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Comment: Re:CMMI is a scam (Score 1) 228

by Stormin (#45825043) Attached to: US Requirement For Software Dev Certification Raises Questions

My experience with CMMI level 5 was from a vendor with that certification providing us code years ago.

They claimed as part of CMMI level 5 that errors would be detected at every possible point in the code. The problem was, this was applied without any thought to maintainability, nor to the fact that in certain places, if an error occurs, the implication is the system is so far gone that the error handler won't be able to run. The language was Sybase stored procedures; the below is a rough example. Their error blocks were even longer.

Maintainability when you can see at most 3 lines that actually DO something on your screen at once is greatly limited - everything else is the same error block copied again and again and again, so even figuring out what variables were used took much scrolling.

We asked the vendor to cut the crap, and they said this was mandated by CMM Level 5 and they couldn't change it without risking their certification.

I briefly considered asking them if they should perhaps add statements of the form "IF 0 = 1 THEN (some error handler relating to the server being broken)" just in case that happened.

The reality of course is that if the server didn't have enough memory to declare variables, it would most likely crash entirley. It certainly wouldn't have enough memory to run the error handler.

  * @company_identifier will hold a numeric(15,0) ... [snip]

DECLARE @company_identifier numeric(15,0)

IF @@ERROR > 0
                INSERT INTO ERR_LOG (error, time) VALUES ( 'Error: Unable to declare @company_identifier due to error ' + @@ERROR, getDate())
                PRINT 'Error Logged In ERR_LOG TABLE with ID ' + @@IDENTITY
                EXEC sp_logErrorRemote @@IDENTITY
                SELECT @ERRORSTATE = 1

  * Documentation on @person_identifier

DECLARE @person_identifier numeric(15,0)

IF @@ERROR > 0
                INSERT INTO ERR_LOG (error, time) VALUES ( 'Error: Unable to declare @person_identifier due to error ' + @@ERROR, getDate())
                EXEC sp_logErrorRemote @@IDENTITY
                SELECT @ERRORSTATE = 1

Comment: Re:OMG 9 hours? 9 days? Half a year? (Score 1) 176

by Stormin (#44272925) Attached to: When Space Weather Attacks Earth

Having lived through various natural disasters that caused electrical power to be out for many days, I've found the situation to be workable if there is somewhere nearby that still has power. It can be very inconvenient, but if you can get somewhere nearby that has power it lets you solve most of the problems you run into. (The house I grew up in had a wood stove for backup heat in just that type of situation.)

An event that caused serious damage to any number of substation transformers would be a totally different story, if it mean that there was no electricity for even say, a 100 mile radius. This past winter I watched them replace a substation transformer near my house. It took them more than three months to do it - a failure impacting a number of those units would be a big problem.

Comment: Re:AltaVista? (Score 1) 277

by Stormin (#44172225) Attached to: I'd most rather, of the following, search with:

The bad-guy web sites
were 95+ percent of all results once the bad guys figured out
how AltaVista worked.

I used to work around this in AltaVista by entering


That basically took care of the problem. It was still pretty hilarious that you had to do it.

Comment: Re:Captain obvious strikes... (Score 2) 280

by Stormin (#44160251) Attached to: Microsoft To Shut Down TechNet Subscription Service

I was an MSDN subscriber for 11 years. I wrote applications for many clients that were Microsoft based, and those clients spent significant sums on licenses for their servers, CALs, etc.

Over the years though it got harder and harder to justify the cost of MSDN, especially as they did all these things to restrict availability of product keys, etc.

I decided not to renew my MSDN subscription. I only have one client left using a MS stack, and they will be migrated to a Linux / Java solution shortly. They will save a significant amount of money on licenses, and I will save a significant amount of money on MSDN subscriptions.

So long Microsoft, it was fun while it lasted.

Comment: Re:Warranty or insurance? (Score 1) 329

by Stormin (#43629597) Attached to: Is Buying an Extended Warranty Ever a Good Idea?

I believe the English term for the second level insurance mentioned is "Reinsurance".

Another mechanism available to deal with large disasters is the catastrophe bond. Insurers can sell them to raise money, but they contain conditions that in the event of a certain disaster or set of disasters, the amount the insurance company needs to pay back is greatly reduced.

