I have blamed the developers, but the greatest source of issues I've seen usually circles back to managers and users.
These fundamental issues/problems are still going on
- Prototypes are taken directly into production. The prototypes intention was to actually flesh out the business rules. After initial testing does it do what the customer wants or can it do what the customer wants, customer is happy and wants it right now.
So how did the prototype get so poor -- after 4 or 5 iterations where the developer saw multiple weeks of work get dumped and trashed, the code got more turn and burn. Backend gets sloppy and just good enough so the shiny front end works.
It may not be business rules, insert any other complex issue here that is poorly described and spec'd.
- I have seen where developers get assigned to departments where they are reporting directly to a business manager or someone in sales. They churn out shiny code. Business Manager or Sales manager are all happy because they are getting new tools.
Actually saw a horror story of this. Developer went and asked and got a view created in a database. Application allowed for an unintentional SQL injection. Data was lost and nobody noticed a large chunk of data missing for 2 weeks. The DBA got blamed. They just didn't want to blame an out of control developer.
But basically it pointed back to a developer who was churning out non-peer reviewed code. Which is actually a management problem. - Then there is the industry publishing problem. (This I think is one of the biggest problems)
I haven't read a beginners or intermediate programming book in awhile, but when I did, I never saw chapters that addressed these issues. Example after example never checking for buffer over flow or SQL injection. If it is such an easy problem to deal with , why aren't they addressed in beginning example code.
Please elaborate on this point.
I think what you are saying is that if I have an email which needs to go to bob, mary and phil. That I can create a PGP key which utilizes bob, mary, and phil's public keys and that email can be opened by bob , mary and phil's private key.
I have never seen this, can you show me an example of how you would accomplish this using a GPG or PGP interface.
Then they need to get rid of it because it isn't working, but they are going to need to replace it with something else that does work.
Currently, part of the problem is that the financial world is hidden. Oh just trust us, we know what we are doing. Well after 2 bubble bursts, people are really wary of investing in anything, because there isn't any reliable information and there isn't any repercussion if someone lies about financial dealings.
So I don't think repealing Sarbanes-Oxley is the answer, unless something is put in its place that will help give investors confidence in their investments.
I for one have pulled completely out of the market and I know of others that have also. Now the big question is if and when do we get back in. Right now there is nothing happening in the financial market, that indicates to me that things are going to improve. So why should I put my money into something that is going to crash again in 2 or 5 or 7 years.
You may want to check the laws in your state. If they truly had you down for part time, then they may owe you overtime (1.5). There was a company in Texas that hit with a fat stiff bill from the DOL, when they found out they were working part timers over 35 hours. That was about 15 years ago, but there are a lot of laws like that which companies and employees don't know about.
The sloppy fat geek computer genius semi-buried in a pile of pizza boxes and cola cans is a mythical creature, best buried deep, never to be seen again
Be careful. They're easily frightened, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
you can use roaming profiles (OK, I admit the last one is a joke)
Finally someone who has seen the difference between roaming profiles and what a Unix box can do.
Roaming profiles is one of the most screwed up things I have ever seen, when compared to the login method used in Linux. Have you ever heard a CEO yelling because his computer wouldn't boot in less than 10 minutes. Why, because someone set his computer to use roaming profiles, and put his email files there. Why, because this is what is taught or was taught in MS classes.
So now someone is going to say well you can fix this in MS by using Exchange. My answer is that you can fix a lot of stuff in MS Products by spending more money. So when does it end? When you run out of money.
One of the first things I learned is how to set up this feature in *nix. Still haven't learned how to correctly set this up in Windows.
The only place I can think of for using roaming profiles is in a call center where 100 people have exactly the same configuration. And they really don't need roaming profiles, unless the want the same wallpaper. Whoopeee
Why Samba chose to use this for default PDC installations is beyond me.
Oh shit, I just thought of a real world application. Training. Where you want people to interact with something in a 3-d way.
Say you want to show someone how to change a tire. Without them actually changing a tire. ( well something more expensive and complicated).
Someones building widgets. They could interact with the screen without touching it and attach a database id to it.
Crap I hated this thing.
Yeah but who would have thought that people would by teleconference rooms. I think it's a nice impressive toy, but someone with a lot of money (company money) is going to decide they need it to impress customers. I can already see someone swapping around Impress documents during a meeting. It'll happen, it'll make no sense, but it will happen.
