Help desk pilot fish gets a trouble ticket: A support tech is having a problem with asset management software that isn't reporting properly on...

Continue Reading Shark Tank: Spoilsport!

Are we ready for a civilization that's based on pervasive computing and increasingly complex "systems of systems," all dependent up...

Continue Reading Modern society relies on ‘dangerously fragile’ software

Yes, No, No ... Pilot fish gets an opportunity for a week of training, room and board paid for by the training company. All he needs is money...

Continue Reading Shark Tank: It’s all about communication

Who Needs It? User buys his own laptop and brings it to this IT pilot fish to load VPN software on it. But the machine comes with Windows Vist...

Continue Reading Shark Tank: Questions, Questions, Questions

What happened to American engineering over the last 20 years?  It used to be such a great profession.  It used to be a secure profession wh...

Continue Reading What is wrong with American engineering and how to fix it

This construction company does work at job sites all over the country, so the engineers have to be supported remotely. "It seems when pe...

Continue Reading Shark Tank: Out of someone’s mind, anyhow

Grady Booch, an IBM fellow and inventor of UML, is using his position to preach the gospel of moral responsibility to software developers. Du...

Continue Reading Developers, it’s all your fault

That's the new, CxO-level mantra at Forrester Research Inc. What's it mean? Forrester gurus say that "design for people, build for change" means this: Designing for peo...

Continue Reading Memo to CIOs: Design for people, build for change

Intermittent noise from this PC's power supply gets a little louder every day, says the pilot fish in the cubicle next door. "Our resident ha...

Continue Reading Shark Tank: Let’s take this one step at a time

User submits a complaint to the help desk that his laptop isn't sending and receiving e-mails properly, and it lands on this pilot fish's de...

Continue Reading Shark Tank: Time trials