DevTalk, March 2000

Dr. Clifford Stoll, author of Silicon Snake Oil and a headlining speaker at this month's Software Development West in San Jose (March 19-24), thinks the Internet is interfering with our daily lives, not enhancing it.
     For example, Stoll worries that:
     · Schools, libraries and even businesses are being sold down the river, wasting money on ineffective and counterproductive computing systems;
     · Information available over the Internet is often stale, incomplete, misleading, unreviewed or simply wrong. Face-to-face meetings are far more meaningful -- and valuable -- than disembodied network interactions.
     · The Internet provides a vast amount of data, but there's a wide gulf between data and information, and between information and knowledge.
     · The Internet is a poor place for commerce ... it's missing one critical ingredient. Hint: digital cash won't solve this problem!
      "The Internet is a great way to waste time," Stoll says. "We should be using our gray matter, not our ether matter. We need to improve our work ethic; the Internet is doing a disservice to our profession. I'm concerned that we're over-selling it.
      "To make great software, we need creative minds and pumped-up people. The Internet has kind of a cut-and-paste mentality; just take somebody else's idea and run with it.
      "We need to get back into serious discussion about where we're going. There's a big promise out there that all you need to do is write some nice C++ or HTML code for 'Startup dot com' and get some stock options to become an instant millionaire. There is no connection there whatsoever. I've seen some good friends mortgage their lives into high-tech, and it's not always a pretty scene. My talk at SD will be cautionary in nature."
     Dr. Stoll's topic, not surprisingly, will be "A Skeptical View of Computing." For more on the conference, visit http://www.sdmagazine.com/sdexpo/.

MCCONNELL TO DISCUSS MYTHS OF RAPID DEVELOPMENT AT SD WEST

Author, software engineering guru and two-time Jolt Award recipient Steve McConnell, considered by SD readers as one of the three most influential people in the software industry (Gates and Linus Torvalds are the others), headlines SD West this month. He'll be offering point-blank commentary on achieving short schedules and how to lay the groundwork for truly effective software improvement.
      McConnell tells DevTalk that, in the old days, people used to say, "work smart, not hard. Microsoft modified that expression to say, 'Work smart and hard.' More recently, Amazon.com changed the old expression to, 'Work smart and hard and long!' The problem is that working smart and hard and long usually really means working 'dumb.' The average project spends 40 to 80 percent of its budget on unplanned rework -- defect corrections -- that is working dumb. The average project burns out its developers who leave the company at the end of the project -- which is also working dumb. The old saying, 'Work smart, not hard' turns out to be right after all."

FLIP TAKES

GETTING E-MOTIONAL

In light of the recent disruptions of several major Web sites, Elizabeth Kubler Ross has updated her landmark observation of the five stages of grieving to include the stages of emotional response to Internet hacking: first, denial-of-service, followed by anger-at-service, bargaining-for-service, depression-from-service, and, finally, acceptance-of-no-service.

ED YOURDON, WHY DIDN'T YOU WARN US?

The worst Year 2000 threat turned out to be ... idiots firing bullets in the air at midnight? The Atlanta offices of Sprint Corp. suffered an unforeseen Y2K hitch on New Year's Eve when a single aerial fiber-optic cable was severed by a gunshot. It was the only date-change problem the company reported.

FROM BANE TO BOON

In a surprise announcement today, Microsoft President Steve Ballmer revealed that the Redmond, Wash.-based company will allow computer resellers and end-users to customize the appearance of the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), the screen that displays when the Windows operating system crashes. The BSOD is by far the most recognized feature of the Windows operating system, and as a result, Microsoft has historically insisted on total control over its look and feel. By default, the new BSOD will be configured to show a random selection of Microsoft product information whenever the system crashes. Microsoft channel partners can negotiate with Microsoft for the right to customize the BSOD on systems they ship.

CAN THIS BE TRUE? 63K BUGS IN WIN 2K?

Hours before Windows 2000's Las Vegas-style launch in San Francisco on Feb. 17, a leaked Microsoft Corp. memo confided that the new operating system -- which cost more than $2 billion and took 5,000 people three years to develop -- may contain as many as 63,000 bugs.
      Now there's a news item that will quiet all those Microsoft quality critics.
      The company doesn't deny the memo, which was sent to the Windows team by development leader Marc Lucovsky. Windows marketing director Keith White said that the system's code has been extensively vetted by 750,000 beta testers and security analysts for potential bugs and insisted that the claims are taken out of context and completely inaccurate.
      White said that Lucovsky was simply trying to present a motivational statement for the development team based on a scan of the source code with a quality-control tool called Prefix. He said the analysis idenitifed code in the system that could be made more efficient in the next release, detected false positives and analyzed 10 million lines of test code that weren't included in the release.
      White likened the scan to running a grammar check on F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby; the tool may underline unfamiliar words but doesn't change the content of the novel. "Our customers, analysts and technical reviewers say this product is rock solid," said White. "This is the most reliable version of Windows ever."
      Microsoft chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said that, in recent testing, the Windows 2000 system had been running for 90-plus days on the company's Redmond, Wash., campus without being rebooted. The average uptime for Windows NT is 5.2 days -- and only 2.1 days for Windows 95, Gates admitted.
      "I think it's fair to say Windows 2000 was the most ambitious software project ever done," Gates added.

FURRY LOGIC

Tokyo-based Omron Corp., a cutting-edge vendor of face-recognition and information-sensing software, has been having fun with fuzzy logic and human media technology. Specifically, the Mind and Consciousness (MaC) Model Omron uses in its new pet robot line enables autonomous agents to intuit and select suitable actions or utterances in order to achieve their goals.
     In 1932, Kazuma Tateisi, founder of Omron Corporation, invented a timer for X-ray photography. Since then, the company has developed a wide range of specialized sensing and medical devices. The company's latest offering, a cat robot designed for psychiatric therapy, might not take a shine to Sony's robot dog Aibo, which went on sale last year for over $2,000. Tama is a step closer to the real animal; it interacts with its owner, recognizes its name when its owner calls it, purrs when stroked and sleeps at random times and locations.
      Toshiro Tashima, Tama's creator, explained that the robotic cat is the by-product of research aimed at improving the interface between man and machine. Eight separate tactile sensors and three motion sensors enable Tama to sense touch and body position, so it knows when it's being held or hung upside down by its tail. Four auditory sensors enable the robot to tell what direction sound is coming from and to distinguish its owner's voice from the voices of other people. Tama can generate one of six emotions in response (anger, surprise, satisfaction, anxiety, dislike and fear), and display actions associated with them. Responses gradually change over time as the electronic cat learns from its surroundings.
      Aibo, introduced in May 1999, is a 1.6-kilogram beast which looks like a cross between a dachshund and a motorcycle. Aibo's dog-like head holds a 64-bit RISC processor brain similar to those found in the company's PlayStation video game player. It remembers how to stand up if it is knocked over and how to chase after its favorite colored ball on an 8M-bit Memory Stick, a memory medium Sony is pushing for a wide range of new devices. The system runs on Sony's Open R modular software, which the company is considering licensing to other vendors.
      Omron projects the emotional interface it is developing for robot and other intelligent agents will have possible applications at bank ATMs. These perceptive ATMs would be able to detect frustrated or confused customers and provide friendly, sensitive help. One question: Wasn't that what human bank tellers were for?