Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Dear Vorticians,
I want to begin by apologizing to everyone who has written of late and not seen his or her comments in this missive. I love showcasing reader thoughts and I’m well behind on doing so. (Am I the only one who reads the Letters to the Editor first in any magazine?)
Before I launch into your letters, let me begin by publicly congratulating my VORTEX 2004 co-executive producer, Geoffrey Moore. Geoff was named by Conferenza, the experts on executive conferences, as Rookie of the Year for his work in hosting VORTEX 2004. Rookie’s an unusual moniker to hang on Geoff, who’s been educating the industry for quite some time, but it refers specifically to his first-time work on the VORTEX stage, where he excelled at providing insights and interviewing speakers. Nice work, pardner.
Now, speaking of Geoff, he was one of several readers who chimed in about my column on the nightmare of software patching, in particular my analogy comparing software to automobiles – as in, you certainly wouldn’t want the auto makers to take the same quality tack as the software vendors. (By the way, you’ll enjoy this article on “Patch Tuesdays” at.)
https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/011005widernetpatchtuesday.html
Vortician Moore wrote:
“I think this is a Microsoft problem at the first order of approximation, not a patch problem. What makes it novel is that the Internet has exposed the desktop to worldwide terrorist attack, something no commercial software was ever designed to withstand, certainly not software that has to be backward compatible. Mercedes fuel lines are not exposed to 24×7 attacks by thousands of hackers. Microsoft has an impossible problem to solve. Patching is the current temporizing process. It sucks, but all the alternatives suck more. I actually think the industry is setting about solving this problem, but it is long, long journey.”
In response to that, I replied that perhaps the problem was the inferiority of the code to begin with. Geoff was having none of that.
“No, that’s my point. The company puts out software that is well designed for normal commercial purposes but breaks under conditions of extreme duress. To create software that would not do so would cost, perhaps, twice as much, but commercial enterprises would not be willing to repay that effort. Now, I think in the end it is the responsibility of the gorilla to suck it up and pay the freight out of their own margins, but even then it is not clear where the boundary lies because there will always be breaches in a world of mutability.”
On the same issue, Vortician Axel Tillman wrote:
“John, the problem of the software industry has many origins. Two of the most important ones are:
* The lack of solid mathematical education in the years when many of today’s design stars and code writers were brought up. Hence, trillions and trillions of lines of badly structured and badly written code exists today in our desktops, mainframes, switches, routers, cell phones and PDAs.
* The code complexity makes it mathematically impossible to have fully functional and bug-free code. At MIT they lecture about system dynamics and it becomes obvious that with the increasing number of interfacing code blocks and the increasing number of complex solutions, we have an exponential decrease in the probability that code will ever fully function. When today’s code goes into QA and comes back for bug fixes almost as many news ones are introduced. Eventually the entire army of developers will shift from product development to code fixing.
“The way out? Easy – new deterministic programming languages, because we have outlived C. What is keeping us? The ego of the programmers themselves who think hand-written code is faster and better than machine written code. Think again! This is not a matter of belief/religion, it is a matter of science and it can be proven that good code can come out of today’s modern compiler technology.
“And regarding the matter of the shifting monkey? To be realistic, I don’t see anything we can do at this point in time, because the entire economic model of the software industry would collapse. In addition, your comparison wasn’t fair. With an automobile, everything comes out of the same hand so we have single source that we can hold responsible. But if you buy an aftermarket stereo system and blow the complicated central electronics of the car, no automobile manufacturer will take responsibility for that. We have the right, however, to expect timely software fixes and getting a self-installable patch is probably the closest thing to going into the shop for repair. The necessary testing of all interrelated software and hardware components is the price we pay for our complex environment.
“What we need to do is demand that software companies use modern and better methodologies to create products which are more adaptable to our 21st century complexity.”
On the subject of EMC and its acquisitions (specifically of VMWare): Dr. Giovanni Orlando, a long-time Vortician hailing from Italy (one of my favorite places!), wrote:
“There is free software called QEMU that a friend advised me on. This software offers the same power of VMWare Workstation, running multiple operating systems on a single system. Check out https://www.freeoszoo.org/screenshots.php for more information. EMC spent $635 million for software that is available for free without limits.”
On the subject of Philadelphia’s planned public Wi-Fi network, Vortician Ross Paterson had this to say: “John, there is significant difference of opinion in the real world about whether Gov. Rendell and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can prevent anyone, municipalities included, from deploying wireless networks. The Federal Communications Commission has repeatedly asserted its claim as the sole authority over use of electromagnetic spectrum in the USA, and that federal law and regulation trumps state and local law.
“Most of the credit for this position should go to the Amateur Radio community, and the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) in particular. The hams have been concerned because they are authorized by the FCC to do lots of things that towns often want to prevent. The most common case is erecting an antenna tower, but I’ve even heard of small towns trying to keep hams off the air during prime time to reduce interference with television broadcasts (back when people actually received TV over the air!). If you’re interested in the details, you can search the ARRL website (http://www.arrl.org) for “PRB-1″ (the name of the FCC ruling that establish federal primacy).”
And Vortician Dave Schmidt added, “John, simple answer: there is nothing to my knowledge that would prevent a city from becoming a CLEC with infrastructure. This would add an interesting twist to the whole rate-setting issue with the FCC & state regulatory bodies. The downside is that it would likely become a revenue source with cities manifesting ILEC-like behavior and wanting to protect their high rate bases, now a source of revenue like taxes. It also opens up the Pandora’s box issue of local government selecting and dictating content. Think of where that will go.”
Thanks to all who wrote (whether their thoughts appeared here or not) and offered their ideas and pointers. Whew!
If you have any thoughts on these topics or anything else, contact me at the usual: mailto:jgallant@vortex.net.
Bye for now.
