While it looks potentially apocryphal, the story last week of 'Bob' the programmer who came up with an innovative way of doing his job has made for an interesting read.
It all started with a posting on the blog of security firm Verizon telling how a review of logs revealed a connection to China. (Shades of the Cuckoo's Egg as discussed earlier.) Bob's security credentials were being used via a virtual private network while the man himself was sitting at his desk. Since his employer was an American 'critical infrastructure company' they were worried about security, especially since the security keys for the VPN were changed regularly and the Chinese connection had been going for as long as the logs recorded (six months in this case).
Cutting to the chase; Bob had outsourced his job to a Chinese company and he had sent the security credentials over to them. Have a read of the story as also covered by The Register, The Guardian and the BBC ... and also an interesting comment piece from Steve Poole at the Guardian.
The various reader comments range from rage to admiration, with several saying he should be promoted to management. He actually had several such coding jobs and outsourced them all to his Chinese sub-contractors. Bob was seen as a model employee, people ask whether his contract of employment allowed sub-contracting (this is an issue for freelancers as well since the right to supply an alternative is one factor to distinguish employment from freelancing).
Could such a thing happen in your organisation? Would it matter if it did? And what did our enterprising coder do all day (up to the point he wrote a progress email to his employers). Apparently he spent his time online, including watching YouTube videos of cats; something which gave the Guardian the opportunity for a couple of really 'aah' kitten pics. Personally I'm still following Henri.
Bob? Oh ... he was fired.
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
The time, cost and quality debate continues
The mantra from Project Management states that time, cost and quality are interdependent so that if one of the factors is changed, the others have to change too. This has been used across all types of projects to try and define what a developer will do for a client in a stated amount of time and for a known cost.
This trio has been referred to as the golden or iron triangle. Project Managers of more traditional projects than interactive electronic projects have found it hard enough to apply, but iMedia projects have suffered from:
Despite the difficult nature of the iMedia environment, the Time Cost Quality processes are sought after as attributes in many current interactive job descriptions. iMedia management wants these to work and who can blame them. They want their companies to be successful i.e. make money. They want the costs controlled. They want the expended time controlled. But, everyone wants to push the boundaries (quality and creativity) as well. Can we have it all?
Time, Cost and Quality are good principles to start from but they don’t give the whole answer. As we’ve explained before, there are variations offered that try to capture more control mechanisms within a project environment such as iMedia. We’ve noted such variations as scope, stakeholders, Agile programming methods and users in our book and previous blogs (for example here and here).
Sometimes you get a clash of disciplines. The Agile programming explosion that has its scrums and sprints – iterative small developments that are agreed with clients rather than the older sequential development models – has clashed with traditional controls of time, cost and quality because it is iterative not incremental. For an up-to-date perspective on this, see Keith Richards’ white paper on how to integrate Agile with Prince2,December 2012, Prince methodology itself adds in extra control mechanisms but very often they are extensions of the core trio processes. Prince takes a strong stand on defining the project parameters, for example, so that the trio can be applied. As an alternative perspective, it appears that the triplet has expanded to a sextuplet and includes risk, resources and scope for Voyager 8 in his blog February 2010. Can this give better control?
We all know that different markets affect the products. The emphasis on projects to sell, to convince, to brand etc. are more about the users of the product and how they relate to it than what the client or developer think they need. User experience can drive projects more than clients do. Time, Cost and Quality work with tight specifications upfront and strict control of changes but these are so very hard to attain in iMedia particularly when user experience shifts so quickly.
So, the debate goes on. There are so many factors to consider in the mix of stakeholders, clients, team, and users in defining the end product that will serve defined business needs. Always a thorny issue: jelly and walls come to mind! Anyone have a better take on all this?
This trio has been referred to as the golden or iron triangle. Project Managers of more traditional projects than interactive electronic projects have found it hard enough to apply, but iMedia projects have suffered from:
- a lack of a clear definition at the beginning of projects from clients,
- a fast changing environment that forces changes in markets and therefore changes in the products that are offered,
- faster obsolescence of skills and expertise in the workforce or accelerating costs of expertise in the workforce through new need outstripping supply, because of the volatile environment.
Despite the difficult nature of the iMedia environment, the Time Cost Quality processes are sought after as attributes in many current interactive job descriptions. iMedia management wants these to work and who can blame them. They want their companies to be successful i.e. make money. They want the costs controlled. They want the expended time controlled. But, everyone wants to push the boundaries (quality and creativity) as well. Can we have it all?
