DEVELOPMENTAL REBIRTH
I'm writing about Ms. Weber Morales's editorial "A Moment to Savor"
(Comment, Dec. 2004), on the completion of her album project. I have a story
about the links between music and software development, and how I came to be
a developer. For most of my life, I was a professional musician in a symphony
orchestra, after graduating college with a master's degree in oboe performance.
I'd reached a goal many musicians strive for, but few reach: making a good living
practicing my craft at the highest professional level.
Life was good, until the day I passed out with a collapsed lung after a symphony
concert. Turns out I had a tumor the size of a baseball in my left lung, which
ended up, after several painful surgeries, in the removal of the diseased organ.
The doctors told me my remaining lung was also in bad shape, and that if I went
back to playing the oboe, I'd be dead in six months. Needless to say, I was
devastated. I stayed on with the orchestra for a few years as personnel manager,
but I hated it. One day after rehearsal, driving past DeVry University, I found
myself pulling off the interstate and into the school's parking lot. I enrolled,
and when I wrote my first line of Visual Basic code, I was hooked. Three years
later, I'm a lead developer on several big projects with the State of Ohio,
writing client/server and Web applications.
To appease my irresistible urge to make music, I took up the guitar and mandolin, and now have a successful jazz trio. It's interesting to find, in my new career as a developer, that the best developers are also musicians, often of professional caliber. There must be similar pathways in the brain for musical skills and those skills needed for successful software development.
Let me congratulate Ms. Weber Morales on her album project, and I wish her all the best in both her careers.
John M. Yount
Programmer/Analyst
State of Ohio, Dept. of Jobs & Family Services MIS IA
Columbus, Ohio
LIVING YOUR DREAM
I just read Ms. Weber Morales's article about finally becoming a recording artist.
Congratulations! I'm in the same vein as she is, a musician and a techie. I've
been writing and recording music since I was 16, and my dream came true a couple
of years ago, when I remodeled my basement into a recording studio (complete
with instruments, including an acoustic drum set). The true sense of accomplishment
came when I burned my first CD of music I'd written. Now I'm attracting other
musicians for projects, and it's still a rush every time I press Record.
Tom Seda
IT Manager-LCN Division
Ingersoll-Rand Security & Safety
Princeton, Ill.
Alexandra Weber Morales responds:
So glad to hear you're finding a way to live your dream. Sometimes it takes
a bit longer than we imagined it would, but I absolutely share that feeling
of accomplishment when you can hold in your hand some small product of all your
hard work.
ROSIE TAKES A BREAK
Regarding Ms. Weber Morales's recent editorial ("Murphy's Law," Nov.
2004), I always preferred the Norman Rockwell drawing of a husky Rosie the Riveter
taking a lunch break with her foot on a copy of Mein Kampf. There are
two reasons for this: First, my mother actually was a riveter during WW II,
and had the forearms to prove it. Second, it not only supports the notion that
"we can do it," it shows what we were doing, and why.
With a few obvious exceptions, gender is unimportant. Reasons are important. We're supplied with our reasons for being male or female at conception. It's what we do with it later that counts. And why.
John N. Doyle
Senior Systems Designer
Lucent Technologies
Sunnyvale, Calif.
FAREWELL, LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
Wow, if I correctly read what Mr. Keuffel's wrote in "Induce Us Not"
(Interface, Dec. 2004), the maker of a scanner, copy machine, fax machine, camera,
or even pen or pencil could be liable. They all induce me to reproduce some
form of material that could have a copyright.
How will writers write, artists paint, filmmakers make films or musicians make music? There can't be any computers, as they have memory and disk storage. They certainly will induce me to copy material that may have a copyright. Television would have to go away. Life as we know it would come to a standstill. Heck, we couldn't even create cave drawings, as I'm sure someone else has done it before us. Lawyers couldn't file suits, as tools they need could induce us to make a copy of something that has a copyright, so at least some good would come of this!
Jim Watson
New Albany, Ohio
A MODEST PROPOSAL
I just finished reading Warren Keuffel's December column, and my recurring ire
over DMCA has nurtured a modest proposal: All human documents—notably
software, but also laws—start out full of bugs (flaws with unintended
and harmful consequences). Software can be tested on reliable and repeatable
machines, but laws can be tested only in the courts. There are hundreds of smart
people poring over commercial software systems in search of buffer overflows
or other dangerous bugs that can be exploited to their advantage, so why can't
we get some of them or like-minded people to pore over the DMCA in search of
a "buffer overflow" (unintended consequence or loophole) that can
be exploited to bring suit against a certain Utah senator or his staff, or perhaps
against the media conglomerates in LA-la land? I suspect programmers, who have
a mind for this stuff, would have a ball looking.
