Use Their Terminology -- Not Yours by Harwell Thrasher
A few months ago I was a speaker in front of a group of CIOs, discussing some of the issues facing IT organizations. One of the CIOs asked me what he could do to better communicate his problems to his business users, who seemed to have trouble understanding the difficulties associated with... I identified virtual classrooms for training, a “history department” that keeps records of the buildings the firm has designed in the past, a virtual library of white papers and presentations, an engineering library of details for Computer Aided Design (CAD), and even a transit station for “public...

What is a Good Program Spec? by Tim Bryce
"Whenever you see a ratio of 1:4 analysts:programmers you will find systems analysis being performed at the wrong time and by the wrong person." - Bryce's Law INTRODUCTION Since the industry is preoccupied with producing software faster (and not necessarily better), let's stop and consider... For example, under "PRIDE-ISEM, we view a system as a collection of sub-systems (business processes), implemented by procedures (administrative and computer), administrative procedures consist of operational steps (tasks), and computer procedures consist of programs (which can be sub-divided into...

VR - Virtual Reality Salesmen - Avatar eEducation Teachers and Other Technological Advances by Lance Winslow
You might be pleasantly surprised at the rapid advances in technology in the Virtual Reality World. Not only are such things as Life II capturing the imaginations of their users, but software VR engineers are learning how humans wish to operate in virtual worlds. ... This is because one will be using all senses EOX (surround-a-sound), haptics (sense of touch via AI computer exploits), interaction, etc. ... There will also be uses in entertainment and we already see the rising demand for Virtual Sex via 3D VR and Augmented Reality with the latest innovations in haptics.

User Driven Modelling - Research Approach by Peter Hale
The intention for this research is to enable non-programmers to create software from a user interface that allows them to model a particular problem or scenario. This involves a user entering information visually in the form of a tree diagram. The aim is to develop ways of automatically... The basis of the research is the need to provide better ways for people to specify what they require from computer software using techniques that they understand, instead of needing to take the intermediate steps of either learning a computer language(s) or explaining their requirements to a software...

The IT Director's New Tools by Tim Bryce
An updated version of "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen Once upon a time there was an IT Director who was so fond of his computers that he spent all of his company's money on elegant hardware and software. He was not concerned with managing his information resources or... The IT Director found the swindlers hypnotic, especially when they promised to break the information bottleneck through sophisticated techniques and power tools for software engineering. ... He saw programmers generating software and prototyping screens; he saw users developing their programs and...

Server Consolidation - What They do not Want You to Know! by Wes Tafoya
How to Reduce Costs & Increase Productivity Do you have too many servers? Many companies realize that they have too many servers or maybe they need to upgrade to the latest version of SQL Server. They know they are spending too much money on maintenance and equipment. ... Though, the performance benefits of 64-bit can be experienced by many high-end workstations and server applications such high-traffic e-commerce sites, computer-aided engineering, and high-performance scientific and engineering computing, this article discusses specific benefits on Microsoft® SQL Server 2000 (64-bit).

The Dichotomy of Systems Development Management by Tim Bryce
"A Systems Development Manager speaks with a forked tongue." - Bryce's Law INTRODUCTION In order to be a Systems Development Manager, you have to be a lot of things: front man, educator, mentor, sage, politician, etc. Oh yea, something else, you also have to be a hypocrite. ... Some of the best systems development managers I have met over the years were people who didn't have a computer background, but, instead, came from a user area and were not intimidated by the latest technical gobbledygook.

CTRL + ALT + DEL, The $100 Handcranked Computer by Shonika Proctor
U.S. + computers + helping developing nations + big opportunity = No Microsoft. Now how could that equation possibly be? Try Negroponte who is in the news again with his One Laptop Per Child Non-Profit that is going to help decrease the Digital Divide between first and third world nations. ... The developed world is throwing away enough computers every day that could be collected, shipped to the developing world to be stripped down, and reloaded with free software and educational games that could provide the basis for educating children using computer technology just like I did.

The Brutal Reality of IRM by Tim Bryce
"You must first plant the seeds in order to harvest the crop." - Bryce's Law The challenge facing systems development since the MIS movement of the 1960's has been to share and reuse information resources on an enterprise-wide basis. There are substantial benefits for doing so: The... Integration of systems and software, thereby eliminating data redundancy and the production of inconsistent information. ... For example, it is equally concerned with the information resources as maintained in manual files as it is with those as maintained by the computer.

How To Improve Your Chess Game by Ari Darmapala
It is a mistaken belief that playing chess is a god-gifted art and barring reaching an ordinary 'cognizable standard' you cannot improve. The 'cognizable standard' means you are reaching to the standard which makes you only recognize the good and bad points of the game but without any ability to... Have chess software Playing chess against a well-programmed computer also helps in your developing chess-skill. ... It was inevitable in our age of electronics that chess would engage the attention of computer engineers.