experts, were taken in and thought it was a real person. This finding disturbed Weizenbaum.

Weizenbaum's thoughts on these subjects can be found in his book Computer Power and Human Reason. We had it as a text book at MIT and I would argue that it should be required reading for all scientists and technologists.

Re:$ sign in front?

On: Microsoft Pays $536M to Novell

Just out of curiousity, which currencies don't follow this system?

• Disclaimer: I realize this is off topic, but does give a partial answer to the parent's question.

In Switzerland we write 10 Fr. (Franks) or 10 CHF, where CHF is the ISO currency symbol for the Swiss Frank.

Prior to the Euro, many of the European currency 'symbols', which were usually one or more letters, followed the currency amount. I think that Spain even used a ligature of 'Pts' for their Pesetas. It followed the amount.

A simple minded rule would be that real symbols, $, Euro, etc. all precede the currency amount and 'symbols' composed of normal letters follow it. But I believe that the Japanese Yen symbol follows the currency amount.

Ultimately the syntax used for stating a currency and amount is simply a practice, derived from custom and culture, that has evolved over many centuries. Thus, there is no general rule. Attempts have been made to standardize (e.g. ISO currency designators), but universal acceptance, by shopkeepers and the man on the street, has been low.

Internally in banks, in Europe anyways, amounts of money are written as a value followed by an ISO currency symbol. The ISO symbol is used to ensure that no mistake is made, say by assuming that '$' means US dollars (USD) instead of Hong Kong dollars (HKD).

You can read more that you even wanted to know about currencies at the Oanda web site. It in includes a forum where you and ask about currencies and a gallery of scans of various international bank notes.

One small step for science..

On: The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism

In fact, it fills in one small link in fairly long chain of evolutionary events that have been extensively researched over the past decades. The particular discovery mentioned in the article is one of the early links in the evolutionary sequence of the eye.

Back in 1986, Richard Dawkins, in the Blind Watchmaker wrote one example of how an eye could evolve from simple light sensitive cells to a fully developed eye with a lens, all via a sequence of plausible evolutionary steps. See Chapter 4 of the Blind Watchmaker for details.

The subject is also covered in considerable detail in Dawkin's paper 'Where d'you get those peepers'. This Dawkins paper remarks that multiple independent 'eyes' (in different species) have evolved, and that at least nine different design principals for these eyes have been identified.

While this is interesting news, it's hardly a revolution or likely to put creationist claims to rest.

Perhaps someone can host a forum to fight this

On: MPAA Blames Linux Australia Notice on Human Error

I've read of a few other similar incidents and it appears that the MPAA is being a little too pro-active in hunting of copyright violators. In the end it doesn't matter if this as an automated process or being performed by hand, it's still harassment and can probably be couter-attacked though the courts.

I wonder if a group of recipients of the MPAA cease and desist letters, meaning only those who are not distributing copyrighted material, could band together and sue the MPAA.

The approach might be to start a MPAA victims (again consisting of only those who are provably not distributing copyrighted material) web-site or forum where you could document the MPAA's phishing attempts.

Assuming the reality is as bad as the we're reading about, some lawyer or perhaps even the EFF might offer some pro-bono time to righting the wrongs that the MPAA appears to be committing.

Pro-Am innovation has existed for 100s of years

On: Amateur Revolution?

I'm not so sure that the Pro-Am movement is all that new. I think talented amateurs have been having a profound impact on society for a long, long time. There's been always a cutting edge of innovation separate from large corporate interests. This is probably better explained by the stifling behavior of large organizations and the passionate individual's willings to risk all, than any Internet and/or technology aspect.

That said, the cheaper and improved communication enabled by recent technological developments, notably the Internet, has allowed talented amateurs to exchange ideas and cross motivate each other without physically have to be in the same place.

In most periods of intense innovation, the innovation itself takes place in so-called clusters, where there is a critical mass of the talented and passionate individuals driving the creation and development of new technology.

This pattern has existed for hundreds of years. Consider the following (incomplete list):

• The development of the decorative arts industries in Venice during the renaissance.
• The industrial revolution in the early 19th century in the midlands of England.
• The silicon revolution in the 70s in the Bay Area.

In each of these periods, outsiders managed to start entire industries, often becoming household names and rich in the process. The barriers to entry were initially low and, as time went by, the rich and powerful would naturally attempt to raise them to preserve their comfortable status quo. Generally, this led to a period of stagnation and then another bout of innovation would occur, often in different place and involving different technology.

