the Software QA Test Resource Center has compiled a lengthy listing of “major computer system failures caused by software bugs” Here are several entries from that list:

1. A September 2006 news report indicated problems with software
   utilized in a state government’s primary election, resulting in
   periodic unexpected rebooting of voter check-in machines, which were
   separate from the electronic voting machines, and resulted in confusion
   and delays at voting sites. The problem was reportedly due to
   insufficient testing.
2. In August of 2006 a U.S. government student loan service
   erroneously made public the personal data of as many as 21,000
   borrowers on it’s web site, due to a software error. The bug was fixed
   and the government department subsequently offered to arrange for free
   credit monitoring services for those affected.
3. A software error reportedly resulted in over-billing of up to
   several thousand dollars to each of 11,000 customers of a major
   telecommunications company in June of 2006. It was reported that the
   software bug was fixed within days, but that correcting the billing
   errors would take much longer.
4. News reports in May of 2006 described a multi-million dollar
   lawsuit settlement paid by a healthcare software vendor to one of its
   customers. It was reported that the customer claimed there were
   problems with the software they had contracted for, including poor
   integration of software modules, and problems that resulted in missing
   or incorrect data used by medical personnel.
5. In early 2006 problems in a government’s financial monitoring
   software resulted in incorrect election candidate financial reports
   being made available to the public. The government’s election finance
   reporting web site had to be shut down until the software was repaired.
6. Trading on a major Asian stock exchange was brought to a halt in
   November of 2005, reportedly due to an error in a system software
   upgrade. The problem was rectified and trading resumed later the same
   day.
7. A May 2005 newspaper article reported that a major hybrid car
   manufacturer had to install a software fix on 20,000 vehicles due to
   problems with invalid engine warning lights and occasional stalling. In
   the article, an automotive software specialist indicated that the
   automobile industry spends $2 billion to $3 billion per year fixing
   software problems.
8. Media reports in January of 2005 detailed severe problems with a
   $170 million high-profile U.S. government IT systems project. Software
   testing was one of the five major problem areas according to a report
   of the commission reviewing the project. In March of 2005 it was
   decided to scrap the entire project.

While the list doesn’t have links or references out to original sources, it does look well-researched. Here’s a link to the entire list.

Update 10/2/07: I had taken this list from another website, which had incorporated it without attribution to the Software QA Test Resource Center.
The reference and links have now been updated to reflect the true
source of the list. My apologies to Rick Hower for the incorrect source
attribution in the original posting

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It’s time to define IT project success in clear, operational terms. Building on this post, here are four criteria for defining a successful IT project:

1. The finished software meets planned scope and specifications, with a reasonable level of quality
2. The project is completed more or less on time and within budget
3. The software solves the business problem for which it was intended
4. Users adopt the software according to plan

These criteria capture dimensions related to project management,
business fit, and usability. Notice that technology is not included as
a factor, since this definition assumes technology is the support
vehicle for delivering the all-important business benefits.

Please leave lots of comments with your opinions on this definition
of IT project success. I suspect this set of criteria will be
controversial, but we need a starting point.

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To illustrate this I’m going to focus on a presentation at DISKCON 2007 by longtime Toshiba researcher Dr. Hiroyuki Hieda.

200 Gbit/in² now
Disk platter size is a constant, so drive vendors have to get more bits
per square inch. Currently disks are at about 200 Gbit/in², close to the grain size of the plated metal.

When the grain is the same size as the track, the track starts to
bounce around quite a bit, making it difficult to read and write the
data.

[image courtesy Toshiba]

10 Tbit/in.² then
Current technology takes drives to the 1 Tbit/in.² range, or a 1 TB 2.5″ drive. Then where do we get the next 10x of drive density?

There are 2 good candidates, HAMR and BPM.

HAMR, BPM or both?
Most of the DISKCON engineers agreed that HAMR - Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording
- is the leading candidate. HAMR uses a laser to heat the recording
media before writing. The makes the spot easier to magnetize and, when
cool, makes the data much more stable.

