Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

I was cruising Slashdot this morning and ran into an eye opening article. Apparently, an academic at the British Computing Society believes that computer science is either dead or dying. Being part of the industry, I just had to read on.

Apparently, the death of the computer science biz consists of people not needing to roll their own word processors and databases, and all software being shipped overseas. Software will need to become an interdiscipline that really doesn’t include programming as a necessary skill.

My response: Its About Time!

Aside from the fact that outsourcing to India has turned out to be less of an economic advantage than it was sold as, I think it’s about time that the computer science academics figured out that they have become dinosaurs. The writing has been on the wall since the late nineties, and most of the rest of us figured it all out during the dot-com bust.

As with any other industries of this nature, the initial focus is internal development of it’s own products and services. Once these products and services leave the “boutiques” and become comoditized, the industry needs to shift it’s focus to what good it can do for others.

The days of banks and newspapers having a large staff of computer professionals dedicated to figuring out how to make computers work for them is gone. Now that everyone can effectively use computers (and have been capable for years) all we need are a few people to maintain them. Since maintenance is reduced to “pluck and chuck” diagnosis and repair, IT staffing can be minimal.

The good news (IMHO) is that there is no longer an influx of computer science students who are in the biz because someone told them there was money in it. Those who get into computer science are going to do so because they like the challenge, not because they expect to get rich from it. This is, of course, bad for the academics, but very good for computer science.

The one thing to remember about the academics is that they are just now figuring out that they are in trouble. Most of the rest of us have known for years, and have therefore taken steps to avert disaster. We need to remember that none of this is news. Times are bad in the software biz, but it really isn’t getting worse. Since the academics have only recently figured all of this out, they are going to have to go through their period of extreme panic. The rest of us will just have to wait it out and hope they catch up.

It’s good to hear that our great thinkers have figured out whats wrong with the courses they are teaching. Too bad it’s ten years late.

Yesterday was supposed to be the big release date for two very popular software packages, and it was… sort of. First of all, Firefox 2 was released yesterday. I checked the web site several times yesterday, but could only find 1.5. Fortunately, I was able to download it this morning.

The other big news was that Fedora Core 6 was released yesterday. Ever since then, the site has been down for the count. I can’t say whether the cause was a crushing demand or something sinister, but it seems as if they may be out of commission for a while. Have no fear… you can download from one of the mirrors. Don’t expect a high bandwidth connection.

So, I guess everyone has seen the Apple commercials that make claims about OS X security. I believe one even claims that there has never been a Mac virus. Will they kindly have those two guys (you know, Justin Long and the Bill Gates look-alike) come back on and explain why Apple just fixed 26 Mac OS X flaws, many of them considered critical, if Mac OS doesn’t have vulnerabilities?

Maybe there was some sort of legal trickery in the way they worded it, but I believe everyone heard a claim that they aren’t vulnerable. I believe that they need to straighten this out if they want their credibility back.

The Wizzards of Redmond are getting cozy with the other dark side of software. Microsoft is challenging hackers to break Vista by giving them a recent release build. I’m of two minds about the whole thing.

On one side, I think that Microsoft is doing us all a service by getting the most dangerous users out of the way first. Theoretically, if these guys can’t hack Vista, it is secure enough for the average user. They would also be the folks most likely to find hidden flaws.

On the other side, I’m skeptical about whether these hackers will actually inform Microsoft of any flaws they find. My fear is that there wil be hundreds of zero-day exploits released on the same day that Vista is. Of course, there are other ways to get a pre-release version of Vista, so maybe the version given out at Black Hat won’t make much difference.

The only thing I can say for sure is that they are taking a BIG risk.

Bill Gates announced today that he has decided to quit working for Microsoft and instead focus all his time on his foundation. I guess now that he has conquered the business world he has decided to focus his attention on creating a utopian paradise.

Note: This change isn’t scheduled to happen until 2008.

A recent study states that Software Engineers have the best jobs in the U.S. It’s not likely that I’ll be arguing with the wisdom of this conclusion, but I have to wonder… Who wrote the software that crunched the data? Hmmm…

Best Buy’s Geek Squad was slapped with a TRO today by a small software tools maker named Winternals. The suit claims that the geeky dudes pirated Winternals software after contract negotiations between the two companies broke down in February. If the claim is true, then you’ve run into a pack of geeks that are even more shameless than Shameless. Pirating software, especially for business purposes, goes right past shameless to criminal. It’s something I’ll never condone or practice.

Microsoft is showing off a new software tool for managing online identities. Hopefully, it isn’t like their old software tool for managing online identities.

