John Swanagon's Blog » Technology

Reviewed: Precision M6500

aeroschwany@hotmail.com (John Swanagon) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:44:24 +0000

On Wednesday, my new baby arrived; the Dell Precision M6500. After just two days with it, I can only describe it as "superb". This new system replaces my three year old unit, the Dell Precision M6300. Dell's Precision Mobile Workstations are designed for professionals who need the power of a high-end workstation in a mobile package. Since its inception, Precision Mobile Workstations have enabled architects, designers, artists, and developers to accomplish, on-the-go, what they used to have to do in a single place. As a Software Architect, it gives me the ability to be anywhere, anytime. Continue Reading »

Trim the Fat

aeroschwany@hotmail.com (John Swanagon) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 01:23:55 +0000

I absolutely love what I do. In my opinion, there is nothing better than designing, creating, and building world-class software. (Actually, creating anything is pure joy for me.) I especially love how the software I work on or design plug-ins for, is used and relied upon by millions of people all over the world. There is a reason for that. (And for the record, I don't do it alone.) Communications software can't be subject to jitter, delay, malfunctions, or "I have to reboot now" events. No, it has to be very nearly 100% reliable. As a result, I have become accustomed to building software that is small, nimble, portable, and extremely fault tolerant. To accomplish those objectives means the fewest lines of code to accomplish the mission and extreme efficiency in those lines of code. Hey, not only does it make the software easier to test, but it makes it more reliable, easier to change, and faster for a computer to run it. Continue Reading »

Environmental Drift

aeroschwany@hotmail.com (John Swanagon) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:38:06 +0000

So the shiny new version of your service-based software just passed QA and you're ready to "go live". It is an exciting time as those countless market studies, requirements meetings, user stories, design discussions, development hours, and bug-fix cycles are about to pay off. Oh yeah, customers can't wait to get their hands on the new features and the executive team can't wait to see a return on their investment. At this point, all you need to do is copy and modify a few binaries, configuration files, and tables right? Continue Reading »

Microsoft Losing Ground

aeroschwany@hotmail.com (John Swanagon) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:07:19 +0000

Microsoft was founded in 1975, but it wasn't until 1994, with the launch of Windows 95, that Microsoft became the great giant. Almost overnight, Microsoft's Windows became a worldwide sensation. I still remember attending the launch party at Microsoft and getting my very own copy of Windows 95. The excitement in the air was electric. (Hey, not only did it beat standing in line for hours upon end, I got it before everyone else.) After Windows 95, Microsoft got on a roll. They released hit after hit such as Office, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Exchange, and subsequent releases of Windows. Microsoft was unstoppable. Competitors were either bought or put out of business, or they became partners. Heck, even a monopoly charge by the Justice Department would not stop Microsoft. Their domination of the desktop market was impenetrable. Yet, today, Microsoft is slowly crumbling; all the excitement and innovation is gone, replaced by nothing more than just another "giant" business. My favorite, most admired company is falling apart. What happened? Continue Reading »

Why do we still code like this?

aeroschwany@hotmail.com (John Swanagon) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:05:06 +0000

When the first human being decided to write something down, he -- or indeed she -- created the first record. As we recorded more, we began to understand that our records have a degree of privacy to them. In other words, we don't want to share everything we write down. Before the advent of electronic databases, we stored our records in filing cabinets and secured them with locks. Although crude, the locks provided a degree of privacy for our records. When electronic databases arrived, the filing cabinets were jettisoned and instead of "locking" our records up, we secured them with digital safeguards such as "permissions". Despite all the safeguards available to software engineers today, software continues to be developed with a classic vulnerability that leads to data corruption, privilege elevation, unintended disclosure of records, and more. Given how digital our lives have become, the notion of hackable software is scary. Where are the safeguards protecting our medical records, credit reports, bank records, and more? And, why don't programming languages enforce these safeguards rather than allowing them to be circumvented? Continue Reading »

Guarding Against E-mail Scams

aeroschwany@hotmail.com (John Swanagon) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:30:21 +0000

E-mail is one of, if not the, most unsecured technologies in use on the Internet today. Notwithstanding the employment of a Public Key Infrastructure or PKI, anyone can steal, copy, or manipulate e-mail while in transit. To make matters worse, e-mail can easily be spoofed to hide a sender's true identity as well as the true origination point. In total, there is more privacy and security in sending a letter via the U.S. Postal Service than sending an e-mail over the Internet. A sad statement, given that the technology needed to guarantee privacy, sender identification, and origination point is readily available. Continue Reading »

Easy Money: Weak Security Makes It Too Easy

aeroschwany@hotmail.com (John Swanagon) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:59:01 +0000

In today's advanced technological age, there is no legitimate excuse as to why we still have credit and bank card victims everyday in the United States. Anyone who holds a debit or credit card should be worried and the reason for the lack of security should be frightening. In today's day and age, we have the capability of securely "tunneling" data between endpoints, or in other words, ensuring data integrity and privacy between Point A (the consumer) and Point D (the bank). This tunneling can ensure that no one between Point B and Point D can steal or alter the data being exchanged. (Think of Point B as the Merchant and Point C as the Credit Card Processor.) However, today's banking network is completely unsecure, essentially allowing what is known as "Man in the Middle" attacks. To pull this off, all one needs is an open system, exactly what we have today. When a consumer swipes their card at the grocery store, the data is shared with the merchant, which is then handed off to a credit card processor and subsequently handed off to the consumer's bank and back. Although the data is encrypted along the pipeline, the data is unencrypted at the merchant. That means that merchant knows your account information and can save it to a database. That is exactly what thieves did at the Hannaford Bros. grocery store in Vermont. Once thieves have the account numbers, they can then exploit it, leading to billions in losses for banks as well as months of recovery time for the victims. Continue Reading »