Software Fit for purpose

A recent conversation triggered a memory of some work I did around fifteen/sixteen years ago.

It was the start of the academic year - for induction we were expected to use some diagnostic software. Unsurprisingly it did not work - as it was incompatible with the novell infrastructure in use.

As this test helped apportion support and key skills level. With staffing and timetables affected by this - we were up a well known creek sans paddle.

Enthusiastic and desperate to solve the problem - we manage to get a copy of the diagnostic questions and reverse engineer the answers.

That weekend, before the induction week and much to my wifes dismay. I set about coding a javascript version - understanding that at that time this was as close to interoperable as we could get.

Armed with floppy disk (yes that was all that was needed) - I arrived at work on the Monday did a quick dry run and we were up and running assessing around 900 students across the campus.

A considerable amount was spent on the original software - yet my version was used for a few years. Simple to run, colleagues, tech support and students alike could use it. I could have sat back and treated it as somebody elses problem. Yet knowing the impact on learners and colleagues alike - I preferred to solve the problem.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wikipedia editors never walk alone: Hillsborough changes can be traced ... from @ConversationUK

Image
By Andrew Smith , The Open University According to the Liverpool Echo , UK government computers have been used to make offensive comments on the Wikipedia page detailing the 1989 Hillsbourgh Disaster over a number of years. The newspaper reports that revisions to the page have been made from computers using the government’s secure intranet since 2009. They include insults to Liverpool fans and a comment suggesting that fans were responsible for the football ground disaster, in which 96 people died. This case highlights the continual issue of trolling and cybervandalism on Wikipedia. It also shows how journalism is using good, technical forensic tools at the disposal of every cybercitizen. Cybercitizens can be good or bad So many of us use Wikipedia on a daily basis that it is one of the most visited websites in the world. Yet not that many of us really understand how it works. Wikipedia is based on the principle that the community can create, edit and refine pages covering
Read more

If airlines offer in-flight Wi-Fi, they should invest in an extra black box for security ...

Image
Yijun Yu , The Open University and Andrew Smith , The Open University In-flight Wi-Fi is one of the most sought-after facilities for air travellers these days, now that laptops and smartphones are so common and so much of our working and personal life revolves around online services. But a US Government Accountability Office report has suggested that many in-flight wireless networks could expose the plane to being hacked or remotely controlled . In fact it’s of such a concern to US authorities that when a well-known computer security expert made an admittedly ill-thought-out joke about doing so on Twitter, he was promptly arrested, his computers confiscated, and subsequently banned from the airline . And all he was suggesting was to make the oxygen masks drop down. So it would appear that the stuff of Hollywood may jump from fiction to fact: Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore starred in the 2014 film Non-Stop , where a passenger hacking the aircraft’s internal wirel
Read more

Highlights and lowlights of 2014, a golden year for cybercrime from @ConversationUK

Image
Looking back, 2014 was not a good year for keeping things safe under digital lock and key. If a score was being kept, it might seem that the cybercriminals are in the lead, despite the valiant efforts – and own goals – from the cybersecurity profession worldwide. Cast your mind back to March , everyone was panicking about the HeartBleed bug. Based on an error in code upon which the majority of the world’s secure servers relied, experts had plenty of time to fix the issue. Sadly there was an array of conflicting information about changing passwords, leading to widespread confusion. While most IT administrators made sure this was managed in a professional manner, it created a stir that seemed to set the tone for the year. In May , online auction giant Ebay admitted to having been compromised. The site said its systems, with personal details of tens of millions of users, may have had been vulnerable for months. Everyone was advised, indeed forced, to change their password. In the
Read more