Hardware that allows software to easily damage it is designed wrong. If your OS crashes, it can basically do anything Murphy's Law dictates, within the bounds of what the hardware will try to humor it on. Hardware has to be designed to protect itself against flippy software because it's gonna happen from time to time. I'm not saying that all hardware needs to be 100% software-proof, but it needs to be, within reasonable limits. The sound hardware blowing out your speaker cone because your software tried to turn the volume up to 1e+15 is a hardware/firmware issue that should be covered under warranty.

Police do not get to keep the money they collect. None of that money is allowed to go back to the police department.

In my city, the Chief of Police drove around for several years in a red ferrari, seized from I believe a drug dealer. They had it sent into the shop to retrofit a light bar, radio, etc into. It's difficult to say what exact maneuvers they went through to pull it off, it might have been a not-so-public public auction or something.

Wish I still had a pic of it to share. It was an interesting sight to see. You can see similar things nowadays though looking at some of the hopped up police cars that run on the autobahn, looks about the same. Sort of like this, only it was red and the light bar was a lot wider: (and they didn't bother to write "police" across the side)

http://www.carhoots.com/media/...

typically attracts people that already have a stable full of unicorns, especially if you're foolish enough to put a big bounty on it. Announcing you have "perfect security" just brings the embarrassment to your door that much faster.

And try as you might, even actual "perfect security" on your part will usually fail miserably at someone else's hands. Look at Safai, and how often flash or java (or the user themselves) is used to compromise it. (approaching 100%?)

I think that's the first thing you need to do before deciding how to react.

Did the author decide he'd created an unmanageable hack and push management to pull in a contractor to either clean up the project or simply suffer through trying to maintain it, so he could get back to focusing on his other work?

Did management rush the author to get something "usable" out the door so they could put him on another project, and you're just the mop-up crew?

It's very likely one of those two things. You could respond to either of them by simply "run, forrest, run!", or you could roll up your sleeves and get to work. If you choose to take it on, your approach will depend on why you are there. First off, trashing on the author won't get you anywhere with anyone, don't even consider it. The author may realize he made a mess, management may not. But right now the author is your best ally. Don't burn that bridge by running to management and telling them the reason it's going to be expensive to fix is because the author created a mess.

That being said, document everything, in case it comes back to bite you. You don't need to share that documentation with anyone unless necessary. It's your safety net in case the excrement strikes the oscillating unit and the author tries to blame the problems on you.

Have a private chat with the author and find out which of the two above is the reason you're there. You'll notice that in either case, he's probably very happy to have you taking over, and you should be able to easily leverage that to get his cooperation. That will make your job monumentally easier. Projects by good authors that get into this state are usually the result of inadequate planning, or a late change in requirements. The author probably had a fairly-well fleshed out plan that went south at some point, and that plan is probably not very clear to you right now. Ask about that plan, find out where the code was meant to go, why it didn't end up going there, and mosts importantly what problems did that create and how did he work around them. Those work-arounds are what's causing your grief. Knowing what they are is half the battle (that's why stuff broke when you edited), knowing why they were necessary is the other half. (THAT'S why other unrelated stuff started breaking) Get this information from the author.

At that point, you can take a very well-informed look at the project and decide if it's worth your hassle to take on. Then either take it or leave it. If you decide to bail, you can look back on your documentation and decide how much of that is necessary to justify your decision and get some compensation for your trouble. If you do decide to take on the project, discuss the issue again with the author and get their input on how to explain the maintenance costs. Even if it has to come down to "this is going to be expensive because Bob created a mess", giving him a chance to have some input on how this is addressed will help keep him in your corner down the road. If he's anywhere near reasonable, he'll understand that he's going to have to accept some of the responsibility for what he started.

that might have been just shire of a good pun

What good is using a stolen twitter handle?

it's a bit like a two character slashdot nick... my... precious...

I thought classified wasn't an excuse for lying to or withholding information from congress?

I thought lying to congress was a felony or something? Maybe that's why they're avoiding the L-word?

They have vowed to safeguard funding for the program to keep it on track.

"Don't worry, even if you don't deliver what we asked for, get way behind schedule, and run way over budget, we'll still pay you." That pretty much sums up the issue right there. That's why we have debacles like the F-35. These clowns making the hardware simply can't fail. We're guaranteeing to buy whatever crap they happen to offer us. Military Contracts have been known to be "gravy" for decades now, and that needs to change. The classic "$250 toilet seat" jab is unfortunately a reality, and a persistent one at that.

It's not jut the government that can't run like a business, it's the businesses working with the government that are having the same issue, and it's again a problem from within the government, it's a behavior that their system both allows and seems to encourage. A select few are getting rich on our tax dollars, and we're not getting what we should in exchange, be it materials or government itself. Pisses me off that there's nothing effective I can do about it. (and no, voting hasn't helped so farâ¦)

this is a little different because the case was filed by the defendant basically. They wanted the court to clarify their non-infringement in advance of any litigation that the patent owner may have decided to spring up at a later time.

"Innovent until proven guilty" usually only applies to the normal direction of cases, not ones that operate in reverse like this does.

I pondered this a bit to see if I could identify an easy avenue of abuse for this, but it looks pretty good. If you want to get into a market with what you believe is novel tech, but are fearful that a certain giant already in the market may sue you later down the road, you can get a judgement either for OR against, right now, before you've invested heavily. Really, it's a "win" for the new player either way. Either the court affirms they're not infringing and they can proceed to enter the market, OR the court finds they are infringing, and they can stop investing immediately or choose to license. It's a very good defensive move for the new player.

Reminds me of in wedding vows, "speak now or forever hold your peace". Prevents a big established player from sitting silent until a new startup gets invested and serious momentum and then the giant springs up out of the bushes demanding licensing fees. When they do that, it places the upstart seriously under the gun since they may have invested very heavily. At that point, licensing becomes much more attractive than walking away, as they might have decided to do if they'd have known from the start that they were infringing. So, statistically, this will end up costing patent holders, and helping people hoping to enter the market. (by keeping them out of it if it's going to end up costing them a bundle they hadn't planned on)

perhaps not. This could cut costs. There's always overhead in having more than one model of anything, whether it's a car, a computer, a hair dryer, or software.

In many cases it's cheaper to do the R&D and design once, manufacture, stock, and deliver a single product, and then deal with "feature activation" after the sale. Software does this a lot. Look at all the software available now that you can buy an upgraded license code for to activate new features. It doesn't cost them a nickel more to ship the software with features that you can't use. (until/unless you pay for them)

If the feature isn't all that expensive to manufacture, it may be cheaper to simply install it in a disabled state in ALL vehicles. Add $10 to the manufacturing cost, (realistic for say, heated seats) and then charge $200 to enable the option. As long as you get at least 5% of customers that buy it, (either at purchase, or down the road) you at least break even. Get 25% total sales for it and make a killing. Customers will find it easier to swallow a feature that can be "enabled" for $200 than to either (A) take it to a dealer and get the seats replaced and the vehicle rewired for $800, or (B) just plain not make the purchase at all since it's too expensive after the sale. In the long run, feature activation will likely generate more profit for the manufacturers, while at the same time getting functioning heated seats in more people's hands. It has the potential to be a win-win.

This will inevitably lead to feature-hacking and all the dmca/pirate/hacking drama, but I don't think I need to get into that. People already do that with the ECUs, reprogramming them for racing etc. I even know someone that reprograms and replaces ECUs right now. 50-150 more HP with a simple software upgrade. The future is now, it's just not for sale by the manufacturers just yet. But I'm sure it's coming.