>
> Actually, my concern is that every one is out buying each other, and
> products are not being carefully tested or reviewed before release.
hmm. I'd add three things to to that.
First: IMHO, there is a large focus [particularly] in the fw/security
system arena towards filling out marketing checkoffs and other features
whicn increase the complexity of the product rather than creating systems
which easily and accurately solves the customers needs.
Second: QA seems to be declining at about the same rate that code is
bloating. This is doubly frightening as this seems to tell me that bugs
per kloc are increasing exponentially. I've a bad feeling that companies
are trying to shovel software out to the market and are concentrating so
much on the feature/time side of the equation that they don't mind that
quality slips (F*T*Q = const). This agrees very much with what mark is
saying, and (sigh) with the crap that i'm about to spew below :)
Third: Another other `trend' which is, unfortunately, growing:
pre-announcing what you think you might do in the next [few] release[s] of
product (vaporware). I've seen this used a lot by certain 'established'
software companies in an effort to either protect their turf from others,
or to destabalize the competition. I've been saddened to see that this has
gone from exageration with some outright BS (from companies known to BS)
to a race to see who can come up with the best tall tale of them all.
You'd think that Scott Adams' fictitious corporation was generating the
marketing plans.
example: suppose one was in a concentrating on creating a network product
which provided service X. Suppose that SUN hinted that it was considering
adding X to be integrated into solaris 2.x+1. Many potential customers
which have long purchase cycles (e.g. large companies) would delay even
further to see suns offering. If your company was small enough, the
perturbation in the cash flow could be enough to sink it, even should sun
decide that it wasn't going to implement X after all.
Hey, as long as i'm climbing towards the 1+K mark, i'll add in even
more verbal spewage :)
I've a feeling that the industry has a good shot of hitting a crossroads.
If the job market continues at its current pace, the value of having
superlative people and managers will make and break companies much like
the NE patriots when they lost parcells. [SO?! we new that] I think
(hope?) that a fundamental change will take place in how companies manage
their people. by fundamental, i mean something similar to how the
industrial revolution completely changed the way that labor was percieved.
Currently people are seen as replacables, and the computers are capital
assets to be zealously guarded. As everyone in hot tech markets knows,
companies who think like that can quickly run out of top notch engineering
staff :)
I'd like to see some sort of analysis of mainline rags/mags talking about
intellectual capital over time. I've a feeling that as the security
industry blooms (and screams "YOU FOOLS!!!") this issue will be more
rapidly brought into the limelight since security inherently deals with
where the real assets of the company lie and how to manage the risk
inherent with posessing them.
I'm also waiting for bona fide lawsuits involving a company being sued for
deliberately attacking/disabling/whatevering a competetors
computer/network/whatever infrastructure to gain competetive advantage. [i
wonder if the on-line investing companies may see this first]
The other is a person/country being nailed for using data communication
networks to conduct hostile activities against a foreign power. Sort of a
bona fide information war (hot war, cold war, bit war). I'm not thinking
hacking, i'm thinking bona fide national policy to have people/mercenaries
brought in to deliberaty wreak havoc on the target sovereign.
> >I seem to recall seeing a April Fools style press release which
> >stated that Microsoft had taken over the US Government.
> >Peter, perhaps you would like to redo your posting in that style,
> >and add comments about making Java Active-X compliant ;-)
would inactive-X be the new gov't standard?
-- craig
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig I. Hagan "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to back it up"
hagan(at)cih.com "True hackers don't die, their ttl expires"
"It takes a village to raise an idiot, but an idiot can raze a village"
Stop the spread of spam, use a sendmail condom!
http://www.cih.com/~hagan/smtpd-hacks
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