Forum for Advancing Software engineering Education (FASE) Volume 12 Number 01 (Issue 144) - January 15, 2002 Note: If you have problems with the format of this document, try ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Table of Contents Articles New UCITA Revisions -- First Reactions by Cem Kaner Working Group on SE Education and Training - Fall Meeting Report compiled by Jorge L. Diaz-Herrera News Items Correction Concerning Last Month's Item on UCITA Complete Transcript of 10th Anniversary Roundtable Now Available IEEE Approves Certified Software Development Professional Program Virtual Teams in Computing Education Survey Results Available Position Openings Air Force Institute of Technology Contact and General Information about FASE ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Articles ###################################################################### New UCITA Revisions -- First Reactions Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D. Florida Institute of Technology kaner@kaner.com A few weeks ago, Professor Phil Koopman, Sharon Roberts, Professor Don Gotterbarn and I went to the 17th meeting of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act drafting committee (I've attended 16 of these meetings). The drafting committee is under intense pressure to work a political compromise, because, after passing in Virginia and Maryland, UCITA has been rejected in every state that has considered it and three states have passed "bomb shelter" laws designed to keep UCITA-governed contract rules out of their states. Additionally, the National Association of Attorneys General recently published a letter (signed by 33 Attorneys General) saying that UCITA is so fundamentally flawed that it should be abandoned rather than amended. Additionally, the UCITA process is under the scrutiny of a Task Force appointed by the American Bar Association. The ABA has not yet committed itself for or against UCITA. Some of its Sections (comparable to SIGs) appear to favor UCITA; others appear to oppose it. One of the Sections actively opposes UCITA and triggered the study by the ABA. It is likely that UCITA will have no further legislative success if ABA recommends against its adoption. The committee met privately, after the official meeting, and adopted 19 of the amendments. A couple of things that I was advocating were passed, especially a ban on "self-help" (ability of a vendor to remotely shut down your system if there's a contract dispute between you and the vendor). This shuts down a serious security flaw that UCITA was encouraging large-system vendors to build into every significant piece of commercial software. Here is my analysis of the amendments that were passed. Overall, I think we are still seeing a big trend favoring large companies over small companies and individuals. In this case, though, large customers are scoring some wins and smaller customers are picking up a little bit as a side-benefit. ================================== The National Conference on Uniform State Laws published an announcement today of 19 amendments to UCITA. These were written in response to a series of amendments proposed at the UCITA drafting committee meeting this November. These amendments are available at http://www.nccusl.org/nccusl/UCITA-2001-comm-fin.htm. For the text of UCITA, see http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ucita/ucita01.htm. For a detailed analysis (of mine) of UCITA, see http://www.badsoftware.com/engr2000.htm The Attorneys General letter is at http://www.affect.ucita.com/pdf/ Nov132001_Letter_from_AGs_to_Carlyle_Ring.pdf Here are my first impressions of those amendments. Please feel free to circulate them. 1) Consumer protection UCITA defines the typical consumer software transaction as an intangible license, the purchase of a right to use the software, rather than the sale of a copy of the software. So, when you buy a copy of Microsoft Word and a book on how to use Microsoft Word at your local computer store, you buy two things that contain copyrighted intellectual property. The sale of the book is a sale of goods under UCITA but under UCITA, the sale of the software is not. If you download that same book from Barnes & Noble, instead of buying the paper copy at Barnes & Noble, the book is treated like software under UCITA. By defining consumer purchases of software as licenses, rather than sales, UCITA pulls consumer software out of the scope of all of the consumer protection statutes that protect buyers of "consumer goods." All of the consumer warranty laws, for example, are "consumer goods" laws. The revisions to UCITA still pull software outside of the scope of the consumer warranty laws. The changes offer very little protection. 2) E-SIGN In the second amendment, UCITA supercedes E-SIGN, except in certain listed sections. In general, I think that E-SIGN is more consumer-friendly than UCITA. I have not had time to analyze the new relationship between the two statutes. 