I still have it ingrained in my mind, the interview on 60 minutes. Two young people discussing how we just didn't understand the new economy and anyone over 40 just couldn't possibly understand it.
This was about a year before the IT bubble burst.
Heck, our human resource manager asked them if they were married and later in the interview started to get her to say whether she was planning to have kids in the near future.
I about fell over on the floor.
They're also unlikely to do socially inappropriate things in front of customers or do really stupid things with your hardware like yanking good drives on a production machine "to see if the RAID works".
Or start fixing a problem by just installing the latest version of software.
I think the point he was trying to make is
(For the uninformed, not all CALs are created equally and the parent is assuming that these are named licenses that must be purchased for each user. Many different kinds of CALs exist, and I suspect these are either physical unit licenses or concurrent access licenses, i.e.: you purchase 1 per node, period.)
From an IT management perspective this is one of the biggest BS headaches around.
CEO - 'So you have to pay extra to connect to the server even after you paid for the server software'
IT - 'Yes $35 dollars per seat or we could go by server connection'
CEO - 'So it's simple then we just multiply number of employees by number by $35'
IT = 'No, it's by connection. If a computer is connecting to a server it needs a call or the server needs a CAL for a connection. We need to figure out which is cheaper for us. Has nothing to do with whether a person is using the computer. Here's an estimate'
CEO - 'Holy crap, okay be done with it'.
IT - 'Well we have got to decide if we want everyone to have full access to the Exchange Server'
CEO - 'Well multiply by $35 and be done with it'
IT - 'Well that's more like $75 to $100 depending on how many CALS we get'.
Ad nauseam explaining all the different CALS and different licensing options.
Actually how the conversation got started was by handing the 3 required quotes to Purchasing. Three different prices from three different Certified MS vendors. None able to totally explain why they differed and all willing to say we would be compliant if we purchased these.
The question which came back was why do 4 $475 dollar servers end up costing us $7000.
Then we got into client and office suite licensing OEM vs non-OEM.
But basically they studied and learned in depth enough about it that NT4 was the last server version purchased.
So basically if they had only required a $699 license to SCO we would probably be still using Windows Servers.
So while MS classes fill the young techies head with knowledge on CALs, other OS classes are concentrating on different protocols and how email servers, web servers, dhcp servers... actually work.
We kind of find more pride in fixing the problem, and less in endurance phone calls to MS tech support,and intricate knowledge of MS licensing options.
They use what are called Rad Hard devices. Using basically the same technology to make the device, but the substrate is shielded with SiOxide layer. The difficulty lies in getting the layer a few nanometers from the surface without busting the silicon crystal. You usually make a lot and get a few that work.
The big issue with making a substrate is isolating the substrate from the actual device. So that when radiation hits the chips, it doesn't flip your zeros to ones. Quit a number of military chips are made this way.
You also run into a problem with smaller devices. It takes less charge to screw up the capacitor or transistor. Basically time for a reboot.
I forgot the actual calculations but the calculations showed that there were 2 problems with smaller devices and we would face both at roughly the same time. The thickness of the dielectric was going to be to thin for processing and radiation was going to start having an effect on performance. Primarily with memory. But CPU also.
You'll find a lot of Military Chips and NASA chips are made from older technology, but with very tight spec tolerances. Hence they cost quite a bit more.
When processing military chips they would ask for maybe 3000. We would process about 36,500 to get that number to meet their tolerances. You get the rest.
No they don't put Intel quad cores into Fighter planes or the Space Shuttle. Even then a Space Shuttle launch has been scrubbed due to chip failure.
I mean would you want your ass riding in a jet doing 400 mph at 300ft off the ground with the latest and greatest chip in control. Or a chip that has been tested over a long period of time.
Yes they do take new chips up in the shuttle, but they aren't used for critical steps like re-entry monitoring.
This concept of creative common good is going to take awhile to be accepted.
1) It has to be accepted by society.
Many still do not understand the Open Source model. If you look at financial markets and talk to business people they don't understand how RedHat and Novell plan to make money selling free software.
2) Those who appreciate open source, need to reward those who produce for the open market.
Not many have gotten filthy rich from open source.
3) Lessig is correct.
Copyright and IP rights are probably going to be here for awhile and probably should stay. Those who publish and produced copyright and license information software are going to be here for awhile. They choose to participate in a different market. Until there is a detriment or significant benefit to participation in one type of market or another, there is always going to be a choice.