Comment: Re:corporations are not people (Score 1) 357

by Stormin (#43080697) Attached to: Don't Want a Phonebook? Give Up Your Privacy

I've also heard "I'm voting for X because my friends are" and chances are you've heard the same thing.

The problem isn't the money. The problem is the voters.

I've actually heard the opposite: A friend of mine who didn't know much about politics and had recently become a naturalized US Citizen basically said that he was voting for $X in the presidential race because a mutual friend of our was voting for $Y and he realized that their politics were so different that for him, $X must be the right vote.

Comment: Re:Its racist (Score 3, Interesting) 183

by Stormin (#42995915) Attached to: Lessons From the Papal Conclave About Election Security

Simple, they can't get one. They came from a place where the records were destroyed, or never existed in the first place. This is not as rare as many people might like to think - it's been a fact of recent civil wars in my lifetime, that one side systematically destroyed all birth records of the other.

There are people who can't afford to fly, who buy their cigs and alcahol off a younger family member, have no credit cards or bank accounts (using just the check cashing place and paying an exorbitant fee there too boot), and yes, can't visit certain federal buildings. Their lives are already greatly limited and with the aggressive work of republican groups screaming about vote fraud, we can ensure that they lose even the right to vote in our lifetime, since they certainly would have voted democrat anyway.

Comment: Re:Apple bashing (Score 1) 452

by Stormin (#42248421) Attached to: Australian Police Warn That Apple Maps Could Get Someone Killed

I've seen that one one of my west coast trips. I'm not sure why - I thought California was all about the car. Anyhow, I'm at my firm's LA office, and the folks invite me out for lunch. The restaurant was reached by leaving the office, making a left turn, turning right at the first intersection (which had a traffic light, driving half a mile, and turning into the restaurant on the right. I could have practically walked there.

Anyhow, we get done eating, and the person who drove the other car says to the person I rode with that "I need to follow you, I'm not sure how to get back to the office." They were serious.

Comment: Re:How about (Score 5, Funny) 381

by Stormin (#42211585) Attached to: When I see gov't CCTV cameras, I think:

You have been fined 25 credits for violation of the verbal morality statute.

Your repeated violations of the verbal morality statute have caused us to dispatch the police to deliver corrective suggestion, please remain at your current location.

Comment: Re:Even if this was true... (Score 1) 1009

by Stormin (#42101419) Attached to: Is Intel Planning To Kill Enthusiast PCs?

Thank you, I was about to post the same thing. The first PC I built came with a CPU that was installed exactly this way - an AMD 386/40 that for some reason they got in a surface mount version, and then mounted on a small piece of PC board that had the pins to plug into the socket on the motherboard. The only point of confusion was that Pin 1 on the underlying pins was at the opposite corner from Pin 1 on the chip itself.

If that doesn't work on the newer chips, I can always go with a competitors chip. I'm by no means limited to Intel.

Comment: Re:Not limited to children (Score 1) 684

by Stormin (#42036027) Attached to: Young Students Hiding Academic Talent To Avoid Bullying

When I read the summary, I figured the articles were from a United States source. I was quite surprised when reading the articles* to see they are from the other side of the pond. How much higher would those percentages be in the US?

* If you think there's no reason to read the articles, then please get off my lawn!

Comment: Re:RIM is already dead (Score 2) 180

by Stormin (#41438575) Attached to: Flatlining User Base May Spell End of RIM

From where I sit I saw one of the strengths of RIM turn against them - the BES server and all the administrative control it allows.

For many years I worked closely with the team that ran the blackberry infrastructure at my company. Whenever a new blackberry came out, users started asking for it. When I asked them about it, the answer could often be summarized as follows:

"Yes people want them, but that model has X. Our current version of X does not allow us to administratively disable X. On (date) we will be upgrading our BES servers and will be able to disable X, at that point we will allow people to use them here."

So all the users who got new devices found that they didn't do anything that the old ones didn't. They blamed this on RIM, even though the real culprit was in fact that the company was locking them down. But I've heard this from numerous people at work.

I still have my company issued BB though, because I don't want them and their remote wipe capability anywhere near my real smart phone. Apart from the keyboard though, there isn't anything special about it.
