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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Using NASA satellite imagery, researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) in St. Petersburg have found that it is possible to monitor coastal water quality.
This means that water quality can be checked daily rather than monthly
as done by traditional methods which involves expensive boat surveys.
This information can be crucial for resource managers devising
restoration plans for coastal water ecosystems. According to the
researchers, this method can be applied to coastal waters worldwide
with little changes — providing that resource managers have access to
data from NASA satellites.

You can see above images showing that water quality of Florida’s
Tampa Bay decreases in winter months compared to summer. More particles
suspended in the water, a measure called turbidity, show up as yellow,
orange and red in December (left image) than in July (right). Images
are composites of turbidity data collected in December and July,
respectively, over a span of three years using NASA’s MODIS instrument.
(Credit: NASA/USF) Here is a link to a larger version of these pictures.

This research work has been done at the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing (IMaRS) at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. The project was led by Frank Müller-Karger, Professor and Director of the Institute, with the help of Chuanmin Hu, Assistant Research Professor and Executive Director, and of Zhiqiang Chen, a Post-doc Research Associate.

Here is how NASA describes the utility of this research work.
“The team’s findings will help tease out factors that drive changes in
coastal water quality. For example, sediments entering the water as a
result of coastal development or pollution can cause changes in water
turbidity – a measure of the amount of particles suspended in the
water. Sediments suspended from the bottom by strong winds or tides may
also cause such changes. Knowing where the sediments come from is
critical to managers because turbidity cuts off light to the bottom,
thwarting the natural growth of plants. ‘If we can track the source of
turbidity, we can better understand why turbidity is changing. And if
the source is human-related, we can try to manage that human activity,’
says Frank Muller-Karger.”

Observing turpidity was previously done with the help of boat
surveys. NASA satellites are changing the process. “Satellites
previously have observed turbidity in the open ocean by monitoring how
much light is reflected and absorbed by the water. The technique has
not had much success in observing turbidity along the coast, however.
That’s because shallow coastal waters and Earth’s atmosphere serve up
complicated optical properties that make it difficult for researchers
to determine which colors in a satellite image are related to
turbidity, which to shallow bottom waters, and which to the atmosphere.
Now with advances in satellite sensors combined with developments in
how the data are analyzed, Chen and colleagues show it is possible to
monitor turbidity of coastal waters via satellite.”

Now, let’s see how the USF researchers have done to check the
coastal waters of Tampa Bay. “To determine water clarity in Tampa Bay,
the team looked at more than eight years of imagery from GeoEYE’s Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS)
instrument, whose data is analyzed, processed and distributed by NASA
for research. The images give a measure of how much light is reflected
by the water. The data were put through a two-step calculation to
arrive at a measure of clarity. Similarly, data from NASA’s Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard the Aqua satellite was compared with measurements of turbidity gathered on the ground and then applied to each whole image to make the maps.”

This research work has been published in two separate papers in Remote Sensing of Environment.

• Monitoring turbidity in Tampa Bay using MODIS/Aqua 250-m imagery (Volume 109, Issue 2, Pages 207-220, July 30, 2007)
• Remote sensing of water clarity in Tampa Bay (Volume 109, Issue 2, Pages 249-259, July 30, 2007)

Sources: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center news release, via EurekAlert!, August 29, 2007; and various websites

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

• Environment
• Geosciences
• NASA
• Sensors
• Space

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Add Trend Micro, Check Point Zone Labs and ClamAV to the long list of security products that put end users at risk of malicious hacker attacks.

The three vendors have all acknowledged various security
vulnerabilities in a range of desktop and server products that could
lead to arbitrary code execution, privilege escalation or
denial-of-service conditions.

Trend Micro, which specializes in virus protection software, has issued patches for ServerProtect and the PC-cillin suite.

[SEE: Can you really trust your security vendor? ]

The ServerProtect update, rated “moderately critical” by Secunia,
covers boundary errors and integer overflow errors that could be
exploited to launch harmful code on a vulnerable installation. Two
separate alerts from iDefense (here and here) outline the details and potential risks.

iDefense has also discovered about a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in Trend Micro Inc.’s SSAPI Engine that could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code with system level privileges.

The latest black-eye for security vendors has also affected Check Point Zone Labs. From an iDefense alert:

Local exploitation of an insecure permission
vulnerability in multiple Check Point Zone Labs products allows
attackers to escalate privileges or disable protection.

The vulnerability specifically exists in the default file Access
Control List (ACL) settings that are applied during installation. When
an administrator installs any of the Zone Labs ZoneAlarm tools, the
default ACL allows any user to modify the installed files. Some of the
programs run as system services. This allows a user to simply replace
an installed ZoneAlarm file with their own code that will later be
executed with system-level privileges.