[diagram courtesy Toshiba]

Bit patterned media
The other leading contender is BPM - Bit Patterned Media.
The dots magnetize as a group so they are more stable and they can be
tightly packed for density. Here’s a picture of a kind of BPM:

[photo courtesy Hitachi Global Storage Technologies]

This BPM sample is only 300,000,000,000 bits/in², far
short of the goal. Research into the self-assembly - i.e. the
spontaneous organization into ordered structures - of polymers has
shown that nice regular patterns of the requisite density can be
created, but then there is one more problem: how do you get the
patterns to line up in circular tracks?

Combine HAMR, BPM and electron-beam lithography
HAMR offers magnetic stability at very small feature sizes. BPM provides the tiny features. How do you get them lined up?

E-beam lithography. Often hailed as the next step
in chip manufacturing, but avoided because of cost and complexity,
e-beams enable much smaller feature sizes than visible or deep
ultraviolet light. The problem for chip vendors is that e-beams are
highly focused and slow to scan across a chip’s mask. Light is much
faster.

E-beams are viable for disks though. The e-beam creates a master
that stamps out millions of disk platters with nano-scale features.
That’s how CDs and DVDs are manufactured today, except for the e-beam
feature sizes.

Prototype self-assembled BPM + e-beamed groove
If current thinking holds, the 10 TB notebook drive will be built using
HAMR and self-assembled BPM on disk platters stamped out by e-beamed
masters. Here’s what a laboratory prototype looks like, up close and
personal:

.
[atomic force microscopy image courtesy Toshiba]

The Storage Bits take
Disk capacities double about every 2 years, so the 10 TB 2.5″ drive is
about 10 years away. While I’ve focused on the problems of the physical
media, disk storage researchers are banging away on a dozen major
research areas - including signal processing, servos and heads - to
make higher capacity storage possible.

I’d like to see the disk vendors do a better job of communicating
the incredible work they are doing. Storage is the hardest part of
modern computing, disk vendors are doing the heavy lifting, and they
get very little credit for all their hard work.

That is just wrong. Disk technology is even more amazing than chip
technology, but the engineering-driven disk companies are wallflowers
at the big technology dance

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Intel has been chasing the handheld space for some time without much
success. It started with the Xscale processor, recently sold to
Marvell, and is now taking aim with its own Intel Architecture or x86
processor technology. The first generations of its IA-based handheld
platform, which use its low-power notebook processors and chipsets,
haven’t done much to wow thus far. That’s partially because they have
been wrapped in Ultramobile PC hardware, which costs around $1,000 and
does not have a straightforward method to gain access to wide area
wireless. For that price, you might as well just buy an inexpensive
notebook. And that’s what most people do.

But Intel is touting significant improvements in device size,
battery life and connectivity for its forthcoming handheld platforms,
including one dubbed Menlow that is due in the first half of next year.
It appears as if the Menlow has begun to win over some. The company
listed companies including Samsung and Fujitsu as designing MID devices
here at IDF.

To be clear, Menlow is not a device. It’s a collection of chips that
make it possible for a manufacturer to build a device. This new
platform contains Silverthorne processor, a sub-1-watt chip that is
smaller than the size of a penny, yet still powerful enough to run
Windows Vista. Not that it will in every case. Silverthorne will power
next year’s UMPCs, based on Windows Vista. But Intel thinks that Menlow
will also spawn a range of handheld, network-connected MIDs or mobile
Internet devices. Intel believes these MIDs, some of which are
analogous to Apple’s iPod Touch, will gain in popularity through the
end of this decade. Intel has already been working with software
developers to create device-specific applications, based on Linux, for
MIDs. However, Intel believes that the primary application will be the
Internet—whether that’s Web browsing or specifically accessing social
networking sites or looking up directions.

It’s also working with a partner to create a cellular broadband
add-in card to allow MIDs to connect to 3G networks. Intel’s own
networking technology will allow MIDs to connect to Wi-Fi and or WiMAX
networks. So, for a few hundred bucks in 2008 consumers should be able
to purchase an Internet-connected handheld device. This presents a far
different value proposition than plunking down about $1,000 for a
non-connected UMPC. UMPCs are also fairly bulky given their 7-inch
screens. MID devices are likely to offer 3.5-inch to 5-inch screens,
making them a little more portable.

