Category: Technology

Venting the Venom

Brian J. Noggle

Hey, check out Thomas Sowell’s latest column, wherein he takes on the notorious extraneous bells and whistles software industry:

One of the maddening things about some computer programs and computerized products is their making you fight your way through a maze of complications to do simple things. Whether you want to play chess, take a picture, or do some other obvious and straightforward thing, you must first deal with a zillion options to do things you have no interest in doing.

The fact that there are innumerable features built into any product — whether computerized or not — does not automatically mean that you have to deal with the features you don’t want.

That’s because too much software is designed by developers, many of whom think vi was a pretty good interface.

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Not ACCOUNT DELETATION!

Brian J. Noggle

From today’s junk e-mail:

                          Dear U.S. Bank valued member,
       Due to concerns, for the safety and integrity of the Internet Banking community we have
issued this warning message.
 
       It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be updated due to
inactive accounts, frauds and spoof reports. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of
your online experience and renew your records you will not run into any future problems
with the online service. However, failure to update your records will result in account
deletation. 
 
       Once you have updated your account records your online banking account will not be
interrupted and will continue as normal.
 
             Please follow the link below and renew your account information.

                                                              
                                                 U.S. Bank Internet Banking

Ladies and gentlemen, good grammar and good knowledge of proper English are a stalwart defense against junk e-mail.

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Do the Math

Brian J. Noggle

Techdirt links to a story that says:

…20 percent of U.S. residents admit buying products from spam purveyors.

Techdirt also links to a story that says:

The US has a hardcore group of people who simply aren’t interested in using the Internet. Around a third of US adults have rejected the Net, causing researchers to split them into two distinct groups.

That would seem to indicate that 1/3 of the people in the United States connected to the Internet buy things from Spam! Well, it would, except:

  • By 20 percent of U.S. residents, undoubtedly they meant respondents to the survey.
  • It’s unclear whether “spam” means opt-in e-mails and e-mails from companies with which the users already have an established relationship.

Other than that, the stories are sensational!

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What a Difference a Decade Makes

Brian J. Noggle

Admit it. When you watched The Adventures of Ford Fairlane in 1990, you thought a computer with three CD drives was ostentatious.

But fourteen years later, you wish you could have a super tower with 30 CD drives just so you could have a DVD player, a CD-RW, a DVD burner, and enough CD ROMs to contain all the copyright-protected games you play regularly without requiring you to reach under the desk every couple of hours to fumble for the little eject button.

Or maybe it’s just me.

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Do They Really Understand Why There Are Prices?

Brian J. Noggle

/. links to a story on the BBC which says Microsoft might have to raise prices to pay for its exorbitant legal fees and fines.

From the BBC story:

Microsoft is objecting to the size of legal bills submitted by lawyers who brought an anti-trust case in California against the software giant.

Microsoft told a California court that consumers could suffer if it has to pay the full $258m (‘/£146.7m) bill.

The legal costs are part of Microsoft’s settlement for over-charging consumers buying its software in California.

“I wouldn’t have put it in if I didn’t think we earned it,” said Eugene Crew, the lead attorney against Microsoft.

“Somebody ends up paying for this,” said Microsoft attorney Robert Rosenfeld. “These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.”

Insightful commentary from the Slashdot poster:

Do they really understand why there are laws?”

Spoken like a professionally overpaid, but open-source free-software-loving burgeois Marxist. Let me explain, once again, the real world. Companies want to make money. To make money, they design, build, or provide things or services. They then offer to exchange same for a quantity of money that covers their costs as well as make a tidy profit. The profit margin’s really determined by the demand for the thing or service, and it cannot equal zero or a greater number (m >=0). So when the cost of providing the good or service goes up, such as a result of regulation or litigation, the price of the good or service goes up. End of story.

Information wants to be free, quoth some developers making upper five or lower six figures, who don’t work for enough soup to sustain themselves and a simple pallet in the corner upon which to sleep.