Exploitation allows local attackers to escalate privileges to the
system level. It is also possible to use this vulnerability to simply
disable protection by moving all of the executable files so that they
cannot start on a reboot.

ClamAV, the open-source anti-virus toolkit recently acquired by Sourcefire, has also struggled with security problems that could lead to sudden denial-of-service crashes. Secunia rates the ClamAV issues as “moderately critical.”

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So it is, now, with Microsoft. All the respect shown Big Green at Linuxworld can’t mask the fact that its era is ending, that in time the open source model will triumph.

Jim Zemlin spent this week pointing out some of the good things about the Microsoft era, like its support and organization, which Linux vendors can’t yet match.

But in time they will. In time we’ll look back on the Linux-Microsoft war and wonder what all the fuss was about.

That time is coming sooner than anyone in Redmond thinks.

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When Facebook first announced its new ‘Platform’ whereby third-party
companies could built applications and set-up shop within the social
networking site, many pronounced its ‘openness’ as a good thing, since
it gives developers access to the site’s millions of users. And whilst
access to all of those users is something no web startup should
dismiss, it did, and still does, make we wonder what impact Facebook Platform will have on the rest of the web?

…where does this leave the ’small pieces, loosely
joined’ philosophy of the net? If everybody sets up shop in Facebook,
keeping all the action inside the social network site, where does that
leave the rest of the web?

Over at Read/WriteWeb, Richard MacManus wrote a great post
looking at how ‘open’ Facebook really is, since it using it’s own
version of web standards, is, by design, a closed network in terms of
privacy (you have to join the site, and be authorized to view
profiles), and it doesn’t support standards to enable users to move
their data elsewhere.

Some have gone as far as to call Facebook the new AOL.

So, is Facebook good for the web? Take my poll, but also let’s debate this in the comments.

Is Facebook Platform good for the web?

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Over the past few weeks several people have asked me if it’s
possible to set up a Windows XP/Linux dual-boot system on a PC that
already has Windows XP installed on it, and if it’s possible, how easy
is the process. 

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s pretty easy to do.  In fact,
the process is only marginally more work that installing Linux in the
first place (which, if you’ve installed Linux before, you’ll know if
pretty easy).

Here’s how it’s done.

1. First, start off with a machine with XP already installed on it.
2. Next, download a Linux distro.  I’ll be using my personal favorite, Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.
3. Burn a CD of the ISO you downloaded and pop it into the drive and boot up off of it.
4. Start the install process.  This will take you through the Welcome screen, the Where are you? screen and the Keyboard layout screen.
5. Now you’ll come to the disk partitioner.  Choose the Resize [main partition] and use freed space
   option.  This is where you find out if you have enough free space to do
   the job.  The default recommendation for the new partition size will be
   ideal, but you can move the slider along to change the values to suit. 
   When you’re done, click Forward.
6. Now you can go away and leave the install to churn away until it’s done.  It shouldn’t take all that long.
7. When the install is complete the system will reboot.
8. When the system boot up, now you’ll be greeted by the GRUB boot
   menu.  From here you can choose which OS to boot into.  In my case
   Ubuntu will be the default and will start automatically in 10 seconds.
9. The first time that you reboot into Windows the OS will more than
   likely want to check the disk since the partition has changed size
   since Windows was last running.  XP will also likely want to re-detect
   hardware and such and probably reboot.
10. That’s it!  Yes, it’s that simple.

In Ubuntu I can also tweak the GRUB bootloader settings.  To do this you need to fire up a Terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type the following into the window:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Hit ENTER and then type in your password hit ENTER again and you get access to the boot menu file in gedit.

The default boot entry is defined by the default value. Change this value to reflect which OS you want to boot up automatically.  The default value is 0,
which means that the first entry in the list (in this case Ubuntu) will
be loaded automatically.  If you want to change it so that Windows XP
loads by default, change the value to 4 (because here XP is the fifth item in the list and the numbering system starts at 0).  You can also increase the boot menu timeout by changing the value of timeout from the default 10 to something else. Save the file to committ the changes.

Sweet.

Thoughts?

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It’s simple really: just use the stock market’s herd mentality
against it. Pick a large company that is information dependent and
whose shares have shown significant volatility over the last few
months. Then hack its systems, short the share, cause their systems to
fail in publicly embarrassing ways, and buy the shares you need at a
significant discount.

The volatility will make it hard for the regulators to nail you and
you can make money first on the price fall, and then on the inevitable
rebound - think of it as a criminal win win.