What's different is that now, with the Internet, being in the same places physically isn't a necessary condition for the formation of a cluster.

In observing the development of personal computers and the introduction to electronic communications that led to the (widespread) Internet you might want to consider the steps that led to where we are now. They are not listed in any particular order, but rather to show that we have had stages of evolution prior to today's Internet that enabled Pro-Ams:

Ham radio

Bulletin Board Systems

Usenet news groups

Desktop publishing

Wide spread availability of e-mail

Browsers and static web pages

Blogs

Each of these steps allow communication to occur and in its way helped the like-minded talented amateurs find their 'cluster'.

Like the song says: It's all just history repeating ..just with a new twist.

P.S. I'd also like to point out the use of rap music to bolster the argument is false. As pointed out in some of the other comments, Big Business has controlled popular music since before the 80's and has largely stifled or co-opted all innovation since then. Not by choice, rather through greed and by attempting to reduce risk. There is some Pro-Am innovation in music, but because of Big Business' control of the existing distribution channels, it has yet to reach any mainstream audience. Perhaps the Internet will change this.

Force compliance, don't impose a fine

On: DOJ Calls EU Microsoft Decision "Unfortunate"

• "It would have been better to levy no fine, but to force Microsoft to provide these interfaces into the public domain. This would allow the possibility of real competition. Allowing Microsoft to remain in control in any form over the interface disclosure leaves the competitive landscape unchanged."

Why not an injunction instead of a fine? Removing less than a billion dollars from Microsoft's $50 billion in cash isn't going cause Microsoft to do anything differently. At most it will be a embarrassing publicity problem.

The EU's goal is to provide a competitive environment where other companies will have chance. This can only be done my making Microsoft compete fairly, which means forcing a change in their corporate behavior. This won't happen by confiscating 2% of their yearly revenues.

Microsoft has shown multiples time that it is unwilling to do business on a level playing field. So instead of a fine, how about immediately imposing an injunction on Microsoft making it illegal to sell their products in Europe until they comply with the EU's terms. I think this is the only way to get them to change their corporate behavior.

Why not an injunction instead of a fine?

On: EU Fines Microsoft $613 Million, Officially

Why not an injunction instead of a fine? Removing less than a billion dollars from Microsoft's $50 billion in cash isn't going cause Microsoft to do anything differently. At most it will be a embarrassing publicity problem.

And it's not even a given that the fine will even be imposed in the short to medium term. Microsoft is obviously going to appeal and engage in all sorts of delaying tactics, hoping for a change in the political winds. They have the cash reserves, the legal team and patience to outlast pretty much all competitors and governments. This worked for them before in the US.

Microsoft has shown multiples time that it is unwilling to do business on a level playing field. So how about instead of a fine, immediately imposing an injunction on Microsoft making it illegal to sell their products in Europe until they comply with the EU's terms. This will negate Microsoft's delaying tactics and is more likely to get them to change their corporate behavior.

Democracy Sacrificed to Buggy Technology?

On: More E-voting Problems in California

Electronic voting is like a slow motion train wreck. Everyone sees it coming, knows it's going to be a big mess, but it has so much momentum that we're powerless to prevent it.

It seems like every second week we read of some precinct that discovers some troubling issue associated with their electronic vote tallying. The sinister mind might think that there is a hidden agenda and that election results are being rigged. The more generous interpretation is that the technology and procedures for using it are just not debugged. Unfortunately, for the citizen, the result is the same: They have no confidence that their vote is being counted.

It has long been argued that a physical paper audit trail must accompany all elections, as it is the only way to guarantee a fair and audit-able result. Sure, politicians and the supplier companies will argue about the cost, but given the dismal results so far, perhaps the proponents of e-voting should bear the costs of the paper audit trails themselves, at least until the systems are proven accurate in a large number of elections. It's particularly disturbing to see the e-voting supplier companies, such as Diebold, expending so much effort trying to hide problems and frustrate transparency.

Without proper safeguards, the citizen's most basic right, namely that of deciding who represents them in government, is going to be forfeit to buggy technology. This is particularly important in the US in 2004, as it is a presidential election year there, and based on the 2000 fiasco, problematic vote counting has the potential to ruin the US elections (again).

It's interesting to note that California, home of high-tech silicon is one of a few if not the only state that requires a hand count. I guess they know technology is not infallible.

