Does anyone know whether or not large corporations had a security check done on programmers hired to fix their code. It is my belief that aside from mistakes, there must be some deceitful programmers out there hoping to cause some havok. Any thoughts?

-- Ron Jeremy (undercover@home.com), November 17, 1999

Answers

Call it "Revenge of the Nerds" eh?

-- Dr. Moreau (Where @TheWildThings.Are), November 17, 1999.

Most do not do security checks.

It is pretty rare for programmers to WANT to do damage. Much more likely to do damage by accident.

OTOH if programmers do not feel secure, they have been known to plant problems in code which they, and they alone, have to be kept around to fix.

I knew one who didn't do a damn thing except babysit the payroll system, which worked like a clock except it crashed once a month while printing the paychecks. She would be called in to fix it, restart the job, and go home. The QA folks were checking jobstreams one day and found she had inserted JCL to blow up the job in production. She'd pull out the bad JCL and restart and everything would be fine.

SO - There are pointy haired Dilbert bosses in the world who are telling the programmers that they are going to be let go as soon as they fix the Y2K bug. (This is really happening.) These idiots might be creating themselves a problem.

-- ng (cantprovideemail@none.com), November 17, 1999.

On this forum there was posted some weeks ago an article from the news media in which the federal government revealed that they are worried about some programmers from other countries (which will remain nameless here) who may have implanted "trapdoors" or other harmful "stuff" in the programs they were hired to remediate.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), November 17, 1999.

I've been bonded, I've been lie-detected, I've been drug-tested, I've been psychologically-interviewed, I've been everything except body-cavity-searched. But there's nothing that can detect whatever synapses might be clicking away between one's ears. Just ask the people at Egypt Air.

In yon times of yore, the CW amongst programmers was that, if you were going to pull anything strange -- intentionally -- you might as well make it good 'n' profitable since you'd never get another job in DP/MIS/Whatever-It's-Called-These-Days. Now? Who knows.....

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), November 17, 1999.

I knew this Oklahoman programmer who was going to try to go in and foul up a company's computer systems. He's was SO incompetent that he fixed all thier problems.

Then there was the Okie terrorist who was assigned the job of blowing up a bus. Went out to to the job and burned his lips terribly on the tail pipe.

-Greybear, I'll quit now.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), November 17, 1999.

thanks for sharing, Greybear

(reminder to self.......self, skip over the grey bruin's posts from now on. they're baaaaaaaaaaad)

-- de (delewis@XOUTinetone.net), November 17, 1999.

Yeah, like us developers have enough personality for that. :)

Too much "them and us" paranoia, not enough focus on our proven track record of being overconfident, slipshod and lazy. Just like you pitiful humans, actually. ;)

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), November 18, 1999.

Ron Jeremy!!!Wow!!Love your movies,you've got a great penis.

-- zoobie (zoobie@yahoo.com), November 18, 1999.

LOL! I thought I was the only one who recognized the name.

-- (duh@duh.duh), November 18, 1999.