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Brian and the Argotnots

Brian J. Noggle

Today, friends and readers, I coin for your amusement a term in the testers’ cant, a secret language spoken to confound developers. Just as developers confound us with talk of materialized views, mainClasses, and environmental PATH variables (all of which we testers know to be fictional), we testers have devised our own secret language with words and terms we can use to explain problems and then, with exaggerated patience and a healthy eye-rolling, define those terms for the silly developers who really don’t know anything about testing.

Today’s term: a zool.

Zool: a row in a database, added via an INSERT command, or rendered in the presentation layer (client application or Web interface) that is expected to contain information, but because of defective behavior of the software does not.

Used in context: "There is no data, only zool."

Try to use it in a sentence today. Extra credit goes to those who use it but don’t actually work in IT.

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I Think Someone Has Modified The History Books

Brian J. Noggle

Here’s a newsbit on CNet dated April 29:

Google denies FBI link to Gmail

Google on Thursday denied that it has had any contact with the FBI regarding the design of its Gmail Web e-mail service. The search firm’s denial came after the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI seeking information about whether the bureau was considering the “possible use of Google’s Gmail service for law enforcement and intelligence investigations.” EPIC, which gave an award last week to a California state senator who is trying to ban Gmail, announced the request immediately after Google said it was filing for an initial public offering.

Critics immediately criticized EPIC’s request as a publicity stunt and because the nonprofit likened Google’s Web-based e-mail service to the FBI’s controversial Carnivore wiretapping utility and the Pentagon’s discontinued “Orwellian Total Information Awareness program.” EPIC’s request also asked whether Google had discussed licensing its search technology, in use by customers in the private sector, to the FBI “to further law enforcement investigations or intelligence gathering activities.” Google spokesman Nathan Tyler replied: “I cannot confirm whether they’re using our technology.”

Funny, I don’t remember the program having Orwellian right in the title.

But I’d better not draw attention to it, or it’s off to Room 101 for me for questioning CNet.

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Put Your Back Into It

Brian J. Noggle

Some phishers don’t even seem to be trying. Here’s one such e-mail I got today:

From: *Citi_C_a_r_d_s~Members
To: stlbrianj@hotmail.com
Subject: Citionline |E-Mail| Verification – stlbrianj@hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:42:58 +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: from cdm-66-76-235-89.tyrd.cox-internet.com ([66.76.235.89]) by
mc3-f40.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6824); Thu, 22 Apr 2004
12:35:09 -0700
X-Message-Info: 6sSXyD95QpXLoZz646LSJ7Ue2E0865la
Return-Path: BarbMartincich@ihaveahugecrotch.com
Message-ID:
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 22 Apr 2004 19:35:10.0582 (UTC)
FILETIME=[ECCAF960:01C428A0]

To_veerification_of _your_ [Email] address click on_the_link :

[hyperlink deleted to protect you, gentle reader.]

and enter in the |ittle window_ _your_ Citi ATM/Debit full_Card_number and
Pin
that you use in local Atm_Machine..

8QkooH8y8N eg4f36 5f7l0ly3v2e3h3x3f6c 7d022oda n9dh 7vz1h020z kNoph86

Like I’m going to fall for that again.

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Indian Tech Companies Outsource, Too

Brian J. Noggle

Remember those tech jobs leaving for foreign shores? Cue the Neil Diamond, because they’re coming to America. The Washington Post reports:

Infosys Technologies Ltd., which has become India’s second-largest software maker thanks largely to outsourced work from the West, is investing $20 million to create nearly 500 consulting jobs in the United States.

Just stay competitive, fellows, and commerce will flow to you.

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Hardware or Software?

