Enough Already! 15 Things About programy We're Tired of Hearing

Energy is nebulous until it is directed by methods and processes. This is especially true when the energy is generated by the effort of individuals of a large corporation trying to accomplish an engineering task. Just as the circuits in analog appliances direct the flow of energy, methods and processes direct the flow of energy used to perform work in companies, large and small. The effectiveness of the methods developed for accomplishing tasks and the level of commitment employees have to the systems of an organization are key indicators of a company's performance. No organization should attempt to produce a product or service without reliable systems directing their daily operations. Many organizations do attempt such feats and this is the cause of the quality problems in many companies today. Time constraints and the other demands are not acceptable excuses to sacrifice discipline. ™

Systems, processes, and methods always have a tremendous impact on the success or failure of I.T projects. Project success is not inevitable. Individuals performing software development roles in I.T. departments must be aware of the possibility of one or more steps in some adopted method being inappropriate for a particular application. This is where we find room for improvement and for new approaches to solving problems that have been learnt through experience.

Systems are broken down into manageable parts to give way to an entrepreneurial approach to development. This means that the process is broken down into tasks performed by team members.

Each team member takes responsibility for his or her work and develops their own strategic plan for implementing their work.

Those carrying out the SD roles inside organizations must have a commitment to the process that orchestrates how things are done on a daily basis, but at the same time they must not be so hardened by the process that inefficient procedures that hinder performance go unnoticed. There are occasions when some method that is part of a process is not applicable for some reason. There must be room for improvements regulated by guidelines that do not hinder progress.

If some analysis method is not able to be performed due to some constraint, the absence of this method should be recognized and excluded as soon as the constraint is seen in the initial requirements, for instance time constraints could make something impossible to perform within the time allocated for a task.

When effective processes are in place implementing solutions become trivial compared to what was initially presented to the engineering and I.T. teams. Request presented to the I.T department usually cannot be converted directly into engineering task. Management teams that are sources of information for things pertaining to new products or features don't present requirements from a standpoint that engineers can use for functional design. The purpose of standard processes is to normalize these requirements, and once this happens the solutions are much easier to find.

An established I.T process digests the information presented to the department and distributes it to parts of the organization responsible for the work.

The work performed through this distributed knowledge is the same work that implements the solution to the problem. Those holding the software development roles are the organs of the system that performs the work. They must have a clear understanding of their responsibilities and should be committed to the process.

The process can be measured by how efficiently it solves a problem. Requirements coming into the I.T department creates a chaotic reaction if the processes used by the engineers are not powerful enough to regulate and direct how the information is moved throughout department. If the procedures are weak, we would observe redundant information, overlapping requirements and changes to requirements that results in complex dependencies.

At the core of the data received by the I.T department is the requirement. The normalization of the data sent to the I.T department must be done effectively enough to avoid the weaknesses mentioned above and the result used to create more granular functional designs. In I.T departments these requirement documents contain the information needed to find application types such as C++ modules, classes and abstractions.

Sometimes there are no established I.T processes in place. I have worked for more than one organization that believed that a formal development process was not necessary because their projects were either not large or complex enough, or that the engineers were so talented that they could work without processes that regulated development work.

I was criticized for attempting to implement formal engineering strategies even for my own work. The result of not having a system in place was chaos in every case, bad quality and performance, but still it appeared that in many firms this chaos was accepted as the normal state of the I.T department.

Moreover, in smaller companies, upper management teams (mainly those managers involved in process control and development) lost control and authority of the service and products offered by the company and the engineers were pretty much in control of everything.

Systems that move information around within organizations and how they are designed is a firm indicator of upper management's desire to maintain control of organizational operations.

When knowledge is not distributed properly because of poor process or lack of commitment, upper management will lose control because they will not be able to track performance, understand system design or coordinate activities within the company.

For example, each Design Document contains the knowledge needed by management to set effective milestones and targets that are concrete enough to measure performance. By not requiring that the engineering department work within a system that produces and distributes their development data throughout the company, the company essentially turns all control of engineering over to the developers.

This is not good, because every department should be open to checks and cross checks by outside controllers. The result of such inefficiencies is that upper management cannot make good decisions about the design, implementation or future direction of the systems. In most cases the organizational process is relied on to produce the data that is the locus of the decision making process.

In every case the time you spend dealing with problems due to a bad processes will be more costly than the time taken to develop formal procedures and follow them correctly. To some extent engineers must change who they are in order to accept new ways of doing things.