Some will say that Apple has beaten Intel to the punch with the iPod
Touch, which starts at $299. But remember that Intel will be offering a
platform, not an end device. (The chipmaker would be more than happy to
sell Apple the guts for the next iPod Touch I am sure.) Keeping in mind
that the comparison involves a device that’s available in 2007 with a
device platform due in 2008, it does make some sense to contrast the
two.

How would an MID device differ from what Apple’s iPod Touch has to
offer right now? MID devices will have more connectivity. MIDs will be
capable of offering broadband wireless connections via WiMAX or
cellular networks, whereas the iPod Touch now only offers Wi-Fi
(remember we’re comparing an 07 device to an 08 device, so Apple could
certainly add to the iPod Touch). MIDs won’t offer cellular phone
capabilities like Apple’s iPhone, upon which the iPod Touch is based.
But they will support VOIP, which could work when combined with WiMAX.

That’s not to say there aren’t barriers to adoption. MIDs need to
offer broadband wireless Internet for under $500 to be compelling.
Currently WiMAX, one way of offering broadband wireless, is currently
very limited in availability. Wide-area cellular-based wireless is
expensive, costing roughly $80 per month, and relatively slow. That’s
another couple of barriers. Meanwhile, people will have to decide what
they want. The question is, do I want a device that is primarily a
phone or do I want one that’s primarily for Internet access, messaging
and data?

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You can see above how a SENSOPAC robotic system with an artificial brain will learn (Credit: SENSOPAC flyer (PDF format, 2 pages, 520 KB). The European SENSOPAC project started on January 1, 2006 and will take 4 years to be completed. The 12 organizations
participating to the project come from 9 different countries and have
provided physicists, neuroscientists and electronic engineers.

The microchips which incorporate a full neuronal system have been
designed at the University of Granada, Spain. “Implanting the man-made
cerebellum in a robot will allow it to manipulate and interact with
other objects with far greater effectiveness than previously managed.
‘Although robots are increasingly more important to our society and
have more advanced technology, they cannot yet do certain tasks like
those carried out by mammals,’ says Professor Eduardo Ros Vidal,
who is coordinating the work at the University of Granada. ‘We have
been talking about humanoids for years but we do not yet see them on
the street or use the unlimited possibilities they offer us,’ the
Professor added.”

The SENSOPAC website gives more details
about the project. “The SENSOPAC project will combine machine learning
techniques and modelling of biological systems to develop a machine
capable of abstracting cognitive notions from sensorimotor
relationships during interactions with its environment, and of
generalising this knowledge to novel situations. Through active sensing
and exploratory actions the machine will discover the sensorimotor
relationships and consequently learn the intrinsic structure of its
interactions with the world and unravel predictive and causal
relationships. Together with action policy formulation and decision
making, this will underlie the machine’s abilities to create
abstractions, to suggest and test hypotheses, and develop
self-awareness.”

This very ambitious project has been divided into 5 modules.

• Active sensing
• Structure and statistics of sensorimotor interactions
• Movement and coordination for active perception
• Computation and learning in neural circuits for sensorimotor processing
• Towards an Artificial Haptic Cognitive System

It will certainly be interesting to see the progress of this EU project.

Sources: CORDIS News, August 27, 2007; and various websites

You’ll find related stories by following the links below.

• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Innovation
• Robotics
• Sensors
• Technology

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You can see above several “elemental mapping images of an isolated
nanowire showing uniform spatial distribution of germanium, antimony
and tellurium elements obtained by energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy
(EDS) in scanning transmission electron microscope (TEM) mode. (Credit:
Penn University) This research has been led by Ritesh Agarwal, an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and several colleagues of his research group.

