Oracle’s Chief Security Officer made a remarkably silly comment in a talk at WWW2006. CNet covered it here.
First wrong thing: We know how to build bug-free software. If you’ve flown a Boeing airplane built in the last ten or fifteen years, you’ve trusted your life to a software system. The nav [...]
Archive for May, 2006
If civil engineers built bridges like we built software…
May 29, 2006How we work, and for whom, part 2
May 25, 2006Alberto and I are splitting the DMS CE duties while ESS recruits a replacement for Warren. The main thing we hope we’ll be doing is tracking progress against the schedule, but inevitably things will come up. The interesting question will be to understand what happens when things to come up.
I understand that people [...]
How we work, and for whom.
May 24, 2006It’s often said, among people who think seriously about how ESS works, that we are pathologically incapable of building the wrong system just because of specification. That’s true, as far as it goes. We certainly can build the wrong system, and to some extent we have in the past. We probably will [...]
Institutional change
May 22, 2006Matt announced today that the changes to the organization are complete for now – no more staff cuts.
The Office of Technology has been eliminated, and the separate Program Management activity has been merged into BRC. The three Mission Heads now report directly to the Director, and the Divisions report to the Deputy Director. [...]
FiOS is coming
May 21, 2006I spent the day finishing up the desk in the living room. Now all that’s left is trim pieces, and the living room will finally be done. Only what, 18 months?
The outside fiber cable was installed today for my new FiOS service. The service guy is coming Tuesday. I’d like to [...]
What's different about software developers
May 19, 2006I spent much of today thinking and writing about what makes ESS different from other parts of the Institute. In particular, I wondered why the original plan, which had people moving from an HST-directed part of ESS to a JWST-directed part of ESS.
A few years ago, it seemed likely that ESS would fission into [...]
A bit of History
May 18, 2006I wasn’t working today, but took the day off to chaperone Teela’s class trip to Historic Saint Mary’s City. It’s a fairly cool place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
St. Mary’s had two main crops: Tobacco for cash, and corn to eat. Tobacco was both the main crop and the [...]
Are you a lousy programmer?
May 17, 2006I saw this in my newsfeed today on CNet:
My favorite: “Your users are stupid. Really stupid.”
I guess I think only some users are stupid.
tc>
Positive expectations for SM-4
May 16, 2006I heard three things in the MSR today that I thought were interesting:
The WFC3 instrument is significantly more power-hungry than WFPC-II, particularly during a safing event, which has significant implications for overall power management on the spacecraft. It is possible that we may not be able to operate NICMOS after SM-4. Since [...]