4) Get over it
As long as MS, Universal,.... whoever sees a benefit they are going to do what they have been doing.
Personally, I believe this is going to bite them in the ass big time. They want an open global market and yet they want IP rights at the same time. Well guess what, you manufacture your product in Asia and you've pretty much open sourced your product. They don't like to talk about it very much, but it is a fact of what is happening.
[ubiquitous car analogy] If you make a car and you want it made cheaply, you had better have figured out a way to make a steady income from that car. What is happening is companies are requesting certain manufacturing be done, and then all of a sudden somebody else is manufacturing the same product. They start screaming "They stole our product". Guess what get over it, by the time you finish the legal international law wrangling, there is nothing left.
So as soon as a company accepts open source the quicker they will be able to adjust to the global market.
That's really funny because I also work in the semiconductor industry. We found out recently one of the formulas they were using was incorrect when they switched versions. They were all saying that Office 2007 had a problem and we should call and get an update. I looked at the equation and looked at the results and told them 2007 is fine, using the equation in 2000 and 2003 it gives incorrect results with large values such as 1E+18 or the reciprocal.
It also cost money to have the different Versions of Excel. We have currently had to update about 20% of our users, because somebody was sharing data in Office 2007. Funny part was when they send out data , they get replies that they need to resend the data in a format compatible with Office 2003/2000. Something they couldn't stoop to doing, before we paid 250 per copy.
The lesson for this semester, will be an extraordianary example of how people can be full of shit. Notice how there arguments don't fit together and that when you boil it all down and examine it, basically they are saying " Poof and it was there". Basically they are saying David Blaine is god and created the Universe.
Let's compare this with a book by Charles Darwin called "Origin of Species"....................
Slashdot Mirror
I have blamed the developers, but the greatest source of issues I've seen usually circles back to managers and users. These fundamental issues/problems are still going on
- Prototypes are taken directly into production. The prototypes intention was to actually flesh out the business rules. After initial testing does it do what the customer wants or can it do what the customer wants, customer is happy and wants it right now.
So how did the prototype get so poor -- after 4 or 5 iterations where the developer saw multiple weeks of work get dumped and trashed, the code got more turn and burn. Backend gets sloppy and just good enough so the shiny front end works.
It may not be business rules, insert any other complex issue here that is poorly described and spec'd.
- I have seen where developers get assigned to departments where they are reporting directly to a business manager or someone in sales. They churn out shiny code. Business Manager or Sales manager are all happy because they are getting new tools.
Actually saw a horror story of this. Developer went and asked and got a view created in a database. Application allowed for an unintentional SQL injection. Data was lost and nobody noticed a large chunk of data missing for 2 weeks. The DBA got blamed. They just didn't want to blame an out of control developer.
But basically it pointed back to a developer who was churning out non-peer reviewed code. Which is actually a management problem.
- Then there is the industry publishing problem. (This I think is one of the biggest problems)
I haven't read a beginners or intermediate programming book in awhile, but when I did, I never saw chapters that addressed these issues. Example after example never checking for buffer over flow or SQL injection. If it is such an easy problem to deal with , why aren't they addressed in beginning example code.
I think the Finance Minister greatly underestimated the resale value in the US. But we'll take them for free.
Please elaborate on this point. I think what you are saying is that if I have an email which needs to go to bob, mary and phil. That I can create a PGP key which utilizes bob, mary, and phil's public keys and that email can be opened by bob , mary and phil's private key. I have never seen this, can you show me an example of how you would accomplish this using a GPG or PGP interface.
Why are IT. computer workers singled out , period? I also agree that technical workers should unionize.
Then they need to get rid of it because it isn't working, but they are going to need to replace it with something else that does work.
Currently, part of the problem is that the financial world is hidden. Oh just trust us, we know what we are doing. Well after 2 bubble bursts, people are really wary of investing in anything, because there isn't any reliable information and there isn't any repercussion if someone lies about financial dealings.
So I don't think repealing Sarbanes-Oxley is the answer, unless something is put in its place that will help give investors confidence in their investments.
I for one have pulled completely out of the market and I know of others that have also. Now the big question is if and when do we get back in. Right now there is nothing happening in the financial market, that indicates to me that things are going to improve. So why should I put my money into something that is going to crash again in 2 or 5 or 7 years.