Time, Cost and Quality are good principles to start from but they don’t give the whole answer. As we’ve explained before, there are variations offered that try to capture more control mechanisms within a project environment such as iMedia. We’ve noted such variations as scope, stakeholders, Agile programming methods and users in our book and previous blogs (for example here and here).
Sometimes you get a clash of disciplines. The Agile programming explosion that has its scrums and sprints – iterative small developments that are agreed with clients rather than the older sequential development models – has clashed with traditional controls of time, cost and quality because it is iterative not incremental. For an up-to-date perspective on this, see Keith Richards’ white paper on how to integrate Agile with Prince2,December 2012, Prince methodology itself adds in extra control mechanisms but very often they are extensions of the core trio processes. Prince takes a strong stand on defining the project parameters, for example, so that the trio can be applied. As an alternative perspective, it appears that the triplet has expanded to a sextuplet and includes risk, resources and scope for Voyager 8 in his blog February 2010. Can this give better control?
We all know that different markets affect the products. The emphasis on projects to sell, to convince, to brand etc. are more about the users of the product and how they relate to it than what the client or developer think they need. User experience can drive projects more than clients do. Time, Cost and Quality work with tight specifications upfront and strict control of changes but these are so very hard to attain in iMedia particularly when user experience shifts so quickly.
So, the debate goes on. There are so many factors to consider in the mix of stakeholders, clients, team, and users in defining the end product that will serve defined business needs. Always a thorny issue: jelly and walls come to mind! Anyone have a better take on all this?
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Happy Birthday TCP/IP
Is this week the Internet's birthday?
True, by 1st January 1983 every computer on the ARPANET (all 400 of them) had to have switched over the that new-fangled packet-switching (finger-licking) protocol TCP/IP: you know, the one where all the computer networks can talk to each other and it becomes an interconnected network? With one bound communications are freed and the Internet is born ... or at least it's operational. So it's 30 years old today and there's more on the story at The Register.
Of course, there are claims to be 'the birth of the Internet' that predate 1983: 1969 for example. That's when the first node on ARPANET (the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense ... Network) was set up. If such historical things appeal then I recommend you check out the second-best book I ever read involving computer networks, Where Wizards Stay up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. (The best book? That would be The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. Moonlighting astronomy professor tracks hacker through the jungle of 1980s computer networking ... all for the sake of 75 cents.)
The 1969 date makes sense of the cartoon you'll find on this page of the ex delicto blog but you should check out the rest of the blog as well. It's a webcomic of law and nonsense and the nonsense bits remind us all that the legendary (but fictional) Mr Justice Cocklecarrot is actually alive and well.
A Happy New Year to one and all on the network.
True, by 1st January 1983 every computer on the ARPANET (all 400 of them) had to have switched over the that new-fangled packet-switching (finger-licking) protocol TCP/IP: you know, the one where all the computer networks can talk to each other and it becomes an interconnected network? With one bound communications are freed and the Internet is born ... or at least it's operational. So it's 30 years old today and there's more on the story at The Register.
Of course, there are claims to be 'the birth of the Internet' that predate 1983: 1969 for example. That's when the first node on ARPANET (the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense ... Network) was set up. If such historical things appeal then I recommend you check out the second-best book I ever read involving computer networks, Where Wizards Stay up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. (The best book? That would be The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. Moonlighting astronomy professor tracks hacker through the jungle of 1980s computer networking ... all for the sake of 75 cents.)
The 1969 date makes sense of the cartoon you'll find on this page of the ex delicto blog but you should check out the rest of the blog as well. It's a webcomic of law and nonsense and the nonsense bits remind us all that the legendary (but fictional) Mr Justice Cocklecarrot is actually alive and well.
A Happy New Year to one and all on the network.
Friday, 14 December 2012
All I want for Christmas is ...
If you have a problem, there is probably a technological way of solving it. Sometimes you can do this even if you didn't know you had a problem ...or if someone else thinks you did have a problem ... even if there isn't really a problem ... if you get my drift. As our last post for 2012 dear old Santa Fe has a few items for your delectation
If you have your own country to play with then what follows more naturally than your own computer operating system and even your very own internet. Fresh from being voted Sexiest Man Alive the top man in North Korea is revealed to also have that bit of JavaScript you always wanted that automatically makes your name bigger on every web page. Find out about Red Star, the balloon network and Kwangmyong in this story from the BBC.
