Pitfalls
. . . will be later today. Right now, it’s Tuesday morning, so it must be link time: President Obama’s War on Business continues. As I noted yesterday, I’m not happy with the AIG payout, but it is both unseemly and dangerous to have the President of the United States singling out and using taxpayer [...]
In case you’re not aware, Microsoft is being sued for allegedly setting misleading levels of hardware compatibility for “Vista Capable” computers. In other words, the suit claims that Microsoft knowingly set low levels of Vista-compatibility for hardware, even though many of the computer models so designated would not be able to run anything above Vista [...]
InsideCRM has a list of the 20 Worst Capital Investments of All Time. As someone who actually helped successfully raise venture capital for a software startup — a total of $7 million, which lasted us for five years — it hurts to see the vast sums squandered on some of these companies: Pets.com: This icon [...]
I’ll bet. The American Society of Civil Engineers is demanding that a video spoofing their investigation of the levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina be removed from YouTube: A long-simmering dispute about whether a leading engineering organization whitewashed the role of the Army Corps of Engineers in the failure of the levee system [...]
MIT is suing the architect and construction firm responsible for their (relatively new) computer science complex: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in [...]
Continue reading about A different type of IT project failure
Headline: “Gov’t IT project ‘failed’ with $12mil misappropriated” Location: Vietnam. VietNamNet Bridge – More than 20% of the funds already disbursed for a multi-million dollar project that aimed to computerise Government offices nationwide has been misallocated, according to a new report from the State Audit Agency. The State Audit Agency said Project 112 had misallocated [...]
Continue reading about Some things transcend borders and cultures
Sorry, I have little love for a systems admin who decides to knock us off the web as we are busy dishing out fire information to people in need. Yes, we were using a lot of bandwidth, and I agree that we should pay for it. But for us to find out that they want [...]
I’ve begun the process of updating and generalizing the original pitfalls (in Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development) for Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering (or PMSE). Just scroll past the introductory text, and you’ll see an outline of the actual live content. As with The Art of ‘Ware, feedback and contributions are encouraged. ..bruce..
I’m finishing up an expert report for a patent case that I’m working on, so I haven’t been able to push forward with PMSE. However, I am posting a PDF of Chapter 2 from the original Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development (M&T Books, 1995). This should be useful for those of you interested in contributing to [...]
Continue reading about Swamped, but here’s a bit of fresh meat
Here comes the bubble, redux
Some months back I raised a cautionary flag over what I considered to be the excessively high valuation of VMWare (“Uh oh…Tech Crash 2.0?”). I got caught in the original (though largely unacknowledged) tech crash in the 1988-1991 time frame and so was able to see (and avoid) what is largely (if incorrectly) termed the [...]
Continue reading about Here comes the bubble, redux