I don't think they are that worried, because they are the extremists.
You may want to check the laws in your state. If they truly had you down for part time, then they may owe you overtime (1.5). There was a company in Texas that hit with a fat stiff bill from the DOL, when they found out they were working part timers over 35 hours. That was about 15 years ago, but there are a lot of laws like that which companies and employees don't know about.
The sloppy fat geek computer genius semi-buried in a pile of pizza boxes and cola cans is a mythical creature, best buried deep, never to be seen again
Be careful. They're easily frightened, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
And they'll want our pizza.
you can use roaming profiles (OK, I admit the last one is a joke)
Finally someone who has seen the difference between roaming profiles and what a Unix box can do.
Roaming profiles is one of the most screwed up things I have ever seen, when compared to the login method used in Linux. Have you ever heard a CEO yelling because his computer wouldn't boot in less than 10 minutes. Why, because someone set his computer to use roaming profiles, and put his email files there. Why, because this is what is taught or was taught in MS classes.
So now someone is going to say well you can fix this in MS by using Exchange. My answer is that you can fix a lot of stuff in MS Products by spending more money. So when does it end? When you run out of money.
One of the first things I learned is how to set up this feature in *nix. Still haven't learned how to correctly set this up in Windows.
The only place I can think of for using roaming profiles is in a call center where 100 people have exactly the same configuration. And they really don't need roaming profiles, unless the want the same wallpaper. Whoopeee
Why Samba chose to use this for default PDC installations is beyond me.
I mean, how many of us guys haven't already realized that we're just lesbians trapped in male bodies.
So I'm gay, get over it.
It is a Wii for executives. Once the doors close they'll be bowling.
Oh shit, I just thought of a real world application. Training. Where you want people to interact with something in a 3-d way. Say you want to show someone how to change a tire. Without them actually changing a tire. ( well something more expensive and complicated). Someones building widgets. They could interact with the screen without touching it and attach a database id to it.
Crap I hated this thing.
Yeah but who would have thought that people would by teleconference rooms. I think it's a nice impressive toy, but someone with a lot of money (company money) is going to decide they need it to impress customers. I can already see someone swapping around Impress documents during a meeting. It'll happen, it'll make no sense, but it will happen.
USA, I can't remember if he did it 3 or 4 years ago.
We hired her.
I still have it ingrained in my mind, the interview on 60 minutes. Two young people discussing how we just didn't understand the new economy and anyone over 40 just couldn't possibly understand it.
This was about a year before the IT bubble burst.
Heck, our human resource manager asked them if they were married and later in the interview started to get her to say whether she was planning to have kids in the near future.
I about fell over on the floor.
They're also unlikely to do socially inappropriate things in front of customers or do really stupid things with your hardware like yanking good drives on a production machine "to see if the RAID works".
Or start fixing a problem by just installing the latest version of software.
This is why I still read slashdot. Every once in a awhile someone posts a gem like this.
Great idea. Consider it stolen. Thanks.
I think the point he was trying to make is
... actually work.
(For the uninformed, not all CALs are created equally and the parent is assuming that these are named licenses that must be purchased for each user. Many different kinds of CALs exist, and I suspect these are either physical unit licenses or concurrent access licenses, i.e.: you purchase 1 per node, period.)
From an IT management perspective this is one of the biggest BS headaches around.
CEO - 'So you have to pay extra to connect to the server even after you paid for the server software'
IT - 'Yes $35 dollars per seat or we could go by server connection'
CEO - 'So it's simple then we just multiply number of employees by number by $35'
IT = 'No, it's by connection. If a computer is connecting to a server it needs a call or the server needs a CAL for a connection. We need to figure out which is cheaper for us. Has nothing to do with whether a person is using the computer. Here's an estimate'
CEO - 'Holy crap, okay be done with it'.
IT - 'Well we have got to decide if we want everyone to have full access to the Exchange Server'
CEO - 'Well multiply by $35 and be done with it'
IT - 'Well that's more like $75 to $100 depending on how many CALS we get'.
Ad nauseam explaining all the different CALS and different licensing options.
Actually how the conversation got started was by handing the 3 required quotes to Purchasing. Three different prices from three different Certified MS vendors. None able to totally explain why they differed and all willing to say we would be compliant if we purchased these.
The question which came back was why do 4 $475 dollar servers end up costing us $7000.
