John McCormick

So, here you have it. The 2007 list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT. The leaders on the list represent the great cross-section of information technology. There are new-media pioneers, software and hardware engineers, corporate executives, chief information officers, policy makers, a venture capitalist—even a lawyer. How did we come up with […]

Ira Winkler, one of the nations leading computer security experts, is president of Internet Security Advisors Group, a security consultancy that specializes in vulnerability assessments and penetration testing services. He also sits on the board of advisers at Securify, a computer monitoring and security company, and is the author of a number of books, including […]

For at least a decade and a half, the top concern of chief information officers has been making sure that the information systems they put in place served and met their companys business objectives. One would think that after wrestling with this issue for such a long period of time, CIOs would have figured this […]

Early on Saturday, Sept. 12, 1998, my wife, Kim, in just the 24th week of her pregnancy, gave birth to our daughter, Katelyn Mary. Katie weighed in at just 1 pound 4 ounces. She didnt cry when she was born. Babies who arrive that early dont have the lung capacity to make sounds. Immediately upon […]

Spanning almost two decades, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) pumped almost half a billion dollars into a pair of nearly still-born efforts: one to improve the processing of disability and pension claims filed by former military personnel, and another to share medical records electronically with the U.S. Department of Defense, which has servers […]

Victor Garcia considers himself lucky to be alive. Three years ago, a combination of cancer and miscalculation almost killed him.The former distribution manager for fragrance maker Chanel now can feel the hot Panamanian morning sun stream through his living-room window. He can smell lunch cooking in the kitchen. He can sit in an armchair surrounded […]

It’s time for a change or two. Or six. Fundamental problems with the way organizations develop software go, if not ignored, largely unaddressed for far too long. Instead of refusing to employ flawed software, buyers accept bugs, vulnerabilities, corrupt files, system crashes and unpredictable behavior as a cost of business. Weak programming practices mean not […]

Date Deaths Detail 2003 3 Software failure contributes to power outage across the Northeastern U.S. and Canada. 2001 5 Panamanian cancer patients die following overdoses of radiation, amounts of which were determined by faulty use of software. 2000 4 Crash of a Marine Corps Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft partially blamed on “software anomaly.” 1997 225 Radar […]

There can be as many as 20 to 30 bugs per 1,000 lines of software code.—Sustainable Computing ConsortiumThere are no methods of removing software defects or errors that are 100% effective.—“Software Quality: Analysis and Guidelines for Success,” by Capers Jones32% of organizations say that they release software with too many defects.—Cutter Consortium38% of organizations believe […]