Mike Schubert, Senior Application Architect, Atlanta, Georgia, triathlete, ironman

November 6, 2008

Who is Doing YOUR QA?

I was looking for some pointers on dynamic assembly loading, reflection, etc. within the .Net framework and found an assembly the author decided to call myAss:

It really struck me that an author or publisher would want to put that verbiage out in the general domain. I went through all of the material and found many instances to myAss - so it's not like it was overlooked. Why on earth someone did not flag that do be changed to something like myAsm is beyond me.

So that raised the question - who is doing QA and what were they tasked with? Perhaps their scope was merely to make sure the code in question functioned. That would require entering all of the code into individual projects, compiling, running, and verifying their output. Perhaps they were tasked with making sure the wording was technically and grammatically correct.

A third option is that the QA tasks were assigned to someone for whom English was not natively their first language. Given my experience in high school Spanish class, I doubt this to be the case. Learning the naughtier words of the language was virtually a requirement. Sure, we wanted to know what they were because we thought it was funny. But the teaching point was more so you did not make a fool out of yourself (or you at least could reflect on why you made a fool out of yourself) if you slipped up and mispronounced a word that ended up being dirty.

The lesson for today is that you need to have a plan of what you want to QA, how you are going to do it, and who are the right resources to perform those tasks.

Posted by Mike at 5:30 PM | Comments (1)

February 29, 2008

Attacking from Within

We spend a lot of time fortifying our data systems and networks to prevent outside attacks. Recent data breaches at TJX Companies, Card Systems, and the Department of Veterans Affairs remind us of the different ways outsiders can gain access to our systems and conquer massive amounts of highly sensitive data.

However, my third example above - the VA, also gives clue to what I think is the most dangerous risk of all - the threat of an insider compromising systems (knowingly or otherwise). The Air Force has been doing research into developing a system that would help pinpoint potential internal threats.

Security efforts have tended to focus on outside electronic threats, explain Peterson and colleagues. However, they point out that it is insiders that pose the greatest threat to an organization. Insiders are members of the organization who may have access to sensitive information for legitimate purposes but who could betray that trust for illegitimate reasons.

This is pretty ineteresting stuff that plays into using computers to detect non obvious relationships. One downside to this type of technology is that it could be used to detect whistleblowers. This article I've linked to talks about them running their system across the email history of Enron. And while it doesn't flat out name Sherron Watkins as being a potential threat, some other materials I've read on this system have indicated that she was one of the people flagged by this system.

Pretty interesting stuff to keep abreast of.

Read More -> Sniffing Out Insider Threats

Posted by Mike at 7:00 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2008

World War 3, Terminator Style?

It's funny to look back at science fiction from the 80's and see it turn to science fact. Unstoppable robotic kill machines that could think and act on their own was the central premise of the Terminator movies. Today the U.S. government has robotic drones that are remote controlled by humans and around 4000 of them are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article I've linked for you below talks about one project that seems to be fast tracked in the department of defense is seeking to develop robots that can make decisions on their own and determine when to use lethal force.

But the Pentagon is nearly 2 years into a research programme aimed at having robots identify potential threats without human help. "The main problem is that these systems do not have the discriminative power to do that," he says, "and I don't know if they ever will. "The US and other governments have also set a very short timeframe to achieve such sophistication, says Sharkey. "It is based I think on a mythical view of AI."

I should probably worry about my government building these machines and to what uses they will serve. But right now I'm more worried about other countries / groups developing the same thing. Just imagine facing an army that does not shed blood. You could argue that this would deter war, but wars as we know them have fundamentally changed. Rather than battling countries, we are battling super-empowered individuals. Mutually assured destruction does not bother them. And this is exactly the kind of tool that they would love to employ against us.

Posted by Mike at 8:28 AM | Comments (1)

January 21, 2008

Need CAPTCHA Technology on Your Website?

Last week I questioned the usability of CAPTCHA codes. One interesting project I found was a plug-in provider that allows you to add this technology to your website, no programming needed, for free. It's called reCaptcha and their slogan is "Stop Spam. Read Books."

It's a very cool idea. They take words from books they are trying to digitize but the machine reader is having a difficult time deciphering. By adding reCaptcha to your site, you get a test of whether it's a bot trying to exploit your form, and they decipher another scanned word.

