[SecurityRatty] tag: xerox

Enterprises face losses from trade secret thefts

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Enterprises are stepping up efforts to counter spying operations that aim to steal their trade secrets, according to a former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who now works for Xerox.

Desk Checking

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:28:52 +0000

Ole Eichhorn has written a great essay on “the lost art of desk checking,” sharing how slow and painful experiences with debugging led to habits of deliberate and careful pre-planning and checking.

My own parallel experiences: Okay, I’m doing to date myself here too. I’m also 49 years old, but didn’t start programming until Senior High. First experiences were with Basic on a Xerox Sigma 7 (thanks, Xerox), and a Wang 2200B. Not much learned there.

I learned more during summer vacations, when I paid real money to the University of Rochester to use their mainframe. I discovered that my first APL programs actually worked. I tried my hand at IBM 360 assembly language programming, but debugging was expensive - each assemble/link/run cost over $2. So I started editing the binary object decks on a keypunch instead, reducing the cost of a link/run to something under 80 cents.

While I followed the technology curve and have all the modern development environment power tools, there’s nothing like designing cleanly and understanding what’s going on. To quote Eichhorn:

To write code I just look at my screen and start typing, and to fix code, I just look at my screen some more and type some more. So now, finally, I‘m done with desk checking, right?

Wrong.

I desk check everything. Thoroughly.

And this, to me, is a major league black art which is lost to all those who didn’t have to hand-punch cards and wait a week for their deck to run. It is a lost art, but an essential art, because all the tools which make entering code and editing code and compiling code and running code faster don’t make your code better.

Why your company may need a mystery shopper

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:21:00 +0000

Do you really know how your employees are treating your customers? You might be surprised to find out what is really happening.

I went to one of the big office supply stores yesterday to look at purchasing a printer for the office. I had been impressed with a recent episode of Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice that featured a well known brand that was attempting to re-invent itself with a line of printers whose ink cost 50% less than that of their competitors.

When I entered the store there was a clerk type of person and another guy who appeared to be a manager. They were both standing with their backs to the customer service counter and had their arms folded across their chest. Without moving, or unfolding his arms, the clerk asked if I needed any help. I said I was looking for a printer that I believed was etiher made by Kodak or Xerox and it used a cheaper ink. They thought for a while and the manager shook his head and said they didn't sell anything by either maker. Arms were never unfolded.

I figured that they would guide me to the printers and show me an alternative in order to try and make a sale, afterall, I was in the market for a printer. Neither one attempted to move. All I could think about as I walked out was how unprofessional they appeared and their total lack of interest in their job.

If I was the owner of the store, or the general manager and my yearly bonus depended on sales, I would really like to know that my sales people were doing everything possible to sell merchandise. What better way to test them than to send in an undercover investigator to document their actions?

They could do well to take a page from Starbucks' book. From the very start, Starbucks made no bones about letting customers know that they were there to SERVE them. The result? Loyal customers willing to stand in long lines at 6am to get their caffinated "fix". Starbucks made coffee fun.

I have been drinking coffee for many years and I never thought of it as fun. Then comes along Starbucks with a strange language and deserts in cups masquerading as coffee. Customers bought in to the experience to such an extent that they even bring their little children in and buy them coffee. "No Tiffany, you can not have a Venti, you are only eight years old. Next year."

How interested in client satisfaction are they? So much so that they closed down their stores from 5:30pm to 8:30pm yesterday evening in order to train their staff enmasse how to make their clients even happier. I did not even know that the country could carry on for three hours sans Starbucks.

It should have been commemorated by inventing a new drink especially for the occassion - the "Happycino".

Links for 2008-02-08 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Toner scheme busted by sharp eyed Xerox employees

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:00:00 +0000

A former Xerox customer service agent on Tuesday pleaded guilty to mail fraud for stealing and selling cartridges stolen from his former employer online.

Systems programmers help people

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:49:52 +0000

Way back in the 1970s, I attended a banquet at RIT, for incoming or prospective students. My assigned seat placed me next to another intended Computer Science major.

I had cut my teeth in high school on some Basic programming (on a Xerox Sigma mainframe and a Wang 2200B), then self-taught myself APL and IBM/360 assembly language (paying for access at UR to an APL terminal, and editing object decks on the keypunch to save money while debugging assembly language programs).

My dinnermate at the banquet had had no such experience. So in choosing her major and concentration, she had to depend on the layman’s descriptions she heard during a college visit. You see, application programmers write programs that actually do things. Meanwhile, system programmers work on the operating system.

What’s an operating system? Well, it doesn’t do anything itself, it’s just there to help people write application programs.

Why did she choose Computer Science with a system programming concentration? “I like to help people.”