Monday, July 29, 2013

Knee-jerk Scripting

Some people become programmers because they like math, some because they like video games, but most because they are lazy. That's right, lazy. Picture this scenario (the names have been changed to protect the guilty).

Monday, July 22, 2013

Hold on....why did they let it do that?

When we work with computer systems, we rarely imagine the people who designed them. If we do, we only think of them in their work context, abstract entities that give us their product and answer our questions about it. We don't like to think about them being dumb, or having a sense of humor. I'm not sure which of those two to chalk this

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

I was told there would be support?

If you work in a technical position and use any sort of vendor product you have likely had to call them for help with their technology.

Here we run into a question: do you have engineers answer the questions more slowly or hire non technical people to answer more quickly.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

No Progress Bars in Hacking

I have played through the following scenario at least three times now.

Me: Hello Information Security, I need admin access to <server> for <amount of time> to complete <activity>. Would you be able to give it to me?

Info Sec: Thanks for the request. We'll get back to you.