But wait, you say - if the word was unknown by the digitizer, how does it know you entered the right CAPTCHA? There are actually two words you have to enter using this site. One word the response is known for, the other is not. If you get the one known word right, the system assumes that your entry for the second word is also correct and the scanned book is updated.

Pretty neat idea from the folks at Carnegie Mellon University.

Posted by Mike at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 8, 2008

Get Your $40 Off Coupon For a Digital TV Converter Box

2009 will supposedly be the year that traditional analog television signals cease to be broadcast. In response to the people who live in caves and don't have cable or satellite, the government has taken some of the money normally set aside for cheese and is subsidizing the purchase of up to 2 digital tv converter boxes per home.

I bring this up because even if you have digital satellite or cable, you are charged extra for the high-definition package. Yes, this gets you ESPN, Discovery Channel, and other out of market offerings in HD, but I bet if you think about your viewing habits, it is primarily the major in market stations that you watch most. You can pick up these HD signals over the air with a pair of rabbit ears for free.

Check out http://www.dtv2009.gov for more information about the conversion to digital broadcasts, what it means to you, and perhaps even pick up a coupon or two for $40 towards the purchase of a digital converter.

Posted by Mike at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 3, 2008

Java is becoming the new Cobol

Wow. Something I've been feeling for the past year or so is showing up in trends amongst other developers. I guess it's like going to these new mega churches that are non-denominational and everyone saying "hey, I used to be <fill in your religion> too!"

What is most interesting to me is that the .Net platform that for 6+ years was not ready for prime time is showing up in the 8pm Thursday night time slot (for you non-US readers, the best tv shows in America generally get slotted to air on Thursday nights between 8pm and 10pm). I have been building my fluency in .Net Web Services, Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation for some time now and am optimistic about the direction these technologies are headed. They kind of remind me of how I felt when Lotus Domino 4.6 came out.

No, I haven't become a Microsoft fanboy. I'm just an enterprise software architect interested in bringing the widest expanse of knowledge and experience to the table when technology problems are needing to be solved.

Posted by Mike at 4:00 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2007

Going Green

No, I don't drive a hybrid or electric vehicle. There are no solar panels on my roof. I am not on litter patrol. However - as technology progresses and brings us things that are good for the enivronment and my wallet, I hop aboard. Such is now the case with compact fluorescent lighting.

Tonight, I started by replacing a single 3-way lightbulb with one of the new 3-way CF bulbs from The Home Depot. Surprisingly, this thing is just as bright and uses less than 1/3 the energy of the incandescent bulb it replaced. I've got it on the equivalent of 150 watts right now, and it's only drawing 32 watts of electricity - that's 18 watts fewer than the lowest setting on the bulb it replaced. And to top it off it's a lot cooler. It seems to be producing only around 1/4 the heat the old one did.

I talked to the guy working in the lighting area and he said that companies are making all kinds of visual improvements to the bulbs so that you don't notice any difference. I think I could replace just about all the bulbs in the house, except for the bulbs in the ceiling fan with the clear globes. These just wouldn't look right.

Financially - the math seems to indicate that I could save over $110 in electricity based on using the thing 3 hours a day over 9 years. This is the lamp on my nightstand, so 3 hours a day isn't that far fetched. It's probably on 1/2 hour in the morning and 2 1/2 hours at night. The bulb was about $9 - that's probably $6 more than a regular 3-way bulb. You don't have to have an MBA in Finance to see the return on investment here.

Environmentally, according to the US EPA & Department of Energy Energy Star program, if every household in America replaced just 1 - ONE - lighbulb with a compact fluorescent, it would have the impact of removing 800,000 cars from the roads and save enough electricity to light 2.5 million homes for a year.

This truly sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Posted by Mike at 8:33 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2006

Be on the Lookout for new Spam Viruses

This crap really ticks me off. I'm sick of children playing hacker games. This is the email I got today from "secur@mindspring.com". Ok - are you going for secure, security, what?? Get it right people.

Mail server report.
Our firewall determined the e-mails containing worm copies are being sent from your
computer.

Nowadays it happens from many computers, because this is a new virus type (Network
Worms).