Brian J. Noggle

Techdirt links to a story about a guy getting charged for putting a keystroke logger on a computer where he worked. Mike at Techdirt says this:

The interesting thing, though, is the only way they caught him was because he was fired from the company and asked another employee to remove the keystroke logger. In other words, it wasn’t any real detective work, but him telling someone. This means, if he hadn’t mentioned it, it’s likely this would have continued and no one would have noticed. It seems likely that things like keystroke loggers are becoming increasingly popular for those involved with corporate espionage – but it doesn’t seem like most companies do much to check if their computers are clean from such programs. [Emphasis mine]

Mike’s making an assumption, though. Here’s the text from the story:

A California man who prosecutors say planted an electronic bugging device on a computer at an insurance company was indicted on Tuesday on federal wiretapping charges in what prosecutors said was the first case of its kind.

Larry Lee Ropp, a 46-year-old former insurance claims manager, is the first defendant charged with a federal crime for using a “keystroke logger,” which tracks the activities on a computer and feeds the information back to its owner, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said.

Sounds like a hardware keystroke logger to me. What, you don’t know what a hardware keystroke logger is? Of course not, you’re not the Shidoshi of Paranoia. A hardware keystroke logger plugs in between the keyboard and the keyboard socket on the back of the PC. It looks like an adapter, but it’s got memory on it. Whatever you type goes into the memory and then to the computer, too. Bad guy comes along later, unplugs it, plugs it in on his computer, uses an escape key sequence, and copies the log onto his computer. You don’t have to break into the ‘hacked’ system to get it, and there are no software gotchas to deal with.

Also, it would explain why he needed someone to remove it from the PC, wot? Hey, buddy, just unplug my adapter I loaned to the secretary.

Learn your lesson, my students. Always look at the back of the PC before you start typing. I do.

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Not Worth My Time

Brian J. Noggle

Free clue to banks, financial institutions, and my creditors: Online bill paying is not worth my time nor trouble.

The Washington Post‘s Leslie Walker muses on online bill paying, but she focuses on the glitzy side:

Some things you expect to be no-brainers online turn out to be as tricky as a Rubik’s cube. Bill payments fall into that category. Nine years after the Web went commercial, many large Internet players are still trying to piece together the electronic-bill puzzle.

The puzzle, I assume, is to do it effectively. Which would mean profitably, of course, but the people behind the online bill paying maelstrom need to remember an important thing: it’s got to benefit consumers as well.

America Online is the latest to believe it has found the answer. Launched on Tuesday, AOL Bill Pay lets AOL members pay 2,500 different billers from a single menu. The service is free to subscribers even though AOL is paying a partner, Yodlee Inc., an undisclosed sum to do the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

America Online, unfortunately, you are nothing but the mechanism through which the money would flow. You can pay 2,500 billers? Big whoop. My checkbook is virtually unlimited, as are the more secure money orders. The number of people you can pay are not the stumbling block.

Increasingly, online bill paying is becoming a strategic tool used by large businesses to reel in and retain customers, especially since it appeals strongly to folks with high incomes and lots of monthly bills. Banks and other financial institutions have been falling over one another in the rush to offer free online bill payments, based on a belief that customers who take the trouble to set up the accounts will remain more loyal than those who don’t. So far, one-third of the nation’s largest banks and brokerage firms offer free Internet bill payments, according to financial research firm TowerGroup.

Okay, so large businesses will accept bill payment through this medium as a means to reel in and retain customers. Hmmm. So what? What’s the advantage over cash, check, or money order? I reckon it might be cheaper or more instantaneous for the recipient who accepts online bill pay. After all, the money’s sucked from the payer’s account into your coffers immediately, without the need to hire a bunch of letter openers.

But what’s the benefit for me, the payer?

Let’s face it. As far as these online bill paying schemes go, the people whom I can pay are still limited. A user cannot necessarily pay everyone whom he wants to pay, and so the user is expected to make his life more complicated using a variety of different mechanisms through which he can settle his accounts.