Expect more of this in the future

On: Project Gutenberg 2 Raises Some Hackles

It is surprising that something like this has not happened sooner. You should expect more OS Hijacking to occur as the various open source project begin to achieve a positive brand recognition.

In this case, some clever business has realized that Project Gutenberg has a good name and is now attempting to make money off it. Thankfully they've had the good sense to put a (rather oblique) disclaimer disassociating themselves from the original Project Gutenberg.

That said, in my opinion, it's certainly unethical and in some case, may even be illegal to attempt to generate business based on fooling the consumer. Perhaps someone should alert the RMS and the EFF of this new method of co-opting open source.

Transcript of the Phone Call

On: Baystar Confirms Microsoft Behind SCO Investment

NOTE: In order to preserve privacy, some names have been changed.

BayStart operator: Hello, BayStart Capital, How my I direct your call?
Caller: Yeah. Dis is Mario. I wanna talk to da boss. Now!
Baystar operator: One minute please.
Goldfahnder: Hello. Goldfahnder here.
Caller: Is dis da Boss o' BayStart?
Goldfahnder: Excuse me?
Caller: Are you da Boss of BaySta?
Goldfahnder: Oh. Yes, my name is Lawrence Goldfahnder and I am the managing director of BayStart Capital. What can I do for you?
Caller: Yeah. Dis is Mario, I'm a friend of Bill, see. And Bill told me that youze guys gotta send some money over to SCO. Got that?
Goldfahnder: What? Who is this?
Caller: I told you already, Mario... A friend of Bill's. Ya don't get it, do ya? Bill says that you gotta give money to SCO.. or else! Got that? Or do I gotta come over and stick your head down the toilet an' clean your ears?
Goldfahnder (somewhat surprized): Ahm, erm. Are you suggesting that we should invest some money in SCO?
Caller: Yeah. Jez, for a smart guy like you, you sure are dumb. You could call it investment.. or whatever. Just send over money... a lotta money... now.
Goldfahnder (shakily): Yes, Mr. Mario. I'll see that it gets done, right away.
Caller: That's more like it. You do that, and don't make me come over and visit you... click.

Yet another information hoover

On: Guilty By Association

Here we go again with another attempt to provide value while collecting massive amount of personal data. While the goal may be laudable, I'm not sure the reault will be all that useful to the users. This time I don't suspect Microsoft of having a hidden agenda. To me this looks like a solution searching for a problem.

What irritates me is that this will be yet another instance of a large company collecting data about me, with no restraint on what happens to it downstream. This is happening more and more.

Also scary is that there isn't, apart perhaps from national security, any master plan for collecting all this data. Thousands of corporations, agencies, clubs and whatnot are collecting data about their customers, members, suppliers, etc. in an effort to provide better/more efficient service. While it's all being done in a good cause, the side affect is that when all these separate databases get combined, all sorts of inferences can be made about your behavior, health, habits, etc.

In most cases this isn't a problem. But occasionally your digital signature is incorrect or matches that of some problem child. And this could cause you to be mistaken for a criminal, denied insurance or end up on some black list. Unfortunately once this occurs, the chance of getting your data corrected and yourself off the blacklist is often very difficult. Just ask people who mistakenly end up on the federal no-fly list.

I'm pessemistic as to whether we can stop this. Human nature and busness being what it is (E.g. the percieved value of collecting the data currently exceeds the percieved risk), means it won't be stopped. I guess we'd better get used to it.

Re:Informative? -- MOD PARENT UP

On: Fedora Core 2 test1 Released

Way way up...

From the original post:

> Did you read this far? Are you smiling at the joke?

Check the EULA carefully

On: Fedora Core 2 test1 Released

And by the way, there's been a small change to the EULA, which means you have to register to download one copy for every single CPU that you plan to install it on! Don't worry, it's still free, you just have to (re-)regester each time. This is so that RedHat can keep it's statistics up to date. They claim that since it's a GNU license the download registration information will be placed in the public domain.

Also, download soon. Because the all the script kiddies planning to run Fedora based password crackers on their Beawolf clusters will be clogging the mirrors. :)

Did you read this far? Are you smiling at the joke? No? Sorry.. ah.. nevermind.. I guess I better get back to work before my boss catches me on /. again.

Please, can't anyone consider the poor Geeks?

On: A Wireless Network for a 4-Story Apt. Building?

