Systems & Software Talk 

New England Patriots 2008 Season Ends

New England Sports

2008-2009 Season

(so far)

A rough season for the Patriots.  Imagine:

• Losing your starting quarterback - last year's NFL MVP - seven minutes into the season
• Losing your starting running back
• Losing your #2 and #3 running backs for significant portions of the season
• Losing your best linebacker
• Losing your starting safety and defensive leader
• Losing your starting insider linebacker
• Losing several key backups and special team players
• Sending 14 players to Injured reserve
• Being forced to use 43 different starters

and still going 11-5?

Yet, after that surprising effort, the Patriots are the first team in over 30 years to win 11 games and not make the playoffs.  Oh well. 

Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe says of the Pats: "They're the Best Team Ever To Miss The Playoffs".

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2008/12/29/not_enough____but_they_gave_plenty/

A terrific season by Matt Cassell, and a good season by the team.  Unfortunately, not quite good enough, given the high standards in New England.  Next year...

Wingtips of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq

After all these years - conclusive evidence of WMDs in Iraq:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/12/14/bush_notebook_surprises_galore_on_hush_hush_trip/

What is it you are testing?

Months ago we had a discussion between the Dev and QA teams as to what was going on with our project and make some plans going forward, strangely even though we talk and documentation is given for review a comment came up in the discussion that said "I don't know what QA is testing?"

To me and the Manager it was a WTH (what the hell??) moment.  We had never heard this before, and even when we discuss bugs and defect fixes with the Developers this never came up, neither did this when we would go over reproducing bugs.  To me, I was testing and they were seeing results, but maybe someone was just not seeing things the same way I was.  We got over that, went into a project and did a lot of work over the past few months, adding some tests, discussing a few and verifying many fixes.  Yet, from those earlier discussions a document was made that still had that comment in it, so now that we are between versions I am going back to this and starting to think out, what is it that someone was missing and we never picked up on.

One of the projects for the next release is to update our test harness, adding some wrappers to it so that the scripts are more integrated and a database to store results, yes I know we still record some results in Excel and if not for that - not much historical tracking.  Well, that and the output documents I have from my tests, that I save for each release and archive away in case we ever need to go through old data.  I am also taking time to go to the Developers and show them what we are doing, get some input and putting the question to them "what should we be testing?".

Getting people involved is a good way to eliminate any confusion, since a follow-up to that is going to be "what would you like to test with this?" and offer our Test Harness to those who really do not have one.  Some parts of our product don't have many Unit Tests and its a shame, or they have them and they are kept secret, that's a future task  I'm not going to be giving them a fish, I intend to give them a rod, boat, ocean of fish and pilot and let them see what they can catch.

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Google Android

txtN cn B fun - bt danjrus!

Who knew that simply texting the word "reboot" would actually cause a phone to reboot?

Apparently, words texted right after a reboot were interpreted and executed as commands with root priveleges by Android, rather than simply being sent. 

A bit of a security flaw, no?

"I was in the middle of a text conversation with my girl when she asked why I hadn't responded. I had just rebooted my phone and the first thing I typed was a response to her text which simply stated "Reboot" - which, to my surprise, rebooted my phone."

 

"Google hurried to repair the problem, which causes the phone to interpret any text entered just after the phone was turned on as a command."

 

"Linux and Unix users are advised to use their systems with "root" privileges reserved only for administrators, but Android was actually giving anybody that privilege."

 

"The Android bug has to rate as one of the great software bloopers of all time."

 

"We tried really hard to secure Android. This is definitely a big bug."

Perhaps they should have tested more?

Here are a few helpful suggestions for words to use while testing the fix for this particular bug:

• Restart
• Shut Down
• Ctrl Alt Del
• $1,000,000
• Travel Back In Time 
• Melt
• ET Phone Home
• Nuclear Winter
• Delete Traces Of All The Calls I Just Made To Those 900 Numbers
• iPhone
• Sarah Palin President (no wait, this one simply isn't worth the risk)

See also:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10093573-83.html?tag=rtcol;relnews
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/18382/texting-bug-for-android
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7722367.stm

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2714843045.html

Know of any other interesting public bugs that might have been prevented?
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New England Revolution - 2008 Season Ends

New England Sports

2008-2009 Season

(so far)

After three straight seasons of reaching the MLS Cup, and six straight seasons of reaching the Eastern Conference finals, the New England Revolution bowed out this year in the first playoff series.

Lots of injuries this year eventually become too much to overcome.

Oh well - wait until next year.