Also, telecom mergers may be bad for customers
Mobile malware a risk
Regarding “Not all agree on ‘overhyped’ security threats”: I would definitely say that mobile malware is a viable risk. Give me one minute with your Pocket PC and I can install keyloggers, Trojans, backdoor/hidden remote control devices and more… and this is just the proof of concepts that I have on my own PDA as part of my work/research in this field. Who knows what other people have developed or created. Combine this with the number of PDA-based connections that occur behind a firewall and you have an easy backdoor to almost any corporate network.
Seth Fogie
VP of product development
Airscanner
Lancaster, Pa.
Merger bad for customers
Regarding “Study: Telecom mergers will raise costs to businesses”: The state of Texas has gotten lower telecom costs, over time, by playing SBC off AT&T. That ability will be lost if the merger is allowed, and will almost certainly mean the state’s telecom costs will begin to rise.
I have Verizon at the house, with no competitive alternatives, and they recently dropped support for the protocol I wanted, basic rate ISDN (BRI). They had already refused to offer that service for homes anyway. There is a digital loop carrier interface on the telephone pole at the end of my driveway for which the manufacturer of the interface makes a module capable (I’ve checked) of supporting BRI and PRI.
There is little or no actual competition for the local exchange carriers now; eliminating two facilities-based potential competitors isn’t a good idea. The mergers are a very bad idea for telco customers.
Stephen Wyman
Network specialist
Texas Department of Transportation
Austin, Texas
Native wisdom
Years ago, I was invited to a fishing trip complete with a Native American guide. He was a good fisherman and a savvy psychologist. While we waited for the fish to bite, we got acquainted and shared each other’s life stories. He had a lot to say about the differences between the Native American lifestyle and mine that make a lot of sense.
“You corporate people work and sweat in jobs you hate, compete, manipulate, forge alliances, plan, sell, implement, review, write lots of paperwork that nobody reads, endure traffic, insults, junky advertisements and everything else that goes with your fast-paced life… and then you wonder why you are exhausted and unfulfilled. You need a vacation like this to escape from your so-called ‘normal’ life long enough to endure another year or so of the same aggravation.
“Your central problem is you have too much stuff. My Nation, the Ojibwa, have this to say in our tradition: ‘Only the stones live forever.’ I will explain. When you buy and own stuff, all you get is stewardship over its use. You do not own the land; it owns you. It was here long before you were born and will exist long after you are dead. Stewardship requires that you care for your stuff or you will lose it. It takes energy and time to care for your stuff. That takes time and energy away from the things that nourish your spirit and nurture other life all around you. Eventually, you get so much stuff that you are spending all of your available time taking care of your stuff. You have to hire someone else to help you take care of your stuff. That requires you to work longer and harder to earn the extra money to pay these people to take care of your stuff.
“If you want more happiness, take a good look at your stuff and get rid of anything that takes you away from the lifestyle you really want. Is your teepee too big or in the wrong place? Is your canoe too large for your paddle?”
I took his advice and looked at my accumulated stuff. Indeed, I did not own my home; it owned me. All I got besides shelter was an opportunity to pay taxes on it, make mortgage payments and insurance premiums, decorate it needlessly, battle weeds, dandelions and crabgrass, redo windows and doors, insulate, replace appliances, repair cracked concrete, and watch that sucking sound on my wallet as my wife continues to nourish her nest-building instinct even after the children left our nest.
We bought a sailboat many years ago from a couple that were transferred to New Jersey. For several years, we rented a buoy on a nearby lake. I spent more time fixing the boat’s problems than sailing it. I had to sand and repaint the hull, repair rigging, clean off the duck poop, bail it out after each rain, right it whenever a storm blew it upside down, haul it in and out of the water each season, and pay for licenses. It now rests upside down in my son’s back yard, rotting away.
Pride of ownership is a strong addiction. I admit that it has troubled my spirit over a lifetime.
Roger O’Daniel
Minneapolis
Shameful engineering
Regarding Mark Gibbs’ BackSpin column, “Shameful engineering”: I agree completely with Gibbs. Unfortunately, the lack of error-checking, user-friendly messages and conceptual issues he describes with this particular piece of software are the norm – not the exception – in most of today’s retail software packages. I lay a large portion of the blame for this on the trend over the last 10 years where people with no formal education in software engineering can use any of a myriad software development platforms to create and market bad code. Moreover, object-oriented programming can exacerbate the problem when objects containing logic flaws are used by trusting developers all over the world. Personally, I wouldn’t trust any object where I can’t see the source code.
I actually sat through a seminar a few years back where a panel of experts suggested that companies could fill their software development needs by picking talented individuals from their organization and sending them through a six-week Web site development course. It’s this lack of understanding on behalf of too many business experts with regard to just how complex a process quality software engineering really is that’s behind today’s abysmal state of software quality. While it’s obvious to most lay people why you need trained engineers to design cars and buildings, it still escapes most people why quality software design requires just as much (if not more) skill and effort. To be an excellent software designer/developer, you must have the skills and mindset of a watchmaker, mathematician, psychologist, architect, attorney and statistician all rolled into one. Yet instead of cultivating and valuing those among us with these abilities, shortsighted senior executive teams at too many companies are firing them and shipping their jobs overseas.
As someone with an engineering degree in computer science, I can only shake my head in disbelief and resignation each time I see a piece of software from a major software vendor fail because of a simple boundary error condition such as the one Gibbs describes. Any first-year computer science student is taught that boundary error conditions are the most common source of bugs, yet untrained or lazy software developers continually make the dumb assumption that “surely no one will ever try doing that!”
David Reid
Chief information officer
The Krystal Company
Chattanooga, Tenn.
As I was reading Mark Gibbs’ recent column on Apple’s failure to properly design and/or document its picture cataloging software, I thought, “ On the Windows side, we have installation scripts that don’t work, antivirus software that doesn’t update correctly, software that won’t install properly unless you turn the antivirus off or give the user administrator privileges, and so on. Why should Apple be any different?”
Bob Havey
Springfield, Va.
Juniper’s future
Regarding “Peeking into Juniper’s future”: The problem is that Juniper lacks a product portfolio that can seriously compete with the different elements of Cisco’s product line. For example, the M10i competes with Cisco’s 7200 platform, but the only Juniper product that matches up with Cisco’s 7600 is the M320, which is double or triple the price of Cisco’s offering. Juniper needs a router capable of handling 10 Gigabit Ethernet with a smaller form factor than its carrier-class boxes.
Clarke Morledge
Network engineer
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, Va.