Woah! Stop with this $7000 crap. The dude asking the question is using the dead Grandma and $7000 as a red herring to weed out the investment analyists, lawyers and other non-geeks. Most of you failed miserably. :-)

What you all failed to consider is the geek dimension .

You're better off installing wires, you have better bandwith and much more importantly, it's much more geeky. Face it, while wireless is considered modern and cool and there are some fairly interest aspects regarding singal attentuation and the like, wireless is basically an easy to install technology. Wires require a messy and geeky installation, and that's what we want, right?

With wireless:

• You buy a bunch of little cards and everybody connects them to their PC. Reboot and run the stupid wizard thingie and you're done. Boring, boring, boring.

With wires:

• You have to go to special industrial supply stores to buy 500 foot rolls of cable, patch panels and RJ-45 sockets.
• You have to buy (and use) a bunch of special crimpers and other tools and test equipment that none of your geek friends will have.
• You get to climb around in an elevator shaft like spider man, with a tool belt and a purpose. (This point alone sells the project!)
• You get to wire a patch panel.
• You get to drill holes through thick walls with a kick ass two foot long bit.
• You take pictures of the experience to post on your geek web site.

..but wait, there's more: With all the experience you gain, you'll still be able to find work after after your programming job gets outsourced to India. :)

P.S. This should all be pretty cheap and you should have tons of left over money at the end (expecially if you ask the landlord to help pay for the wires, since all the tenents can use them for their ISDN telephones :). What to do the cash? Duh.. buy more hardware for that Beawolf cluster, dude!

This could have lots of benefit for Europe

On: EU's Mind 'made up' on Microsoft

A harsh EU judgment against Microsoft could kill a whole flock of birds with one stone.

Consider:

• A multi-billion Euro fine could be used to top up the soon to go bankrupt European pension funds.
• The UN could be brought back onto the world stage by being used to police the enforcement of any judgments.
• A whole new software industry will be created as new companies are formed that attempt to write software that conforms to the newly disclosed Microsoft 'standards'.
• Another whole new software industry will be created helping companies migrate away from Microsoft, once they realize how bad those 'standards' are.
• France could regain face by fighting off US hegemony.

Re:Very small shell scripts

On: Computers Paraphrase English

How about the following for summarizing international news:

#!/usr/bin/perl
@summary = (
"Major corporation sue its customers over IP rights.",
"USA sends advisors to foreign country to combat terrorism.",
"EU negotiations end in disagreement.",
"Disaster in China kills thousands.",
"India and Pakistan threaten war.",
"Another Microsoft security hole discovered.",
"UN pledges to end hunger and poverty within 10 years.",
"Government officials freed from corporate corruption charges."
);
print( $summary[ int( rand( scalar( @summary ) ) ) ] . "\n" );

Strictly speaking, one might argue that this is a news generator.

Privicy Issues are Not Limited to Your Purchases

On: Implanted RFID Tag To Replace Cash?

With an embedded RFID chip you would not only leave records of what you purchased, but also where you have been. What's to prevent the collection of individual RFID numbers by installing of RFID readers in every office doorway, lamp post, parking meeter, etc.? They obviously wouldn't debit your account, but they could passivly forward the time and your ID code to some secret location when you walk by.

In fact they already have devices that do this, but they are not (yet) implanted. They are called ankle transponders and have been used as an alternative to prison. Have a look at this or this article.

Worse, in the near future, you probably won't even be able to hide your cash transactions. RFID tags embedded in bank notes are on their way. The EE Times reports that in Europe it's planned for 2005.

Oh, but how will they know who I am when I spend tagged cash? It's pretty simple, by one of the following methods:

• You took the money out of an ATM and the ID numbers were logged with your name during the withdrawl.
• You had your mobile phone with you, which pings the local cell.
• Got the money from someone else, but it's detected because (the currently faulty) facial recognition software attatched to the video camera in the shop (or streetcorner) where you made the purchase.
• The passivly track cash moving through the city, just like they track the people.

If you want a quick overview of where we're headed with RFID have a look at this article.

Technology is amazing, and the current convergence of computing power, large databases and tiny radio transponders even more amazing. I don't know about you, but I also find it pretty scary.