Using the new bug in the Windows, these viruses infect the computer unnoticeably.
After the penetrating into the computer the virus harvests all the e-mail addresses
and sends the copies of itself to these e-mail
addresses

Please install updates for worm elimination and your computer restoring.

Best regards,
Customers support service

And of course there was an attachment called update-kb1062-x86.exe that I guess they want me to run, although the email only aludes to it rather than saying 'click the attached file to patch this vulnerability'.

If Earthlink ever sent me an email with that grammar/wording/blah I would drop them like a sack of potatoes. As I said before, I am sick of children playing hacker. Finding exploits in operating systems is actually a worthwhile exercise and I don't have much of a problem with it (within reason). But this crap of finding exploits in the unknowledgeable people that open email is just BS. Anyone with a compiler can write a program that does nasty things and email it to someone and perhaps talk them into running it. That's not security research, that's just lame.

Posted by Mike at 7:15 AM

July 10, 2006

Are iPods Lightning Attractors?

I don't think that is the message that this article was trying to convey, but the news media seems to have spun it that way. Recent research shows that people talking on the phone or using headphones are at an increased risk of death from a lightning strike. There is a phenomenon called 'flashover' where the skin protects your internals from the electricity and channels the force to the ground. If you've got metal held up to some part of your body, that protective force seems to be broken.

But what are the odds of being struck by lightning?? 576,000 to 1. Your odds are better of dating a supermodel (88,000 to 1) or being cosidered possessed by Satan (7,000 to 1). You can check these out for yourself here (I'd feel better if it was a national statistics bureau, but several of these others seemed in line with what I believed reality to be).

So listen to your iPod and talk on the phone at your own risk during thunderstorms. You're not more likely to be struck, but you're apparently more likely to die as a result.

Posted by Mike at 11:30 PM

April 15, 2006

"Good Technology" Sold Separately

I am a gadget guy - no doubt about it. I do not buy every new thing that comes out, but I try to look at the market and keep up. So tonight I clicked thru an ad for the HP iPAQ hw6515. Looked pretty interesting, but probably a bit of overkill.

What I couldn't help but notice was one of the bullets under the "At Work" features. It says:

• Good Technology (sold separately) provides two-way synchronization of all Microsoft Outlook functions

So it comes with crappy technology out of the box? Do they actually have a product called "Good Technology"?? How stupid would that be? It would be like a car having optional equipment called "Reasonable Safety".

Go see for yourself --> The latest in mobile technology - ADA version - HP Small & Medium Business

Admittedly, I am familiar with the software competing against Blackberry. But most people aren't - shouldn't this marketing slick somehow indicate that "Good Technology" is a product, not just an enhanced state of being?

Posted by Mike at 7:27 PM

February 8, 2006

IE7 Beta 2

It seems Microsoft took the hint from the rave reviews of Firefox and has stolen some of its best features. I'm happily using beta 2 (download beta 2 here) on my development machine at work. So far, here are the features I like:

Automatic print scaling. No more words that trail off the edge of your printouts!
Preference to delete Temporary Internet Files each time the browser is closed.
Simplified UI. Tabbed browsing.
Favorites for URLs and feeds. I really like the UI handling of favorites. The feed reader isn't as slick as standalone feed readers (feeddemon is my current fave), but it really is everything I need to keep up with my favorite authors. Haven't seen a way to import an OPML file yet, but I'm sure it's probably at least in the works (this is beta software, you know?).
Anti-phishing add-in that can be configured to check every page you visit against a database or allow you to manually check. The automatic check is kind of a PITA since it slows down the loading of the page. Not that I need a filter anyway - hopefully this will help the large community of naive internet users out there.

Thus far, my only snag has been in launching the browser from Notes 6.5.x (haven't tried other versions). In my location doc, I had the "Internet Browser" preference set to "Microsoft Internet Explorer". This worked fine when I was running IE6. With IE7, I had to say "Other" and point it to the iexplore.exe under "c:\program files\internet explorer".

Posted by Mike at 8:00 AM

December 9, 2005

Yahoo! Eats del.icio.us

del.icio.us - one of the greatest services on the net - has been acquired by Yahoo!. This news just dropped a couple of hours ago. I really like del.icio.us - it has a no-frills approach to social tagging and organization. The blog entry I linked to has a really mixed bag of comments to it. Most people are happy for the founder, and then there are those vocally opposed to the yahoo-ization of it.