Sometimes you know academia has a sense of humour ... and I really hope Andrew Gray gets a masters or better for this amazing piece of work. Wired reports on the remote controlled buggy he designed and built for his parrot. Note the protective newspaper cover folks. Pity about the music: Mr Slater's Parrot would have been much better.
You know that annoying hum you sometimes hear? Well often it comes from mains electricity in some way, vibrating wires or parts of transformers. Would you believe that the hum is useful for forensics ... allowing you to determine just when a sound recording was made? Well, this story on the BBC web site (and the associated programme) tells you how.
I'm a bit suspicious as to how reliable the speed of the recording might be ... but then these days they're all digital aren't they ... and crystal locked. A few years ago I came across a guy in the USA who had developed a system for improving the quality of analogue audio tape recordings. Since all tape recordings included a very high frequency tone (called the ultrasonic bias) it is possible to detect the tone on the tape and adjust the recording, moment by moment, to make the speed absolutely constant ... and this improves the sound quality. His company is called Plangent Processes. Worth a look if you're an audio nut.
And finally. Just watch this video (of a school nativity play) on YouTube and try not to laugh. No kittens, I promise. I'll say no more ... except 'Condiments of the Season to One and All'.
All I want for Christmas is an Internet of my own
If you have your own country to play with then what follows more naturally than your own computer operating system and even your very own internet. Fresh from being voted Sexiest Man Alive the top man in North Korea is revealed to also have that bit of JavaScript you always wanted that automatically makes your name bigger on every web page. Find out about Red Star, the balloon network and Kwangmyong in this story from the BBC.
All I want for Christmas is a buggy for my parrot
Sometimes you know academia has a sense of humour ... and I really hope Andrew Gray gets a masters or better for this amazing piece of work. Wired reports on the remote controlled buggy he designed and built for his parrot. Note the protective newspaper cover folks. Pity about the music: Mr Slater's Parrot would have been much better.
All I want for Christmas is a hum or a whistle
You know that annoying hum you sometimes hear? Well often it comes from mains electricity in some way, vibrating wires or parts of transformers. Would you believe that the hum is useful for forensics ... allowing you to determine just when a sound recording was made? Well, this story on the BBC web site (and the associated programme) tells you how.
I'm a bit suspicious as to how reliable the speed of the recording might be ... but then these days they're all digital aren't they ... and crystal locked. A few years ago I came across a guy in the USA who had developed a system for improving the quality of analogue audio tape recordings. Since all tape recordings included a very high frequency tone (called the ultrasonic bias) it is possible to detect the tone on the tape and adjust the recording, moment by moment, to make the speed absolutely constant ... and this improves the sound quality. His company is called Plangent Processes. Worth a look if you're an audio nut.
All I want for Christmas is a sing-song
And finally. Just watch this video (of a school nativity play) on YouTube and try not to laugh. No kittens, I promise. I'll say no more ... except 'Condiments of the Season to One and All'.
Sunday, 9 December 2012
Accessibility and the evolving digital arena
The whole concept of accessibility is being questioned and we need to understand what is happening so that we're not caught unaware. We were a bit late applying retro standards to our web sites after legislation about website accessibility in the updated Disability Discrimination Act 1995 called, The Equality Act, 2010. We have kept an eye on the issues in this blog. See some previous posts.
But, there is a sea-change coming: perhaps helped through the positive legacy of the Para-Olympics where overcoming disability was celebrated. Within the last month a report by Kevin Carey commissioned by AbilityNet, Universal Citizen Access, Universal Consumer Access: A New Approach, has upped the anti. The Key Concepts Summaries from Page 29 should give the gist and 7.5 Key Concepts relating to Technology, (Page 31), are as follows:
In response to Kevin’s report, AbilityNet has launched Mind the Digital Gap, a proposal for a strategic initiative launched at a parliamentary reception at the House of Commons on 21st November. Once the concept of access is expanded to any citizen outside a peer norm, the numbers should ring alarm bells. There are millions of defined registered disabled people just in the UK so yes, we should be taking notice. Imagine asking your clients if they’d mind excluding X million potential customers worldwide from their information.
If you have higher education institutions among your clients then you might be interested in the Mobile Technologies and the Law Overview, by JISC, 19th November, that covers accessibility, as well as copyright issues.
Times, they are a-changing!
