The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: January 14, 2007

Official News - page 13

WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

Is there really a shortage of IT workers in the west?

The newspapers and the politicians would have us believe this is the case, as would many employers who use it as a reason to offshore work. And yet there are plenty of unemployed programmers around, many of them highly skilled, who are unable to get jobs.

Why should this be?

Well I suspect there are two reasons. One is that the phrase IT worker is fundamentally meaningless, because it covers too wide a group of people - potentially the whole working population in fact. Nowadays every one uses some IT, even if it's only a computerised till, in their work.

Even if we apply the term more rigidly there are still problems. There is, for instance, an over abundance of 'web designers', many of them self-styled, while we do have an apparent shortage of skilled programmers, to give but two examples.

But even that doesn't explain why there are good programmers who can't get jobs while employers are screaming about the lack of good programmers. The reason for that it in the nature of programming skills and the failure of employers, particularly HR departments to understand these skills.

The essence of programming skills is that they are transferrable, and the problem is that adverts for jobs are much too specific. A typical advert will ask for things like three year's experience in C++, xyz variant, and experience of working with the wobbly operating system, preferably on wibbly hardware. Any programmer worth his or her (mostly his, I'm afraid) salt who has a solid C++ knowledge could walk that job given a week or so to come up to speed on wibbly, wobbly, C++/xyz programming. But, they won't even make an interview in the current climate. As an old programmer once told me, getting a programming job is not about programming - it's about how well you can lie.

Lest you think I exaggerate, let me tell you a true story. Not all that long ago, I went for an interview as a C++ network programmer with one of the biggest games companies in the world. When I got there they gave me an written test. Half of it was about 'C' language 3-D games programming (remember this is for a network programmer job), the other half was a few trivial questions to 'test' my C++ skills. (Incidentally, a couple of the questions featured some extremely dubious programming constructs.)

I didn't get the job. And do you know why? Because I didn't have any prior experience programming the Xbox 360. At this stage the Xbox 360 had only been available for a few months. Also, as my CV made clear, over the last 20 years I've worked on nine different operating systems, and in over a dozen different languages. Moving my skills to the Xbox 360 would probably only have taken only a few days - a couple of weeks at the most. Why do they think it's so difficult? The truth is that the people who interviewed me seemed to have little idea what skills they needed, and how my skills would fit in. At the time I thought it was just a one off, but friends and colleagues assure me it's all too common.

Before going on to this week's news I'll leave you with a snippet from a job advert I once saw, which to me just sums it all up. "Wanted: C++ programmer to work for world renowned software company. Must have at least five years commercial C++ experience." This appeared less than two years after the first commercial C++ compiler came on the market!

And now we return you to our regular coverage...


Shorts:

Just when you thought it was safe to use your credit card again... someone produces a chip and pin machine that's been hacked to play Tetris. Amusing as the video of the machine playing Tetris is, it raises serious security issues. Manufacturers have been touting the unhackability of these machines ever since they came out; this hack gives lie to the claims of security. Of course, the hackers need access to the machines, but that's not difficult, there are literally millions of them around. And if you were presented with a machine that not only verified your card for a transaction, but secretly recorded everything for later use by criminals, would you know that it had been hacked?

I seriously doubt it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/05/pin_terminal_tetris_hack/

More credit card doom and gloom. The US Federal trade Commission (FTC) has just filed against credit card processor InterBill demanding it pay back nearly US£2.4 million that it debited individuals on behalf of Pharmacycards.com.

Most small firms operating on the Internet are too small to afford setting up a complete credit card processing infrastructure, which is very expensive and involves all sorts of certifications and audits by the credit card companies. This has lead to the growth of intermediaries, called 'credit card processors' who set up this infrastructure and, for a small (or some times not so small) percentage of the transaction cost, handle all the credit card verification and debiting for a whole number of small business.

InterBill is one such processor, and in 2004 it debited millions of dollars from checking accounts without the consent of the owners of those accounts. It was supposed to be debiting the accounts on behalf of an outfit called Pharmacycards. Unfortunately, InterBill failed to notice that Pharmacycards' business address was a mail drop in London, and that all its business was conducted by pre-paid, untraceable cell phones, or free anonymous e-mail and fax accounts!