I will be happy as long as the simple approach to tagging and organizing stays as is. Sticking ads at the top and bottom wouldn't be an issue for me. But if it looks remotely like Yahoo mail, home page, or any of their other properties with clutter and crap all over them, I'll be ticked.

Posted by Mike at 4:00 PM

November 10, 2005

The Google Toolbar Spell Checker is Too Cool!

If you blog, use wikis, or generally have to enter form data at work or for pleasure, this thing is a lifesaver. Not only does it highlight what it believes to be misspelled words, but it also suggests corrections when you click on the word. The only downside is that it doesn't seem to understand HTML tags. Ooh - but you can add words to your own personal dictionary. Very cool.

Interesting side note - in spell checking this piece, Google apparently knows what a blog is, but not a wiki. Hmmm.

Additional side note - don't rely on spell-check as a crutch. Several astute readers yesterday pointed out that I used the word 'call' when I meant to say 'all'. For more on the slings & arrows of using spell check, check out my wife's article on spell check.

Posted by Mike at 9:00 AM

October 21, 2005

Comment & Trackback Spam

Ok, I'm guessing there must be a CAPTCHA plug-in for movable type that will eliminate the comment spam. I need to find it for my site and Tammy's site. But what about trackback spam? I would love to turn trackbacks back on and get the conversations going, but there are just too many splogs out there abusing the trackback system.

Update: Mark Cuban blogs about splogs and the massive traffic jam they caused with indexers over this past weekend.

Posted by Mike at 8:00 AM

October 19, 2005

Dear DAD, please send more money....

Ray Chen tells us an interesting tale of the new Desktop Applications Division at Microsoft and its impact on communications with employees' fathers.

I naturally assumed that personal contacts/groups received preference over public contacts/group on all messaging platforms. I guess that's not the case.

Posted by Mike at 8:00 AM

September 21, 2005

Priorities

An article in the WSJ "Personal Journal" section today talked about different gadgets for recharging your vital gadgets in cases of emergency. It reviewed various types of chargers for cell phones and weather radios - even devices with a hand crank on them. What got me was included in this review of 'emergency kit' chargers was a device to recharge your iPod mini. C'mon... your iPod mini is part of your emergency kit?

Me: "Sweetie - where's the flashlight? I can't find it in our emergency kit."
Tammy: "Oh, I took it out so I could stick my iPod in there."

Note to self: check emergency kit when I get home.

Posted by Mike at 1:55 PM

Seeking Balance

I spend some weeks going 100 miles an hour down various technology paths in an attempt to enrich my life and my company's bottom line. This week it seems like I'm spending time taking an inventory of the disruptions that technology has introduced in my life.

Current Example

Delicious. You know - your centralized repository for remembering, categorizing, and sharing links (can you believe they are 2 yrs old? Seems like only yesterday). When I create web pages, I put an extended title in the tag. It is fairly well known that search engines cross-reference the title of the page to the text on it for the purposes of scoring the relevancies of various words and phrases. Browsers only show the first 100 characters or so.

But when you tag my site with del.icio.us, you get a lot more. And it is more oriented toward marketing ME than it is to telling you what my site is about and why you should visit it regularly. Ideally, I want del.icio.us users to see "Mike Schubert - Software Development, Finance, and more!" or something to that effect, while the title browser is still the long-winded thing for the search engines. I want to have my cake and eat it, too (why buy cake if you're not going to eat it?).

So to everyone that sees my long-winded title bar show up in your del.icio.us links, I apologize. I am aware. And it is on my @Thinkaboutit sheet of issues that deserve thought. It would be really nice if we could embed an alternate title tag for del.icio.us to read, but this isn't really their problem and that seems a little hokey to ask for. Ok - it's still on @Thinkaboutit.

Posted by Mike at 11:19 AM

September 20, 2005

Grasping the Concepts and Benefits of the Wiki

I immediately grasped the full potential of wikis many years ago. Fred Wilson admits it took him a little longer but he is completely on board now. In his evangelism, he points out the many characteristics that make wikis great in society and busienss. What I would like to know is what finally did it for him. Was repeated exposure to Wikipedia the entry drug?

