Top 10 List of Bad Movie Computer Moments

I watched Eagle Eye over the weekend, and it was fun but just terrible in its use of the old boogie man plot device of the computer taking over the world. In appreciation, here are some of my all time favourite bad computer movie moments.

1. Eagle Eye (2008): an all powerfull, all seeing surveillance computer tries to take out the entire US government but can be defeated by poking it in the eye with an metal rod.

2. The Net (1995): Sandra Bullock plays a notorious hacker who throughout the entire movie mispronounces the word MODEM (as if it rhymes with bottom) and uses a Macintosh and a drag and drop interface to hack computers! If only it were that simple.

3. Jurassic Park (1993): the computer that controls the park is apparently UNIX (identified by the super genius girl who apparently learned it in grade school). She then proceeds to operate it using this 3D flying interface!

Jurassic Park - Unix System Scene
by unixguru

4. Independence Day (1996): Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith design a computer virus that can infect an ALIEN COMPUTER via TCP/IP using a MacBook! Apparently alien invaders use the Internet but without the McAfee subscription.

5. WarGames (1983): Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy hack into the government using a 300 baud modem (with accoustic coupler for visual impact). The super computer is a room full of tape drives and flashing lights that is defeated by forcing it to play chess until it figures out the concept of a stalemate. "The only way to win is not to play".

6. Mission Impossible (1996): Standard computer animations like file uploads, logins, etc. are really boring to look at. In Mission Impossible, a standard macbook was used but the OS was suped up with some fancy animations. Why have a progress bar when you can have the screen whiz around and scream at you (even though its supposed to be top secret)?

7. You've Got Mail (1998): Email clients are also very boring. Who wants to watch someone reading email. This movie is a great example of how special effects people take great liberty to make computer applications much more interesting with animations, sound, etc.

8. Star Wars (1977): The computers in Star Wars are not bad actually, although the amount of blinking lights in the room that the Droids hang out in for most of the movie are a bit much. The demo on how to destroy the the death star is quite primitive (they look a bit like the original asteroids video game) but at least looks somewhat plausible.

9. Golden Eye (1995): Thanks to some product placement, all the computers are running OS 2/Warp. If the Russians were running Windows, maybe they could have had a chance against 007.

10. Swordfish (2001): Hugh Jackman is a hacker who puts together viruses using some sort of 3D visualization software. The one thing he does get right is the repeated swearing at his computer while he works.

Best Practices for Implementing a Learning Management System

I have just co-written a white paper that is now available through Brandon Hall.

Here is the description of the paper - click the link if you would like to purchase it or stay tuned to my blog for further ideas and writings.

Description

Imagine you've been given the job of researching and finding a suitable learning management system (LMS) for your company. Where do you start?

Everyone knows that selecting the wrong LMS can have terrible financial repercussions and hurt the quality of your learning initiatives. What is often forgotten, though, is that selecting the RIGHT learning management system but implementing it poorly can be equally painful.

This report, written by Gary Woodill, Ed.D., director of Research and Analysis at Brandon Hall Research; David Fell, vice president of Business Development at Operitel Corporation; and Christopher Woodill, Vice President, Solutions and Strategy at Navantis Corporation, is the first in a four-part series on the process of implementing an enterprise LMS.

A typical LMS can take months, if not a year or more, to implement and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Getting it right is critical; getting it wrong can be a problem for both you and your business. Essentially, the process involves four stages:

Stage 1: Planning and Evaluating Business Needs for an Enterprise LMS
Stage 2: Purchasing an Enterprise LMS
Stage 3: Implementing the Selected LMS
Stage 4: Maintaining, Supporting, Operating, and Governing an LMS

This report focuses on Stage 1 and addresses the following:

• Developing a business case for investing in a learning management system
• Considering alternatives to an LMS
• Articulating a vision and scope for the entire project, resulting in developing a “project charter”
• Developing an implementation strategy and project management plan that includes presenting the business case, assessing the LMS's impact on the organization, and changing management strategy
• Developing the communications and marketing plan for the project
  Identifying all stakeholders for an enterprise LMS
• Conducting a requirements gathering exercise, including developing “use cases” for each business unit and group of stakeholders
  

If you have thoroughly carried out the above suggestions, then you are ready to prepare and send out an RFP, investigate products and vendors, and move toward purchasing a learning management system. It’s also important to note that getting this first stage right provides a firm foundation for success in all the later stages.