As Walker points out in her piece, she doesn’t want to spread her secure financial information too much throughout the Internet–yet, the recipients, and the companies who play middlemen, all get the data. It’s a security risk multiplied by the number of payees and middlemen. Any one of them could get hacked and suddenly, I am buying computers for Romanians.

Worse, if anyone of these entities has a mere computer glitch, suddenly my bank account is empty and all other checks, debits, and withdrawals are bouncing, and my bank is charging me an extra $20 a day to remind me that my account is still empty. I have seen enough critical defects outside the financial industry to recognize how tenuous the Web is and to put my actual information–and my credit rating–on the line.

In exchange for assuming these risks, what do my creditors and the online bill-paying industry offer me? Convenience.

I say: Not good enough.

So as a consumer, I am expected to incur the risks of theft, identity theft, and defect-related (unreversible) Insufficient Funds notices for mere convenience, while the person I am paying gets instantaneous access to the cash at a lower cost to the creditor. Sometimes I can pay extra for these goodies, too. You know what? Maybe I am not high enough income to be a target for this scam, but I am damn happy to expend the cost of ink, eight cents for a check, and thirty seven cents of postage for my peace of mind.

So my question to my creditors is, “What’s in it for me?”

All of you in the online bill paying industry ought to come up with a better answer than “Convenience.” Paying bills is never convenient. Show me the money.

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Tech Professionals Suddenly Anti-Free Markets

Brian J. Noggle

Funny, I seem to remember about six years ago that all of the IT professionals in the world were all for the free markets, especially since those free markets meant that the IT professional’s next job in six months would yield a 20% salary raise. Oh, how shallow the sentiments ran.

According to CNet, the IEEE has come out against outsourcing:

In a policy statement, IEEE-USA said U.S. government procurement rules should favor work done in the country and should “restrict the offshoring of work in any instance where there is not a clear long-term economic benefit to the nation or where the work supports technologies that are critical to our national economic or military security.”

I agree with the bit about security, much as I think the country should have manufacturing capability to build B2s when every other country is against us, but I don’t think the government should prop up an overpaid bunch of undercompetent IT workers. Let the marketplace do its work and return those who cannot produce quality, and inexpensive, hardware or software back to the retail or services industry where they belong. If you alone are making twice the national median income or more for a family, stop begging for sympathy and complaining about workers who can support an elevated personal standard of living for less than you can.

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Searching for Software Tester

Brian J. Noggle
   Sometimes, on long days on the job, I hear the voice of Ben Kingsley in my mind, paraphrasing those lines from Searching for Bobby Fischer:

    Bruce: Do you know what it means to have “contempt” for the software?
    Brian: No.
    Bruce: It means to hate it. You have to hate it, Brian, it hates you.

I’ve never actually seen the movie, but I do hear Ben Kingsley talking to me, oh yes I do.

I don’t even play chess well.

On long days, my mind just wanders.

Long nights, too, I guess.

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Ya Think?

Brian J. Noggle

In an essay on CNet, Dan Schoenbaum states the obvious:

    Instead of exponentially increasing business productivity and allowing us to realize the full potential of our ever-faster and more powerful hardware, software consistently grows more complex, bloated, cumbersome and slow.

    It is no secret that the majority of IT initiatives fail. Software is hard to write, hard to understand, hard to deploy, hard to use, hard to manage, hard to maintain and increasingly hard to justify. We spend billions of dollars building, implementing, fixing and fighting with our software, and yet we demand little in return, meekly accepting that our investments come with no quality or performance guarantees.

Because:

    IT projects fail because we often approach the software development process with reckless abandon. We have thrown the proven engineering principles and processes that other disciplines adhere to right out the window. We are lax in planning, we have few standards and design principles.

The solution is to embrace the concept of total quality throughout the SDLC (software development lifecycle) and hold to the virtues of some other contemporary buzzwords and blah blah blah.

This gets written and discussed ad infinitum, but if ignoring it completely is what it takes to get one more sale in the current quarter, then those are the sacrifices with which we have to live.

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