Requirements and ZBBs

I dislked "Requirements Engineering". Very often it is associated with projects that do not satisfy the customer. At the end, the engineers often blame the customer, saying "If only they had written more precise requirements".

This is a cop-out. It is the engineers' job to figure out the real customer needs and requirements. Or maybe the architects. Or marketing.

Here is an example of why I dislike "Requirements Lists". If you have requirements R1…R10, often people say "Let's restrict ourselves to the top three", and implement a mechanism or separate mechanisms that meet R1, R2, R3. They ignore the possibility of a mechanism that satisfies all of R1…R10, although possibly not as wel as the specific mechanism.

Or, there may be a single mechanism that satisfies R1 and R3…R10, but not R2. But it gets dropped, because we have arbitrarily excluded R4…R10 from consideration.

I.e. it is not so much the process of requirements that I dislike, as the simple minded prioritization thinking that is so often associated with it.

45 minutes = 500MB ?

Yesterday IT complained that I had exceeded 1GB of diskspace on my home directory, and the 17GB disk was full, hurting 47 other users on the disk.

It took me 45 minutes to clean up 500MB.

Ironically, the first 300MB was easier - it was a disk usage report I was creating to find out why a different disk used by a project was full. I.e. my home directory disk was full because I was using it to investigate why my project disk was full.

According to PriceWatch, 1GB of PC disks can be purchased for less than 25 cents; heck, 1GB of flash is only around 10$.

45 minutes of my time is worth more than 1GB of disk.

Heck, 45 minutes of the US minimum wage is worth more than 1GB of disk.

Autoclose timeout of security problem reports without investigation

I have posted about my paranoia about malware on my laptop. I think this email from IT's servicedesk / bug reporting / ssue tracking system says it all:

...long code number...

Dear Andy Glew,

We have an answer to your request. See the details as follows:

Request Summary: CB: MS RootkitRevealer indicates possible security problems on my laptop

Answer Summary: Closed by Auto-Close process

You may also click on the link above if you want to view or provide additional information to your request and answer online.

Sincerely,

Note: Please do not reply to this e-mail as messages are not monitored or responded to.

Nobody at IT ever contacted me about the problem. No email, no phone call, no text added to the "helpdesk" problem report.

They just allowed it to time out.

Now, I can understand: RootkitRevealer sometimes has false positives. Maybe IT recognized the symptoms I reported as a false positive, and knows to ignore it.
Or maybe they don't bother investigating security problems, relying only on malware scanners.

Or maybe IT themselves installed the rootkit on my system. (There's my paranoia kicking in again.)

ProcessExplorer - yay

Thanks to Tom Walsh for pointing me to Microsoft's ProcessExplorer, and other sysinternals.

One heck of a lot more useful than task manager.

I continue to waste time tryng to diagnose performance issues that would be better fixed (a) by more DRAM, and (b) a PC upgrade.

E.g. 4 hours wasted today, due to a runaway IT process (BigFix.exe)

I wish I could say "Well, if that's how my employer wants me to spend my time...", but

a) it's my career time that is being wasted. It often seems to me that my employer doesn't give a damn about me wasting my time.

b) even if my employer did, the orgchart doesn't bill IT for time wasted by an engineer like me.

I think more and more about lightweight webpads, as opposed to using IT (not really) managed PCs.

Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me

My system is dog slow.

Microsoft RootkitRevealer indicates suspicious stuff. (Hmm... maybe a good reason not to upgrade to a newer CPU with VT support.)

My system got slow all of a sudden, when an IP issue came up.

Part of me wonders if my employer is monitoring me. It is, after all, their legal right. (But if they are, I wish it didn't impact my productivity so much.)

Part of me wonders if other miscellaneous bad guys have taken over my PC.

Part of me wonders how embarassing it will be if my PC is infected. Since I work in security.

But I have never pretended to be an expert about the ecosystem of PC viruses, worms, and other malware. I have never pretended to be an expert in detecting malware on my PC.

I have reasonably good, standard, knowledge and practices for how to keep a PC clean of malware. Those rules begin "no active content". Unfortunately, the very fact that I am using a Windows PC means that much of such standard BKMs for security do not apply. E.g. I used the preview pane in Outlook, back when various preview pane related security holes became evident. E.g. I tried for years to send only plain text email, but eventually gave up because of the number of people I correspond with who complained.

Yes, I will be embarassed if my PC has been taken over. But not unduly so. The very fact that a reasonably conscientious and security aware guy like me has to worry about this highlights WHY I want to make security easier to use.

Standby Exit Speed

Continuing occasional notes about excess slowness coming out of standby:

This morning, at home while "hurrying" to find a phone conference number: 13 minutes from standby to where I could use Outlook to see the phone bridhe number salad.

Today, at work, after lunch: 14 minutes.

All these times are from standby, not hibernate.

Fear and Loathing of ... Powering up my PC to see my Outlook calendar

I positively dread having to check my Outlook calendar on my company PC.

This evening it took 12 minutes to get from standby to the point where I could see my calendar - and that 12 minutes was read off the PC clock, so missed 1-2 minutes of boot time.

---

It was better, briefly, when I was using my AT&T Tilt SmartPhone.

"Better", but only a bit - because I was never able to get Bluetooth synch working, and because IT doesn't allow peons like me to use push - it often was out of date. Everyone talks about synchronizing regularly, but only the truly obsessive do so, unless it requires no user action.

"Was", because my SmartPhone fell circa 26" from desktop to carpeted floor - and broke its display, which now displays a rainbow like collection of colors. ATT provides no support, apart from saying "Well, you could not even have bought a warranty from us when you bought the phone, but sometime this summer we will sell warranties for your next phone."
I have not even begun the process of gettingf the manufacturer, HTC, to homor its warranty.
Pity, because I liked the machine. This may be what I get for buying refurbed instead of new.