Some thoughts on the Zachman Framework

I have been doing some reading on the Zachman Framework in the context of some work we are doing with the government. The ZF is popular in government circles as an enterprise architecture framework and they routinely ask for experience using it within their RFPs, especially for roles such as technical architect or business analyst. Having had lots of work in the enterprise architecture space but none specifically using the Zachman Framework, I wanted to see for myself what it was about and understand how it could support my own needs in presenting strategic plans to a client.

Having now read a few books and posts on the subject, here is my own reaction to it:

• Written in 1987, it definately has that architectural ivory tower approach that assumes that if we could only document every explicit assumption in our enterprise we would have this perfectly functioning enterprises. Having worked in lots of different enterprises, I don't know any that actually lived up to this ideal and they functioned quite well despite not having every prescribed artifact nailed down.


• I love the simplicity of the model: 6 roles and 6 interogatives. It's the simplicity that makes it "universal" - it's like saying any problem can be solved by combining asking questions and a planning/building life cycle. While I would say this is true, its also quite vague and doesn't provide a lot of specific techniques or approaches to enterprise architecture other than a method of organization.


• I like the approach in that its business centric and quite non-technical. I could quite easily explain the framework to a project manager, a business analyst and an industry stakeholder. You do not need an engineering degree to get the ideas here and the expertise is delegated to filling in the particular models.


• I really like the integrated approach that forces architects to really think about more than just code, servers, and technology. The framework puts a heavy emphasis on logistics, business cases, scheduling, business rules, and people. The "HOW" part of the framework is only 1/6 of the picture which I think is about right.


• The concept of a normalized architecture, e.g. a unique spot for a piece of information is an interesting one but hard to accomplish in practical terms. In my experience, its definitely a good ideal - I have had too many cases where the requirements document, the data model and the network diagram are changed independently and they no longer match.


• One challenge with the organization of models in ZF is that they are very model focused instead of feature focused. In many cases, you want to organize your requirements, code, etc. by feature so that you can take it out - this seems inherently different to do in ZF because your feature is now spread out in 36 different buckets of artifacts. Trying to take a feature out or change it means finding it in your master universal schedule, your master universal network diagram, your master use cases, etc. (Ideally, you could automate the entire repository of requirements so you could slice and dice in multiple dimensions so that you could search your whole picture by "sliver")


• There is a certain religious zeal about this framework from some authors - the fundamentalist belief that if you can complete all the spots on the grid that you now have this nirvana requirements repository and we can all go home until the next change request. In real life of course, the nirvana never happens and you have to cut corners like crazy to get anything out the door. While this is a nice framework, in practice many medium to large organizations could not fill in every bucket down to every explicit assumption and maintain the repository with any execution speed. This is probably why this framework is popular amongst governments, large scale industries (aerospace for example) where you have years to gain value out of your architecture investment but not used by smaller or faster moving organizations.


• There are some ways you can approach the ZF with an agile approach. Scott Ambler has a good article on this here.

In general, for a framework that evolved in the mid 80's, I was pleasantly suprised at how relevant it is in today's context. I could conceivably apply the same principles in some of the enterprise planning work I do today in very different technology contexts than what were around in 1987, e.g. portals, internet, rich client applications, data warehouses, etc. I could also see using it as a basis to analyze and document a very specific domain model instead of an entire enterprise.

How Can You Vote for a VP Who Uses Yahoo Mail?!

Today, it was discovered that Sarah Palin's Yahoo account was hacked. Various emails were discovered including government business.