To end this I would like to say that, systems take on a personality that resembles the implementer. Standard procedures keep the companies personality or character on the systems implementation not the personality of individual developers.

Spyware is a general term used to describe software that performs certain behaviors such as advertising, collecting personal information, or changing the configuration of your computer, generally without appropriately obtaining your consent first.

Spyware is often associated with software that displays advertisements (called adware) or software that tracks personal or sensitive information.

That does not mean all software that provides ads or tracks your online activities is bad. For example, you might sign up for a free music service, but you "pay" for the service by agreeing to receive targeted ads. If you understand the terms and agree to them, you may have decided gdzie kupić program that it is a fair tradeoff. You might also agree to let the company track your online activities to determine which ads to show you.

Other kinds of Spyware make changes to your computer that can be annoying and can cause your computer slow down or crash.

These programs can change your Web browsers home page or search page, or add additional components to your browser you don't need or want. These programs also make it very difficult for you to change your settings back to the way you originally had them.

The key in all cases is whether or not you (or someone who uses your computer) understand what the software will do and have agreed to install the software on your computer.

There are a number of ways Spyware or other unwanted software can get on your computer. A common trick is to covertly install the software during the installation of other software you want such as a music or video file sharing program.

Any software that covertly gathers user information through the user's Internet connection without his or her knowledge, usually for advertising purposes. Spyware applications are typically bundled as a hidden component of freeware or shareware programs that can be downloaded from the Internet; however, it should be noted that the majority of shareware and freeware applications do not come with SpyWare. Once installed, the Spyware monitors user activity on the Internet and transmits that information in the background to someone else. Spyware can also gather information about e-mail addresses and even passwords and credit card numbers

Aside from the questions of ethics and privacy, SpyWare steals from the user by using the computer's memory resources and also by eating bandwidth as it sends information back to the spy ware's home base via the user's Internet connection. Because SpyWare is using memory and system resources, the applications running in the background can lead to system crashes or general system instability.

Because SpyWare exists as independent executable programs, they have the ability to monitor keystrokes, scan files on the hard drive, snoop other applications, such as chat programs or word processors, install other SpyWare programs, read cookies, change the default home page on the Web browser, consistently relaying this information back to the SpyWare author who will either use it for advertising/marketing purposes or sell the information to another party.

Licensing agreements that accompany software downloads sometimes warn the user that a SpyWare program will be installed along with the requested software, but the licensing agreements may not always be read completely because the notice of a SpyWare installation is often couched in obtuse, hard-to-read legal disclaimers.

Examples of SpyWare

These common SpyWare programs illustrate the diversity of behaviors found in these attacks. Note that as with computer viruses, researchers give names to SpyWare programs which may not be used by their creators. Programs may be grouped into "families" based not on shared program code, but on common behaviors, or by "following the money" of apparent financial or business connections. For instance, a number of the SpyWare programs distributed by Claria are collectively known as "Gator". Likewise, programs which are frequently installed together may be described as parts of the same SpyWare package, even if they function separately.

o CoolWebSearch, a group of programs, takes advantage of Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. The package directs traffic to advertisements on Web sites including coolwebsearch.com. It displays pop-up ads, rewrites search engine results, and alters the infected computer's hosts file to direct DNS lookups to these sites.

o Internet Optimizer, also known as DyFuCa, redirects Internet Explorer error pages to advertising. When users follow a broken link or enter an erroneous URL, they see a page of advertisements. However, because password-protected Web sites (HTTP Basic authentication) use the same mechanism as HTTP errors, Internet Optimizer makes it impossible for the user to access password-protected sites.

o Zango (formerly 180 Solutions) transmits detailed information to advertisers about the Web sites which users visit. It also alters HTTP requests for affiliate advertisements linked from a Web site, so that the advertisements make unearned profit for the 180 Solutions Company. It opens pop-up ads that cover over the Web sites of competing companies.

o HuntBar, aka WinTools or Adware,WebSearch was installed by an ActiveX drive-by download at affiliate Web sites, or by advertisements displayed by other SpyWare programs-an example of how SpyWare can install more SpyWare. These programs add toolbars to IE, track aggregate browsing behavior, redirect affiliate references, and display advertisements.

oZlob Trojan or just Zlob, Downloads itself to your computer via ActiveX codec and reports information back to Control Server. Some information can be as your search history, the Websites you visited, and even Key Strokes.