Several months ago, I blogged about wikis and even co-presented a proposal at work that we use a wiki as our intranet. The presentation was to a group of technology professionals and I thought for sure our demonstration showed the benefits of turning the intranet (currently just a bunch of links that no one really uses) over to end users. We showed how sales folks could post competitive information, proposal templates, and success stories; engineers could post configurations and schedules; and anyone who wanted to stick a personal page or a team page out there could do that as well. We were going to decentralize the intranet and provide a framework so that if the users wanted to arrange it in a manner that made sense to them, they could.

But alas, only a couple of people bought into our vision. For some, I'm sure it was a first exposure to wikis. How could I have better sold this idea? I'm not sure. I believe the communication strategy was appropriate and the audience was definitely ready to hear this message. The hardware requirements were nil and the software was free (MediaWiki on top of LAMP). I refrained from showing Wikipedia in our presentation because it is seemed a little too abstract from our business to make that leap.

So I'll put this question out to you - as always, you can contact me directly if you don't feel like doing the typing in the small comments box below - how did you introduce the disruptive wiki into your organization? What made it 'click' for your company?

Posted by Mike at 8:14 AM

September 16, 2005

Amazon Phishing

Rocky Oliver has a PSA up on his site regarding a new phishing scam that looks like it's from Amazon.com. I agree with him that this one looks really good and will probably capture the information of a lot of users. DO NOT FALL FOR IT! If you're reading my site, I know you're too smart to click through :)

Posted by Mike at 12:42 PM

August 12, 2005

Misleading Research

I recently wrote about the silly scuffles that take place in the technology space. One of my favorite ongoing debates lies in determining the viability of a solution in the future based on its current installed base. As I wrote in that entry, The Radicati Group is one of the players involved in this debate. They take a lot of abuse for the IBM Lotus community - some warranted, some not. I don't intend to take a shot at them directly here, this is just my observation of the debate as a whole and they are the most recent to hit my radar screen.

In May of 2005, they released a "whitepaper" entitled "A Survey of IBM Lotus Messaging Customers". They state that the reason they conducted the survey was to determine the extent to which customers understood the Lotus Workplace strategy. Why they care is beyond me. I am a customer of IBM who is running Lotus Domino. I have been a consultant, most notably with GE Capital Consulting, involved in creating applications that utilized the collaborative experience of Domino and integrated it into the business processes that facilitate revenue generation. If IBM went out of business tomorrow, our current investment in Domino would serve us well for the next 10 years. If our needs changed, then we would begin identifying solution alternatives.

Do you get my point? Unless I have a need, I'm not wasting my time identifying solutions for problems I don't remotely have!! So do not be surprised if you send me a survey asking 'Have you considered switching to XYZ' if XYZ does not have a bundle of benefits for which I have some need.

The conclusions drawn from this survey are the real kicker. A large percentage of their respondents indicate they have either not made a decision or have decided against Workplace. They say it "does not bode well for the future success of Workplace, or the future of IBM Lotus messaging." Let's look at the absurdity of that conclusion through a couple of examples.

Example 1) My wife and I were talking about purchasing an SUV a couple of weeks back when GM had "Employee Pricing for Everyone." We decided against it. Does that mean we won't purchase one in the future? NO. It means that we examined our current needs, the bundle of benefits the SUV would provide, and the cost we would incur to obtain it. We decided against it. In a couple of years, we will undoubtedly be in need of a replacement vehicle and will identify solutions at that time. I'll put money on the fact that we will buy a small SUV.

Example 2) It's no secret that I'm working on an MBA at Georgia State University. My classmates are from a wide range of companies and industries. When talking about Groove one night, I discovered that none of my IT peers were using or had plans to use Groove. Does that mean Microsoft was stupid for purchasing them? Does it not bode well for the Microsoft Office System strategy? Nope.

The moral of my story is - it's ok to look at industry research, but have your own requirements and selection criteria in mind as you look at it. Find as much as possible. Also use your personal networks to seek out the experiences of your peers who use the different technologies you are looking at. And talk to their end users, too. If life sucks for them and their productivity is in the toilet because of a particular system, do you want to implement it as well?