There has been speculation in the media that she was using Yahoo to conduct business so that she could avoid being under government freedom of information requests.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080918/tc_nf/61961
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008

So my basic question is this: regardless of whether you want to vote for this woman because of her stance on abortion, moose hunting habits, etc. why would you EVER vote for some so security illiterate that she would use a yahoo mail account with a weak password for government business? This is privacy 101 here - do we really want to trust this woman with the keys to nuclear codes, mission briefings, etc.?

Someone should tell her it's probably not a good idea to store CIA documents on USB keys or leave unshredded documents in her garbage can while they're educating her on basic privacy management.

Hug A Developer

I just love this video...



Enjoy!

Good Example of How Tricky Security Is - Even for Banks

I signed up for online visa account access today at CIBC, and found a basic security flaw in their registration process.

Here is their form:


The flaw is the last question - the previous balance. The flaw is a simple one - if you call up VISA on the phone and give them the information above, the phone system provides your previous month's balance!

It just goes to show that even a security conscious bank can make easy mistakes when it comes to security and the moral of the story is a simple lesson: make sure you analyze all your access channels for possible leakage of authenticating information before you demand it online.

Live Earth vs. Google Earth - Which One Is Better?

I decided to run a comparison between Google Earth and Live Earth. Here are some of my findings.

Google Earth runs only as a separate executable. Live Earth runs as an ActiveX control within the live maps interface. Microsoft's approach is more integrated but it also means that you cannot run the application full-screen.

Google Earth seems to find locations better especially when they are vague. For example, I typed in "yonge and dundas toronto ontario" and Google Earth found the intersection. Live Earth couldnt find it and simply suggested businesses which weren't even at that location.

Google Earth's ability to handle misspelled words is much better as well. For example, I typed in "young street toronto ontario" and it was still able to find Yonge Street as an exact match. Microsoft Live Earth could not find it.

Microsoft Live Earth splits the search box between businesses and locations. The search assumes that you will split the business name and location into the two boxes. For example, I typed in "eaton centre toronto ontario" into the business box and it asked me for a location. In Google Earth, typing in the same search query finds me the exact match.

The search box in Google Earth is on the left hand side. In Microsoft Live Earth the search box is at the top of the screen. This makes a big difference if you are using a wide screen monitor. Microsoft's map ends up being very wide. Google Earth's map ends up being nice and square.

Microsoft's satellite pictures seem to be more up to date and detailed. Looking at downtown Toronto, the Google Earth satellite picture shows certain buildings under construction which I know are now complete while the Microsoft picture shows them finished. See also the picture of Monarch Park below and you'll notice a significant difference in picture quality and resolution.

Microsoft Live Earth

Google Earth

Both Microsoft Live Earth and Google Earth have 3D modeled buildings. However, Microsoft Live Earth's are vastly superior both in number and in quality. Google Earth shows about 5-10 buildings in Toronto where Microsoft shows hundreds.

Google Earth: Not Much of a City Scape

Live Earth: Now That's a Downtown!

Both applications take up a large amount of RAM to run. Looking at Task Manager, Google Earth was taking up to 800 megabytes of RAM and Internet Explorer was taking up to 600 megabytes. I assume this must be for caching of data.

For smaller towns, both applications seem to be equally poor. For example, searching for Port Hope, Ontario yields a poor grainy image in both cases likely because the high resolution satellite imagery is simply not available.

Google Earth

Google Earth is much richer in terms of content overlays and more flexible in being able to turn them on and off. My personal favourite is the Panaromio overlay which geo-maps personal photographs to locations from hundreds of thousands of users around the world.

Microsoft Live Earth has a feature called "Birds Eye" which does a map of photographs to the map taken from different angles. This feature is not available at all in Google Earth.

Microsoft Live Earth has very nice traffic reporting features. I was able to check the 401 highway in Toronto, see the busiest spots to avoid and also it provides construction updates as well. Google Earth does not have this feature at all.

Both applications provide directions. However, Google Earth has a feature that allows you to "play" the route. The camera will follow the route through the directions showing you in 3D how to drive to your destination.