United Airlines, for example, meets the target selection criteria,
collapsed down to about $35 when its planes sat on the tarmac on June
18th, and recovered to its short term $39+ average by Thursday.

Notice, please, that I’m not saying this was done to United - I have
no information about what happened there; I mention this example just
to show how the market reacts to systems failures. What I am saying is
that every events study
of market reaction to IT news shows roughly the same pattern - and
there are millions of dollars available to players willing to grab a
little competitive advantage by creating the price movement pattern
they’re betting on.

So go for it: I know it can be more profitable than even WoW
cheating, and my guess is that it’s not a lot riskier - after all, do
you really think that people are going to start getting fired for using
junk technologies like wintel desktops and Cisco networking? Gimme a
break; it’s not gonna happen. I mean, sure it’s every IT manager’s job
to protect the business, but as long as the idiots in charge keep
authorising more of what plainly doesn’t work there will always be so
many innocent failures that no-one’s going to notice you creating a few
more just so you can make a few bucks.

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s social networking really just a young persons game? Is MySpace the only social networking game? 

(see Web 2.0 ages: Poor old media?)

NO. There is a social networker in each and every one of us that
seeks emotional rewards from being connected and influential, new
research has found. 

Popular word of mouth marketing theories, however, purport that
real influence is not universal, but solely the provenance of a few
highly-connected individuals enjoying domain expertise.

Ted Smith, Research Fellow, CNET Networks (parent of ZDNet),
debunked such conventional notions of influence yesterday, unveiling
research at the Advertisng Research Foundation convention in New York
City.

In a presentation titled “Social Networking Demystified: Why
Consumers Cannot Resist Giving Advice,” Smith presented the findings
from proprietary research on the structure and dynamics of social
networks.

During the Q4 ’06 and Q1 ’07 timeframe, a multi-faceted study
engaged consumers via fieldwork, Internet surveys, one-on-one
interviews and behavioral site analysis to understand how influence
works.

With the goal of answering questions about whether there are many or
few who are highly influential, insights were gleaned on what is
assumed to be the essential ingredient of influence, personal network
size.

Study participants were asked to indicate the number of people they
interact with on a monthly basis, categorized by groups. Respondents
were then grouped by level of connectedness: Less Connected, Moderately
Connected, Highly Connected.

Results? There is a “tremendous central tendency” about the mean.
Translation: There are not two groups of people in two distinct
populations, connected or not. Instead, most individuals are in a
tightly defined range around the average.

The masses are “moderately connected,” with 42 connections, on average, the research found.

Implications? The true shape of influence can be best viewed as a “diamond,” rather than as a “pyramid.”

Focusing only on a small number of highly connected individuals at
the top of the pyramid neglects the larger, and more real, opportunity
for influence on a large scale via the bulk of the population, in the
middle of the wide diamond. 

Real-world, everyday influencers are motivated by a desire to help others, the research suggests:

People like to be needed and valued, and influencers
derive a sense of self-worth and validation from giving good advice.
They aren’t simply blasting emails to their entire address book,
influencers are taking the time to seek out and customize information
they believe will be relevant to specific individuals within their
network. When their advice is wee received, it gives them confidence to
continue and expand their efforts. 

In
addition to the personal rewards they get from providing good
information, the typical  influencer also enjoys the process of
discovery, or being “The Sleuth,” the research found.

What is “The Sleuth” in real-world mass social networking terms? Sleuths: 

aren’t experts but are savvy at finding credible information,
watch and read media with a critical eye,
rely on the Web to find and distribute critical information,
tend to send information only to individuals they know will be interested,
won’t send information unless they’re confident it’s worth sharing.

Moral of the we are all social networkers story? 

Influence is not exclusive, it is something we all share. Influence
is not a function of charisma so much as it’s a function of human
nature, 

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Microsoft announced in early May that it would make available within a few weeks a beta of a connector for Outlook 2003/2007 users who want to manage their Windows Live Hotmail accounts from inside Outlook.

The beta of that connector, as of this week, is now available for download from the Microsoft Downloads site.

(The same beta connector also can be used by Outlook users to manage their Office Live Mail accounts.)

On the Mail Call blog, Program Manager Ellie Powers-Boyle said that Microsoft is providing users with multiple ways of accessing their Live Hotmail accounts in the name of choice.
She also notes that users who are paying for MSN Premium can access
their Windows Live Calendar through the new Connector beta.

“With Outlook Connector Beta, you can use Outlook 2003
or Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Windows Live Hotmail or
Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for
free! Calendar, tasks and notes can also be accessed and managed in
Outlook for accounts with a paid subscription.”

More details on what’s in the connector are available on the Liveside.Net blog.

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