Mind you, InterBill sounds pretty dubious itself. According to Infoworld last Tuesday, InterBill's web site was 'under construction' and although its primary business location is supposed to be in Las Vegas, it's not in the phone book there! One really has to ask how InterBill were allowed to get into the business of siphoning off other people's money in the first place, and what changes are being made to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=15B356D:215D3E184FC552D
C4BC48A7D556F9907EFF29049075316B4

Google, Apple, and Napster are being sued over their online video businesses. The company doing the suing - Intertainer - was awarded a patent to cover Internet video distribution in 2005. Needless to say Intertainer is not actually in the video distribution business itself - it gave that up years ago. There were plenty of companies distributing video over the Internet when Intertainer filed its patent applications in 2001, so even if you accept the idea of patents to be legit, awarding the patent doesn't really make sense. I await the outcome of this case with interest, not because I really care whether the likes of Google get hit for royalties, but because a decision in Intertainer's favour would once again highlight the ludicrousness of the whole system.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/08/intertainer_sues_google_apple_napster/

And talking of people suing Apple - Cisco are suing over Apple's smart new iPhone name. Cisco have used the name in the past on their products, and they had a trademark on the moniker. There is some dispute about whether the trademark lapsed or not, but they were negotiating with Apple about joint use of the term, when Steve Jobs appeared on stage at Macworld Expo and publicly announced the iPhone product.

The truth is that the negotiations were all doomed from the start. Cisco seem to believe the problem is Steve Jobs arrogance. Of course Steve Jobs is arrogant - everyone knows that. But that wasn't the real problem. The truth is that Cisco were asking for the one thing that Apple would never concede - interoperability. Cisco were asking for Apple's technology to work with Cisco's own phone technology. Definitely not. Apple have built their entire success on not allowing anyone else to interoperate with their proprietary technology, and they are not going to change that now. Cisco should have just asked for large wodges of cash in used dollar bills - there would probably have been no problem about that :)

I'd guess that the lawyers will be smirking all the way to the bank at the thought of this iLitigation...

http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=25316454-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0

Something that's going to be worth watching out for in the next year is a new bill in the US Senate which aims to establish some oversight of government data mining projects. There seem to be nearly two hundred of these projects underway in various branches of the Federal government, most being justified by the 'war on terror' mantra, and there is no oversight of the projects by lawmakers. That's pretty worrying, given that the projects could completely change the nature of society by massively increasing the amount of information that the Federal government holds on US citizens.

The details of the bill, sponsored by Senators Leahy, Feingold and Sununu, are more than a little vague at the moment, but then, so are the details of the activities it is trying to curb. I'm sure more information will come out as politics wakes up again over the next few months. Definitely one to watch.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId
=9007939&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8

Avoid this company like the plague: Azzurri Education.

They were recently certified for an educational procurement process for schools software in the UK. In an article about the process the managing director, Gerard Toplass, said that the certification process was very stringent and boasted, 'We had six programmers working 15 hours a day for six months."

Toplass seemed to think that this level of incompetence was something they should be congratulated on. Why didn't they just hire a second six programmers, so that everyone could work eight hour days and still have some left over? Or was their software so badly written that only six programmers could work on it?

So, if you see job adverts for this company - avoid it at all costs, since they seem to believe that working six months worth of 15 hour days is not only acceptable but a sign of how good they are. If you find software from this firm, think before you buy it - do you really want to use software written by programmers who were dog tired and had been working for over twelve hours when they wrote, say, the routines that will save out the work you've done over the last few hours?

I think not!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/08/becta_ec_complaint/


Geek Toys:

Ever fancied having your own submarine? Then take a look at the Exomos web site for their seven person 'Discovery' vessel. It can operate to depths of 40 metres (that's about 120 feet, for those who still think in Imperial measures), remain submerged for five hours, and has a couple of video cameras for you can see where you are going. And of course it's a yellow submarine! The price? A very reasonable US$914,200. (Would you want to travel in a submarine that had been built on the cheap?)

Not recommended for the claustrophically inclined, though...

http://www.exomos.com/machines.php?id=4


Scanner: Other stories

The billion dollar ringtones war
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/08/steve_gordon_ringtones/

Broadcast royalty bid roils tech leaders
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e3Lx0FypUC0FrK0Eydj0E7

Chasing the holy grail: the algorithmic arms race
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/07/algorithmic_arms_race/

New search engine for aging boomers
http://www.physorg.com/news87662146.html

Philly flushes Oracle out of water bill project
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId
=9007919&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8

UK's MI5 to send terrorism alerts via e-mail
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=15B356F:215D3E184F
C552DC4BC48A7D556F9907EFF29049075316B4


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barbara, Fi and Jason for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
14 January 2007

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html


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