But, there is a sea-change coming: perhaps helped through the positive legacy of the Para-Olympics where overcoming disability was celebrated. Within the last month a report by Kevin Carey commissioned by AbilityNet, Universal Citizen Access, Universal Consumer Access: A New Approach, has upped the anti. The Key Concepts Summaries from Page 29 should give the gist and 7.5 Key Concepts relating to Technology, (Page 31), are as follows:
- Digital information systems should be defaulted to the maximum access state and the simplest information array
- Publishers should adopt uniformity in their displays, taxonomy, terminology, navigation and controls
- Conformity between major publishers is unlikely in the short term, so investment should be in inter-operability applications.
In response to Kevin’s report, AbilityNet has launched Mind the Digital Gap, a proposal for a strategic initiative launched at a parliamentary reception at the House of Commons on 21st November. Once the concept of access is expanded to any citizen outside a peer norm, the numbers should ring alarm bells. There are millions of defined registered disabled people just in the UK so yes, we should be taking notice. Imagine asking your clients if they’d mind excluding X million potential customers worldwide from their information.
If you have higher education institutions among your clients then you might be interested in the Mobile Technologies and the Law Overview, by JISC, 19th November, that covers accessibility, as well as copyright issues.
Times, they are a-changing!
Friday, 30 November 2012
Are your iMedia Projects out of control?
Project management is all about control: control of risks, control of stakeholders, control of time, cost and quality, control of the cross-functional team of developers, control of the clients and so on. It’s no wonder that keeping a tight rein on all these factors is not easy. Herding cats comes to mind as an appropriate expression! You shouldn’t despair if your own projects are displaying some control issues but unless you have put in place some control benchmarks that all know and agree, then jigging or tugging the reins will have no effect.
After checking up on ‘control’ factors I found a few interesting items that I want to share.
In its survey of web developers, heart internet has come up with 88% believing that clients underestimate the cost of web design. Do you agree? If true, this is a danger point for control for a project manager and unless the client is made aware of the likely costs in a project before they embark on it, you’re in for a difficult time.
Lynda Bourne in Controlling or Influencing? The real use of project controls (Project Accelerator News, 18.11.12) has a take on control in projects worth a look. She insists that control is the wrong emphasis and that it is communication across all the players that changes future behaviour: i.e. gives control. Mind you, she doesn’t believe you can control the future through processes but seems to indicate that future behaviour of people can be changed by communication. A bit confusing, I feel. However, I agree that now there is more emphasis on controlling/influencing the people within the project through communication and we’ve emphasised this in our dealings with stakeholders and cross-functional team considerations (See our previous blogs on these.) Surely it’s a combination of communication and processes that help shape the project environment?
It is hard to define the number and range of projects that have problems, but I reckon that a company offering to step in to help floundering projects is a good indicator that there are enough out there. (See Micromicon Media’s profile atwww.micromicon.com). You need to remember that it isn’t just you that can suffer financially if your projects are wobbling. Your clients count the cost as well and this affects their future behaviour to iMedia.
After checking up on ‘control’ factors I found a few interesting items that I want to share.
In its survey of web developers, heart internet has come up with 88% believing that clients underestimate the cost of web design. Do you agree? If true, this is a danger point for control for a project manager and unless the client is made aware of the likely costs in a project before they embark on it, you’re in for a difficult time.
Lynda Bourne in Controlling or Influencing? The real use of project controls (Project Accelerator News, 18.11.12) has a take on control in projects worth a look. She insists that control is the wrong emphasis and that it is communication across all the players that changes future behaviour: i.e. gives control. Mind you, she doesn’t believe you can control the future through processes but seems to indicate that future behaviour of people can be changed by communication. A bit confusing, I feel. However, I agree that now there is more emphasis on controlling/influencing the people within the project through communication and we’ve emphasised this in our dealings with stakeholders and cross-functional team considerations (See our previous blogs on these.) Surely it’s a combination of communication and processes that help shape the project environment?
It is hard to define the number and range of projects that have problems, but I reckon that a company offering to step in to help floundering projects is a good indicator that there are enough out there. (See Micromicon Media’s profile atwww.micromicon.com). You need to remember that it isn’t just you that can suffer financially if your projects are wobbling. Your clients count the cost as well and this affects their future behaviour to iMedia.
Sunday, 25 November 2012
A white spectrum to you!
I've been thinking about spectrum this week. Not rainbow colours, and (for once) not even that particular part of light that lies just beyond what we can see and that is called infrared.
My thoughts started with 2.4 gigahertz (or as engineers and regulators sometimes refer to it 2400 megahertz). Apparently, if eight or more people using Wi-Fi on their laptops, phones or other devices should happen to come together on a train on the Shenzen Metro ... the train will stop. This is because this particular frequency band is used by the signalling system.