Ok. I'm done (again). I now return you to my regular broadcast - already in progress...

Posted by Mike at 10:59 AM

August 4, 2005

More Notes Comments

Since I've broken the seal on commenting on the whole Lotus vs. Microsoft thing, I might as well go a step further.

Here we have some innocent end user's blog, loathing his/her inability to import some contacts into the personal address book. In the comments, both Ed Brill and Richard Schwartz chime in that it can be done - but Cripes! The effort you have to go to get it done. Again, I've been doing this for years, I know how to do it, but to expect a receptionist, sales rep, CEO, etc to do it is unacceptable. There should be a standard tool for doing it built in. Maybe when I get the free time, I'll write one and freely distribute it here.

On a similar note, remember the "nifty fifty"? That was the 50 templates for starter apps that I think came on the Notes CD a long time ago. Well, Microsoft took a similar approach and is providing 30 apps for their Sharepoint product. With the Notes apps, it was pretty easy to go in and modify those templates and integrate them into our workflows (oh, those were the days). But with this Sharepoint stuff, presumably written in C# and ASP.Net, how easy will it be to integrate? I, for one, hope to never personally find out!

Ok. Enough of this stuff for a while. I apologize for the interruption and will now return you to my original broadcast - already in progress.

Posted by Mike at 8:22 AM

Silly Technology Scuffles

Coke vs. Pepsi. Toyota vs. GM. The list of battles in the marketplace are long and distinguished. Today we have IBM Lotus vs. Microsoft. Analysts and pundits have been proclaiming "Notes is Dead" for a long time. For me, a product is "dead" once I stop making money or finding value in it. So, thanks for the Monty Python imagery, Forbes - but I disagree with your simplistic approach to the question.

With Coke vs. Pepsi, the question was which tastes better? We had the Pepsi challenge, and let's not forget the horrendous introduction of "New Coke". The battle between Toyota and GM has been over quality and value. So where does that leave the battle between Lotus and Microsoft?

To read the analysts, the battle is over who has more seats. This just seems ridiculous to me. We have the Radicati Group coming out with market share projections every 6 to 12 months showing IBM losing market share. Well, is the market growing, or is their installed base shrinking? And why should I care as a technology manager? IBM continued support for OS/2 10 years beyond its relevancy in the marketplace. If new versions of Notes stopped at release 7, that would not negate the value in the applications that I had deployed up to that point. The quote on the Radicati home page says "We provide companies with the information they need to be successful and compete effectively." I don't need my MBA degree to know that just because it seems like 'everyone else is doing it' it does not mean it is a good idea for me to do it.

Email is a commodity. If anyone tries to tell you differently, they are full of it. What happens in a commodity market? The lowest price wins. Sure, there are ways to differentiate yourself based on service, product availability, speed of delivery, etc. - but when it comes to email, you can't really differentiate yourself there.

So I guess Microsoft (or the analyst community) is trying to present themselves as the low cost provider of email. Great. What else can you do for me? Apparently not much without buying a bunch of extra products (Sharepoint, SQL Server, etc). So is the value proposition the same between Exchange and Domino? No. With Lotus Domino (and Workplace) you not only have a core messaging system, but you also have a product that you can build collaborative applications on top of.

Do you only need email? For a lot of companies, the answer is yes. Great. Go buy Exchange. Or better yet, just outsource your email to Yahoo! or another online provier. That will be even cheaper since you won't spend a pant load of time every week fending off every virus that propagates through Exchange.

But if your competitive value is based on knowledge and you have more than 100 employees, you really need more than just email. Is Notes or Workplace the answer? I can't tell you without knowing your actual situation. I've been doing this for 10 years and no two customers are exactly alike. Anyone who thinks that the decision is clear-cut like the crowd I've been reading lately wants you to believe must eat at Subway a lot 'cause they're full of baloney.

Oh - and if you are thinking about switching systems, feel free to drop me an email and we'll talk it through. This is more like Coke vs. Pepsi (an issue of taste) than Toyota vs. GM (an issue of standard products differentiated by features and economic value). Switching costs can be quite high and there are no doubt better ways to invest those dollars in growth opportunities rather than just getting just a sweeter tasting soft drink.

</soapbox>

Posted by Mike at 6:00 AM