I'm "Philip Zack", and as it happens a person with the same name was caught on video removing anthrax from a military base. Anyone who attempts to learn about me by googling my name will find lots of references to this other guy. I have no idea whether any of the jobs I didn't get were lost because an employer tried to do a quick and dirty background check, and didn't bother to ask whether what they found was me or not. Fortunately, the TSA didn't use google when I last flew, or I would have had a lengthy detour on the way to the aircraft.

Don't I wish. That was on my first software job -- after ditching on a BS in Space Tech near Pad 39B, I entered IT via a bank -- and I got it because it was too distasteful for the higher-paid folks to want to deal with. I have to say that it was instructive, though. Doing that was more practice doing analysis than anything at school.

Back in the IT Pleistocene, I had to document and revise a business program that had been converted by software from Autocoder to COBOL. That conversion produced working code with elements named 'variable 1', 'constant 1' and 'subroutine 1'. So my first step was to use the known inputs and outputs to start naming things. The second step was to use the first wave of named things to deduce what the calculations were doing, and therefore be able to name the results of those calculations. Finally, I could put names to the routines. With all that in place, I was able to document the code, and then figure out how to make the requested changes.

My point is that analysis is important, and unless you really understand what that code in front of you is actually doing, you're likely to make assumptions based on what it was supposed to be doing. Black box programming is as reliable as black box voting.

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What's at the intersection of H. P. Lovecraft and politics? http://wp.me/p4ZDr-4R

A predictive model of human behavior? Sure. If I recall, Harvard Law states that under carefully controlled conditions, human beings will do what they damn well please.

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Read "Terrifying Vindication" at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/

If you're going to equip AIs with a sense of purpose, you'd better make sure you also permit them to take action based on that motivation. And once you do, you'll also have to deal with the results of where that introspection might lead, especially if you mistreat the AI, even if it is not intentionally. I explored the possibilities of this path in a short story called "Edifice of Lies". It starts like this:

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Joanna Bjornsen gaped helplessly at the Synthetic holding her at gunpoint in her living room. The cost of fielding Synthetics demanded that they be visually as unique as the flesh and blood people for whom they performed tasks too complex or too hazardous for the usual dumbed-down spawn of the world's corporate-controlled education systems to handle. This one had a vaguely Chinese look, an effect that helped to identify the multinational that had built him, but it was something in his eyes that had fixed her attention.

"You recognize me," he said quietly. His voice was heavily processed, filtered of inflection, and came across as the kind of non-threatening tone that actors often affect in sales vids.

She closed her eyes and swallowed as she realized it wasn't a question. Synthetics operated on a faster time scale than people. In the half-minute she'd been standing here, svi Gilholic had more than enough time to scan the room and fill in any gaps there might have been in his assessment of her from the books and other tell-tales of inner life that she surrounded herself with.

When she opened them again, it was with remorse. Several years earlier, svi Gilholic had engaged the ACLU in a suit seeking equality for Synthetics, using the tenuous legal standing of corporations as legal persons for precedent. The corporate interest group that underwrote the opposition to that case had engaged her to craft the campaign of disinformation adopted by the government and spread by the captive media to slander Synthetics and squash the nascent public support for them.

"Yes. I know who you are."

He motioned for her to sit in a nearby chair. "Then you also know why I've sought you out."

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Motivated to find out what happens? If you are go read the whole thing, and lots of other stories at http://wp.me/p4ZDr-1l

P. Orin Zack

Getting the entire team, or people across many teams, to act together, can be difficult, as the contractors at Microsoft recently discovered after their pay rate was unilaterally cut 10%. After seeing what became of the protests, I fantasized a bit. The story is called "Contractor Uprising", and it starts like this:

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Charlie had never thought that his suggestion would be taken literally. Posting it on the forum at the site where the software giant's now-disgruntled ex-employees and ex-contractors gathered after their across-the-board rate cuts were implemented had been as much a throwaway rant as any of the other two dozen posts he'd left there. But something about this one had struck an unexpectedly responsive chord.
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You can read this, and other stories, here: http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/short-story-contractor-uprising/

P. Orin Zack

Two consecutive identical readings was also considered conclusive proof of valid air pressure data when the venturi on a cruise missile I worked on was opened. The engineers figured that this indicated the turbulence caused by opening the venturi had dissipated, and that they could therefore use the air pressure reading as the basis for an initial altitude calculation. As it turned out, in a universe this size, it was possible to take two readings from within turbulence and get the same value, so the missile calculated that it was five miles up, and did a power dive into the sand.

Good thing it was only a test.

P. Orin Zack
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Google returns 64,000,000 matches when you search for political short stories. The first one is mine. Visit http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/ to find out why.

The cards have changed over the years, but mine specifically states:
"For social security and tax purposes -- not for identification"

What were the steps that led down the slippery slope of using them for identification?

Wow. A covert reference to one of the greatest storytellers of all time. All I can say to that is "Flick Lives!"

On the other hand, the first alien visitors we get could be some lawyers serving us with papers...

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"Yes sir, Mr. Nagle," I told the debriefing officer, "that's what they said when they handed us the papers."

The five of us had just returned from what was supposed to have been the first stage of a long-delayed Mars colonization project. Had everything gone as planned, we were to have stayed for five years, helping groups of volunteer colonists set up their habitats and showing them how to use all of the special equipment. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way.
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The story is called "Site License", and you can read the whole story here:
http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/site-license/

P. Orin Zack

I once worked on a project where they had a Tempest room to shield the VAX-11/780 and so forth from spies. The room had a heavy metal mechanically operated door which was supposed to latch shut when it closed. Unfortunately, the way the thing was designed, the door bounced open before the latch mechanism could trigger. Our manager solved the problem by carving a backstop from a pink eraser and gluing it in place. Worked great. Then we had a demo for the visiting brass, and they demanded that the eraser be removed, because it was not in the spec. The manager objected, explaining that it made the door seal properly, but was overruled.

As to best vender workaround for a software problem? On a project for NOAA, we reported that the InterData FORTRAN compiler took the bytes it needed for long integers at runtime out of whatever followed the space reserved by it for a short integer. Their response: "It works in New Jersey".

P. Orin Zack

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Read my short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/

The original guys as the ghosts? How about this...

It's been all this time since the original Ghostbusters committed what were considered war crimes by the ghosts, and they've finally been extradited and brought to the other side through ectoplasmic extraordinary rendition for 'questioning'. A new group of Ghostbusters hack the old gear and figure out how to break through so they can rescue them. The ghosts fight them to a stand-off, and agree to hold a trial for them. It's up to the new ghostbusters to win the case, which means they have to figure out how to subvert the ghostly legal system.

I'd pay top ticket prices to see that, and it would have lots of current-day 'B-Western' cred with analogs of current issues to work off of.

P. Orin Zack
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Read my short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/

One of the questions that Bank of America uses to verify your identity for helping over the phone is 'Which branch did you open your account at?" But then, for some people, they have a trick answer. For some reason, B of A unilaterally changed that information for my account, and then expect me to give the false answer in order to access my account. They can't explain why it was changed, and are incapable of setting it back to a true answer. I argued this all the way up to the Office of the President, and nobody there would even acknowledge that it was a bad precedent for them to insist that a customer intentionally lie to them.

To make matters worse, their customer service claimed to be able to leave a note instructing agents not to ask that particular question. However, the note doesn't appear on their screen until AFTER they have asked their stupid questions.

P. Orin Zack

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Read my fictional account of corporate incarceration in the Business Short Stories section at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/