Unfortunately it's also used by a lot of other things as this band is unregulated ... everywhere. Microwave ovens use it (because water absorbs energy at this frequency and so will heat up), wi-fi uses it and in some parts of the world wireless phones in the home (as opposed to cellular phones) use it ... amongst other things. This freedom of use around the world makes for economies of scale and brings down the prices of kit.
I am surprised that an unregulated band is used for railway signalling. Apparently it's to save time, with the Caijing web site saying line development is faster in China than elsewhere but that the price is insufficient testing. There is also a difficult regulatory environment.
It reminds me of a BBC training course I was on a long time ago where we were told not to use portable tape recorders on the London Underground Victoria Line as they interfered with the trains!
Such stories as this should be borne in mind as engineers and regulators in the UK move towards using so-called white space, which in this case means frequencies that are currently reserved for television but actually have substantial geographical gaps where they are not used. This 'extra' spectrum can be used to extend existing services, such as broadband in rural areas, and provide new ones. The first stage of a consultation, on white space devices, has been published by Ofcom and The Register has a good summary. White space frequencies are different to those used by Wi-Fi and the Shenzen Metro, so they behave slightly differently, especially in how they pass through walls. They are also not the TV frequencies that are being cleared for next-generation mobile phones.
White space devices will need to be careful about which frequencies they try to use, since what is free in one part of the country is carrying BBC One in another. So there will be several databases set up that the devices will have to consult before they start transmitting. Despite there being only one spectrum, Ofcom want several databases; a conundrum devised in the name of competition.
If you would really like to know more about spectrum, and how it is allocated, I suggest you take a deep breath and look at Ofcom's allocation chart. There you will find that '500 kHz is an international distress and calling frequency for Morse radiotelegraphy', as it was when the Titanic went down a century ago, that 2400 megahertz is for 'Spread Spectrum devices, including Radio LANs', and that between 100 and 105 gigahertz lies spectrum reserved for 'Passive research carried out in some countries for intentional emissions of extraterrestrial origin'.
Now there must be some service opportunities in that.
My thoughts started with 2.4 gigahertz (or as engineers and regulators sometimes refer to it 2400 megahertz). Apparently, if eight or more people using Wi-Fi on their laptops, phones or other devices should happen to come together on a train on the Shenzen Metro ... the train will stop. This is because this particular frequency band is used by the signalling system.
Unfortunately it's also used by a lot of other things as this band is unregulated ... everywhere. Microwave ovens use it (because water absorbs energy at this frequency and so will heat up), wi-fi uses it and in some parts of the world wireless phones in the home (as opposed to cellular phones) use it ... amongst other things. This freedom of use around the world makes for economies of scale and brings down the prices of kit.
I am surprised that an unregulated band is used for railway signalling. Apparently it's to save time, with the Caijing web site saying line development is faster in China than elsewhere but that the price is insufficient testing. There is also a difficult regulatory environment.
It reminds me of a BBC training course I was on a long time ago where we were told not to use portable tape recorders on the London Underground Victoria Line as they interfered with the trains!
Such stories as this should be borne in mind as engineers and regulators in the UK move towards using so-called white space, which in this case means frequencies that are currently reserved for television but actually have substantial geographical gaps where they are not used. This 'extra' spectrum can be used to extend existing services, such as broadband in rural areas, and provide new ones. The first stage of a consultation, on white space devices, has been published by Ofcom and The Register has a good summary. White space frequencies are different to those used by Wi-Fi and the Shenzen Metro, so they behave slightly differently, especially in how they pass through walls. They are also not the TV frequencies that are being cleared for next-generation mobile phones.
White space devices will need to be careful about which frequencies they try to use, since what is free in one part of the country is carrying BBC One in another. So there will be several databases set up that the devices will have to consult before they start transmitting. Despite there being only one spectrum, Ofcom want several databases; a conundrum devised in the name of competition.
If you would really like to know more about spectrum, and how it is allocated, I suggest you take a deep breath and look at Ofcom's allocation chart. There you will find that '500 kHz is an international distress and calling frequency for Morse radiotelegraphy', as it was when the Titanic went down a century ago, that 2400 megahertz is for 'Spread Spectrum devices, including Radio LANs', and that between 100 and 105 gigahertz lies spectrum reserved for 'Passive research carried out in some countries for intentional emissions of extraterrestrial origin'.
Now there must be some service opportunities in that.
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