Then we got into client and office suite licensing OEM vs non-OEM.
But basically they studied and learned in depth enough about it that NT4 was the last server version purchased.
So basically if they had only required a $699 license to SCO we would probably be still using Windows Servers.
So while MS classes fill the young techies head with knowledge on CALs, other OS classes are concentrating on different protocols and how email servers, web servers, dhcp servers
We kind of find more pride in fixing the problem, and less in endurance phone calls to MS tech support,and intricate knowledge of MS licensing options.
They use what are called Rad Hard devices. Using basically the same technology to make the device, but the substrate is shielded with SiOxide layer. The difficulty lies in getting the layer a few nanometers from the surface without busting the silicon crystal. You usually make a lot and get a few that work.
The big issue with making a substrate is isolating the substrate from the actual device. So that when radiation hits the chips, it doesn't flip your zeros to ones. Quit a number of military chips are made this way.
You also run into a problem with smaller devices. It takes less charge to screw up the capacitor or transistor. Basically time for a reboot.
I forgot the actual calculations but the calculations showed that there were 2 problems with smaller devices and we would face both at roughly the same time. The thickness of the dielectric was going to be to thin for processing and radiation was going to start having an effect on performance. Primarily with memory. But CPU also.
You'll find a lot of Military Chips and NASA chips are made from older technology, but with very tight spec tolerances. Hence they cost quite a bit more.
When processing military chips they would ask for maybe 3000. We would process about 36,500 to get that number to meet their tolerances. You get the rest.
No they don't put Intel quad cores into Fighter planes or the Space Shuttle. Even then a Space Shuttle launch has been scrubbed due to chip failure.
I mean would you want your ass riding in a jet doing 400 mph at 300ft off the ground with the latest and greatest chip in control. Or a chip that has been tested over a long period of time.
Yes they do take new chips up in the shuttle, but they aren't used for critical steps like re-entry monitoring.
This concept of creative common good is going to take awhile to be accepted. .... whoever sees a benefit they are going to do what they have been doing.
1) It has to be accepted by society.
Many still do not understand the Open Source model. If you look at financial markets and talk to business people they don't understand how RedHat and Novell plan to make money selling free software.
2) Those who appreciate open source, need to reward those who produce for the open market.
Not many have gotten filthy rich from open source.
3) Lessig is correct.
Copyright and IP rights are probably going to be here for awhile and probably should stay. Those who publish and produced copyright and license information software are going to be here for awhile. They choose to participate in a different market. Until there is a detriment or significant benefit to participation in one type of market or another, there is always going to be a choice.
4) Get over it
As long as MS, Universal,
Personally, I believe this is going to bite them in the ass big time. They want an open global market and yet they want IP rights at the same time. Well guess what, you manufacture your product in Asia and you've pretty much open sourced your product. They don't like to talk about it very much, but it is a fact of what is happening.
[ubiquitous car analogy] If you make a car and you want it made cheaply, you had better have figured out a way to make a steady income from that car. What is happening is companies are requesting certain manufacturing be done, and then all of a sudden somebody else is manufacturing the same product. They start screaming "They stole our product". Guess what get over it, by the time you finish the legal international law wrangling, there is nothing left.
So as soon as a company accepts open source the quicker they will be able to adjust to the global market.
That's really funny because I also work in the semiconductor industry. We found out recently one of the formulas they were using was incorrect when they switched versions. They were all saying that Office 2007 had a problem and we should call and get an update. I looked at the equation and looked at the results and told them 2007 is fine, using the equation in 2000 and 2003 it gives incorrect results with large values such as 1E+18 or the reciprocal.
It also cost money to have the different Versions of Excel. We have currently had to update about 20% of our users, because somebody was sharing data in Office 2007. Funny part was when they send out data , they get replies that they need to resend the data in a format compatible with Office 2003/2000. Something they couldn't stoop to doing, before we paid 250 per copy.
Well you should then realize that $212 dollars in 2012 will be equivalent to $56 dollars 2008 after inflation. So I don't think they are that far off.
Go markets
The lesson for this semester, will be an extraordianary example of how people can be full of shit. Notice how there arguments don't fit together and that when you boil it all down and examine it, basically they are saying " Poof and it was there". Basically they are saying David Blaine is god and created the Universe.
Let's compare this with a book by Charles Darwin called "Origin of Species"....................