So how these new memories were tested? “Tests
showed extremely low power consumption for data encoding (0.7mW per
bit). They also indicated the data writing, erasing and retrieval (50
nanoseconds) to be 1,000 times faster than conventional Flash memory
and indicated the device would not lose data even after approximately
100,000 years of use, all with the potential to realize terabit-level
nonvolatile memory device density. ‘This new form of memory has the
potential to revolutionize the way we share information, transfer data
and even download entertainment as consumers,’ Agarwal said. ‘This
represents a potential sea-change in the way we access and store data.’”

Here is why the Penn researchers decided to use phase-change
nanowire memory. “Phase-change memory in general features faster
read/write, better durability and simpler construction compared with
other memory technologies such as Flash. The challenge has been to
reduce the size of phase change materials by conventional lithographic
techniques without damaging their useful properties. Self-assembled
phase-change nanowires, as created by Penn researchers, operate with
less power and are easier to scale, providing a useful new strategy for
ideal memory that provides efficient and durable control of memory
several orders of magnitude greater than current technologies.”

And to whet our appetite, Agarwal added: “Imagine being able to
store hundreds of high-resolution movies in a small drive, downloading
them and playing them without wasting time on data buffering, or
imagine booting your laptop computer in a few seconds as you wouldn’t
need to transfer the operating system to active memory.”

For more information, this research work has been published in Nature Nanotechnology
as an advance online publication on September 17, 2007 under the name
“Highly scalable non-volatile and ultra-low-power phase-change nanowire
memory.” Here is the beginning of the abstract.
“The search for a universal memory storage device that combines rapid
read and write speeds, high storage density and non-volatility is
driving the exploration of new materials in nanostructured form.
Phase-change materials, which can be reversibly switched between
amorphous and crystalline states, are promising in this respect, but
top-down processing of these materials into nanostructures often
damages their useful properties. Self-assembled nanowire-based
phase-change material memory devices offer an attractive solution owing
to their sub-lithographic sizes and unique geometry, coupled with the
facile etch-free processes with which they can be fabricated.”

Please note that the above illustration comes from the supplementary info provided along with the above article.

Finally, if any of you has some additional information about the
claim that these nanowire-based memories can last for 100,000 years,
please drop me a note

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“Quarterlife”
will follow the lives of six twenty-somethings and “chart the sometimes
excruciating, sometimes comic, often emotional experiences that
comprise coming of age as a part of the digital generation.” In classic
post-modernist fashion, the lead character, Dylan, is a video blogger
(in the trailer she coughs on camera, as if to demonstrate her
authenticity).

“Quarterlife” provides yet more evidence of News Corp.’s strategy to
make MySpace a home where user-generated and professionally-produced
content can live side-by-side and with both benefiting from the online
communities that blossom as a result.

paidContent, however, picks up on one curious aspect of the “Quarterlife” partnership. A separate social network will exist for the show, away from MySpace.

Herskovotz and Zwick are creating a closed social net for quarterlife… Members of quarterlife
the social net (not live yet) will have the chance to participate in
writing the creating the show through writing and video submissions.
That in turn puts MySpace in the business of helping a potential rival.

There will of course also be a MySpace page for the show.

It’s interesting to see the balance of power between the show’s
producers and MySpaceTV as the exclusive “broadcaster”. Perhaps the
right to run their own social networking site, which ties directly to
the show, was the compromise needed to give MySpaceTV exclusivity.
Otherwise MySpace would have a monopoly on the show’s relationship with
its fans.

Having said that, quarterlife.com isn’t just a social network for
people wishing to interact with the show — but goes quite a bit further.

From the site:

quarterlife.com is a social networking
site for creative people. Whatever your interest - photography,
writing, music, filmmaking, dance, design - quarterlife.com
will help you go to the next level. Connect with like-minded people,
gather information about schools, grants, and internships. It’s a place
to explore the issues in your life, where changing the world is as real
as the friends you meet.

Come back to quarterlife.com when we launch and
participate in the ongoing creation of the series, be discovered as a
writer, director, composer, photographer - find your next step as an
artist and as a person.

Doesn’t sound too far from MySpace itself.

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