Just an idea. I haven't looked at the DMCA, but other recent laws I've examined (HIPAA, frex) are riddled with exploitable problems. You just have to devise a suitably devious test case.
Tom Pittman
Bolivar, Mo.
COPYCAT CRIME
Suppose I go to the library and take out a cookbook. I find a recipe I like
and use a copier to copy the page for my recipe box. Are not copier and scanner
manufacturers now guilty of "inducing" me to infringe on the author's
copyright? Copiers and scanners are indeed a vertebra in the backbone of day-to-day
office machinations.
Richard A. Mikovsky
Software Engineer
Syncro Technology Corp.
Langhorne, Pa.
Warren Keuffel responds:
There's no difference, in my opinion. When you copy the recipe for your own
use, the act falls under what has historically been called "fair use."
The proponents of the Induce Act have failed to curtail fair use of music and
videos, so they're taking this end run around fair use by criminalizing the
manufacture of devices that potentially could be used for making pirated copies.
However, in the process, they deny music and video purchasers the right to make
backup copies for their own use. I have a vague recollection that when Xerox
machines began to proliferate, book and magazine publishers tried to get legislation
passed that would put aside a fraction of a penny for every copy made; the money
would be allocated among the publishers. However, cooler heads prevailed and
the legislation went nowhere.
HATCHLING RUFFLES FEATHERS
I just read Mr. Keuffel's "Induce Us Not." Interestingly, Sen. Hatch's
son Brent represents SCO in its war on Linux. I believe that broad, vague extensions
of IP rights constitute perhaps the only significant threat to the growth of
the open source movement, so it's interesting to note that the Senator has a
dog in this fight. The Hatchling is also a board member of the nominally libertarian
Federalist Society, so advocacy of statist enclosure of the intellectual commons
can hardly be deemed a matter of principle.
Geoffrey McKenna
Independent Software Contractor
Alexandria, Va.
Warren Keuffel responds:
This is most interesting. However, I long ago ceased to be surprised at the
difference between what people nominally espouse in political principle and
what they actually do in their interaction with reality.
MYSTERIOUSLY MISSING ORBS
It's curious that the list of Object Request Brokers (ORBs) in Mike Riley's
Middleware Solutions article ("Distributed Objects and Messages,"
A Special Guide to Middleware Solutions, Nov. 2004), although appearing in the
same issue as a feature on women in the software industry, left out prominent
ORB products from two women-led companies: Hewlett-Packard, led by CEO Carly
Fiorina, produces the NonStop CORBA transaction server, which ranks among the
world's largest and fastest; while 2AB, led by CEO and founder Carol Burt, vends
ORB2 in conventional and secure versions along with an array of security add-ons.
In addition, we think these CORBA vendors and their products deserve a place
on your list: BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Promia's Smalltalk Broker and Secure
Broker; Sun's JavaIDL (included with every Java Virtual Machine download) and
EJB; and the open source ORBs MICO and OmniORB. The CORBA market is large, vibrant
and growing, with new successes every year not only in enterprise computing
but also extending to real-time, embedded, high-assurance and other computing
markets.
Jon Siegel, Ph.D.
Vice President, Technology Transfer
Object Management Group
Needham, Mass.
BALANCING ON A BASKETBALL
Eight years ago, my church decided to expand our physical plant, and I accepted
an appointment to the building committee. The process was tragically similar
to doing a major IT conversion at a "the way we've always done it has worked
just fine" company. However, the experience gained in three decades of
IT projects made dealing with runaway architects, vision-impaired preachers,
risk-averse boards, sneaky general contractors and lowball bids a snap.
With a building, there isn't much problem communicating what it is, what color it is, where the doors go and why, and so on. With an IT project, it's hard to get and maintain general agreement about what you're doing and why. Furthermore, change one player, and the IT project must get sold and explained all over again. Once the church ladies agree on carpet color, that argument's over. Finally, a building has an end game, and that end game has a definite end. Sometimes, an IT project survives even the completion of its replacement (see Sarbanes-Oxley).
The ability to see around small corners with low walls and keep the goal in sight helped me, the committee and the church. The experience has made me realize that IT work also fits the description for hovering a helicopter: like riding a unicycle on top of a basketball.
Name withheld
Houston, Tex.