Sometimes, I wonder if there is anyone at Microsoft that has a memory that lasts more than a few patch cycles. The last Microsoft Wallet app opened up millions of users to identity theft and, if prosecuted, could have resulted in billions of dollars in fines. I’m wondering what makes them think that they have a bulletproof system this time?

The whole idea of online identities with CC numbers, SS numbers, and any other info that could be used to impersonate me just seems scary. Though it would be desirable to have all of that in one convenient place for shopping, I would hate to have it in one convenient place for hackers. Too little to gain for the risk. Count me out.

This isn’t really news to most of us, but I thought you might enjoy it. The first IE7 Beta 2 bug reported was found in 15 minutes by a guy running a “fuzzer” program. Classic.

For those unfamiliar with the term “fuzzer", it refers to a program that tests another program by feeding it random input. Running such a program should be part of the test procedure for any commercially available software.

Fuzzers aren’t hard to create, and there is no excuse for a company as large as MS to fail to use one.

According to the slashdotters, The upcoming release of Windows Vista will only allow digitally signed drivers to install. There are, of course, exceptions based on the unwillingness to update code for 32 bit versions of the OS. The digital signing will require a “free” license from Microsoft, which will require a digital certification that is currently priced at $500 per year.

Before seeing this as some kind of saviour mechanism that will stop the installation of rootkits, remember that it probably wont take hackers more than a week to crack the system. In exchange for that week of security, you will have to pay by seeing the end of open-source and shareware drivers, the loss of the ability to get around unfair DRM restrictions, and SERIOUS hardware compatibility problems.

I, for one, won’t believe any of it until I actually see it happen. Can you imagine Vista coming out to a large amount of fanfare, but only running on a small percentage of the installed PC base due to hardware compatibility issues? The whole thing would be so close to IBM’s OS2 fiasco that we would all end up with Macs running Linux. I think Microsoft knows that too.

I’m really not sure what to make of this… but the non-profit Mozilla foundation has spawned off a corporate stepchild. It isn’t without precedent… Apache and Cygnus are similar concepts… I’m just worried that a big, public switch from an Open Source ideology to a corporate mentality will result in further mass defections to the dark side.

Just to be clear… nobody in the Open Source community has suggested that the “Open” adjective be removed, but I fear that it is coming. As these folks get more and more profitable, and thus more and more accountable to stockholders, the concept of exclusivity will get more and more attractive.

If you need any examples of this type of thing happening, just take a look at Microsoft. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, it was common knowledge that Microsoft would “never, never, ever copy protect their software". Though that is, very strictly speaking, still true, is it really true in practice? The original concept was that joe everyuser would take home a corporate copy of the software, install it on his machine and get addicted. It’s not a new strategy. It has been used by drug dealers for ages. The strategy worked… only too well. Now most corporations are so addicted to Windows that they can never break free.

Linux, Mozilla, Apache and other OSS packages were created by a dedicated community that had the high ideal of providing a publicly owned code base that everyone could build on. It would be terrible if big money started exercising control over something like that. It would be even worse if we found out that we were just fooled by a different kind of drug dealer.

It looks like the MS PR machine has finally decided on a name for the next Windows. Today, Microsoft announced that the OS code-named Longhorn will be released as “Windows Vista”. The beta version will be released by August 3rd.

As previously announced, the final version of “Vista” should be released sometime in the second half of 2006. It is the longest gap between Windows versions in the company’s history.

Get ‘em while they’re hot! Mozilla.org has released Firefox 1.0.6 and Thunderbird 1.0.6. The new versions were released to fix compatibility problems with the 1.0.5 releases, which were themselves released to fix security issues. It’s nice of Mozilla to do the mea culpa thing again, but it’s getting a little old. I’m guessing that there are a few red faces out at Mozilla.org these days.

Mozilla is getting ready to release a Firefox alpha. Though that is not usually something that the average geek would care about, the eWeek story that brings the news also has a peek at the updates that it will contain as well as what’s in store for Firefox 1.1.

Bill Gates, in an interview published today by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, said that he felt Apple was going to lose the portable mp3 market to cellphones. During the rest of the interview Bill did his normal Apple bashing (he also bashed Blackberry) and talked about Windows Mobile 5.0, Mircosoft’s upcoming OS for cellphones. He did let out one fact that shocked me:
“
He admitted, however, that Microsoft had made mistakes in the past, for example with the first version of its XBox games console.
“

Wow. I did not realize that Microsoft considers one of the best game consoles ever a mistake.