Add Inches to your SPAM with the Patch

On: Spammers Pleased with 'Anti'-Spam Act

I just got this mail. Maybe this can help us eliminate SPAM:

> Subject: Does SPAM size really matter? You bet it does!
>
> Nine out of ten women report better *rgasms and less junk
> mail in their Outlook Express Inbox, when their
> men use the SPAM-PATCH.
>
> Use the Doctor recommended SPAM-PATCH, the world's
> proven most effective p*nis patch, proven to
> eliminate SPAM and add inches to your p*nis.
> It's 100% safe and effectve at filtering unwanted
> SPAM and adding inches.
>
> We guarantee our patch will increase you P*enis
> s*ze and stop all SP*M. Or you Money Back (Shipped
> discretely in a Plain Package)
>
> Click here to to learn more about our exciting product.
> Click here to stop receiving these mssages.
> aafrdebcjfzeav kwrpcarplcyqc oujagydvocugp afwofsdcbxg

I know, it's does seem to be too good to be true, but hey, they guarantee your money back, so what have we got to lose?

Off-shore IT projects are hard

On: Dell Moves Call Center Back to US

I've been involved in software developement projects that have been outsourced (from Europe) to both Russia and India. The results are mixed, and depend heavily on the experience levels of the actual managers and developers involved. I believe that off-shore projects face the same problems that in-house projects face, but because of cultural and geographical distance many of the problems become more acute.

Success factors are:

• Experience in sucessfully completing projects. Companies that fail on in-house projects will also fail on off-shore projects.
• Experience with the off-shore development method, which requires that you rigorously define requirements and monitor carefully. This applies to both the project management and staff. A long term relationship between both companies is even better.
• Competent and communicative management at both ends.
• Occasional visits (in either direction) that help detect all the stuff that falls though the cracks.
• Both the local and the off-shore company having a stake in the success of the project.

Obviously, much of the success dependend on experience, which you can only get by having completed off-shore projects. This means there's a relatively high barrier to entry for the company that wants to save money by off-shoring projects and they must accept a slow payback. The low risk strategy is to start with small, low risk projects (which are usually cheaper done in-house!) to build up experience.

There are a lot of 'hidden costs' associated with off-shore projects, that you won't encounter until it's too late. Most of the problems relate back to two factors:

• Cultural differences - Even when you take this into account, you'll get burned. Things you take for granted will be evaluated completely differently at an off-shore site. It's not that's anybody is right or wrong, it's just that 'they' have different answers for things that are obvious to 'us'. This means that lot of extra communication will be needed (about stuff you never ever dreamed could be a problem).

• Geographical separation - Informal contact between management, users, developers, etc. makes up for a lack of rigor when specifying systems. We're all guilty of not being exact and detailled enough when writing specs. Indeed most companies can't afford the rigor (or the testing!) required to produce a functioning system and survive because all the stakeholders are close by and take the time to interact 'outside official channels'. This generally isn't available for off-shore projects, except when the teams have been working together for a number of years.

The conclusion: there's no silver bullet.

BTW: When problems happen in off-shore IT projects they lead to failed projects and companies lose money. This also happens in foreign relations it leads to real problems.

Re:security != lots of patches

On: Mail Server Flaw Opens MS Exchange to Spam

In reply to the replies:

• Isn't it an administrators *JOB* to know how to do this?
• should be reading up on the latest security vulns, read books, read /., etc.

Yes, administrators should know all this, but obviously not all do. Worse the penalty for failure is high and not necessarily limited to the site that screws it up.

Given the poor market and the non-transparency of MS systems, this situation isn't likely to improve anytime soon. The rest of the world is going to be left cleaning up the mess, e.g. filtering out the junk mail and cleaning up the infected systems.

The point I would like to make is that Microsoft isn't really taking any responsibility for this. MS's standard response is that if you've kept all the patches on all your systems up to date then nothing should happen. In practice, effort of keeping up with the patches is high, some patches are initially broken and even then not all admins trust them until a few weeks after the patch's release.

A responsible vendor would set up their OS, installation procedures and default values such that many problems don't have to be dealt with by the administrators. Currently MS stuff just magically installs and without a lot of effort it's difficult to know what you have to look at and clamp down. Other vendors do things like:

• Forcing you to assign passwords to all accounts.
• Defaulting all 'risky' options to 'not enabled'.
• Not automatically running applications with untrusted data received from the network.
• Etc., etc.

If everybody at MS put on a technical/security hat instead of a marketing/public-relations hat, maybe they'd wouldn't have so many security problems. Jeez, they claim they've rewritten their entire OS a couple of times and that thay have a security initiative but the result is just crap.