3) Choice of Forum The change proposed will make it slightly harder for vendors to make an outrageous choice of forum (where the customer must sue the vendor, if the customer wants to bring suit). 4) Electronic Self-Help I am glad to see that UCITA has been revised in the way that Sharon Marsh Roberts (Independent Computer Consultants Association) and I recommended, with the support of the Society for Information Management. Electronic self-help is banned, but a vendor retains extensive power to protect its rights under UCITA. For example, the software can come with a built-in automatic termination, stopping performance after a specified number of days or uses. In the event of a dispute, the vendor can simply refuse to renew the license. The vendor can also get an injunction. 5) Public Criticism & Contract Laws The amendment (section 105(d)) appears to address the public criticism issue, but leaves open a wide loophole. People are allowed to criticize a product that has been "offered in its final form to the general public." But anything that is not "in its final form" is not open to criticism. Let's consider Viruscan, published by McAfee. McAfee has issued licenses that ban publication of benchmarks or other reviews of Viruscan without McAfee's permission. Viruscan is updated frequently. I don't think it is ever in "final form." So it appears to be outside of the scope of this consumer protection. Anything that is sold with the promise of frequent automatic updates (think of the dot-NET business model) is, arguably, never in its "final form". Any vendor who wants to ban criticism of its products has an obvious way around 105(d). 6) Known Defects This amendment specifically states that UCITA does not displace the laws of "fraud, including fraudulent inducement, misrepresentation, or unfair and deceptive practices." This amendment does nothing whatsoever. UCITA already does not displace these laws. To the best of my knowledge (which is fairly extensive on this point), every software publisher in the United States releases software with known defects, and many of those known defects are serious. It is very difficult to hold vendors accountable for this under current law. UCITA shields vendors further, by making it easier for them to disclaim warranties, harder for a customer to establish that a product demonstration upon which the customer relied actually created an express warranty, easier for the vendor to limit remedies, and harder for the customer to recover a "minimum adequate remedy. What was proposed, time after time after time in the UCITA meetings, was that the drafting committee provide an affirmative incentive to manufacturers to reveal their known defects. This was in return for the many vendor protections being written into the statute. This amendment does not address that proposal and is no better than the unmodified UCITA. 7) Presentation of Later Terms "Later terms" are contract terms that you see only after you pay for the product. Amendment 7, new Section 216, appears to add nothing to UCITA's rules. The question is not whether some of the terms in the click-wrapped licenses will be enforced. Most people know that some contract terms will be presented in the box in some form or another. The question is which terms will be enforced and how much notice customers will have of those terms. The new UCITA requirement is satisfied merely by putting a notice on the box that says, "Terms inside" or a statement when you start to download a product that contract terms will be presented later. This is trivially easy to satisfy. The only people who will have difficulty satisfying it will be the open source / free software community because so much of their software is already circulating and will continue to circulate. That software was not packaged in a way that will meet the new, fairly formal, UCITA requirements. What was repeatedly requested was a requirement that customers could get a copy of the terms before the sale if they asked for the copy. This is one of the basic tenets of the consumer warranty laws that UCITA helps software publishers evade. Under this amendment, customers will still have to pay for the software and start installing it (if that's how the vendor chooses to structure the deal, which most software vendors seem to want to do) before being able to discover the terms of the contract. The "right of return" under UCITA is the same extremely weak "right" that it was before, more marketing fluff than a consumer benefit. Remember: even though this is promoted regularly as a consumer benefit, it was brought to the UCITA drafting committee by the representative of the Business Software Alliance and it has (to the best of my knowledge) never been endorsed by any consumer protection advocate. 8) Retention of Terms Amendment 8 provides that the license must be provided to the customer in a form in which it can be printed and/or retained by the customer. That this is an improvement on the current UCITA is an illustration of the extent to which the current UCITA is poorly drafted. Of course the customer is entitled to a copy of the license that can be printed and retained. How can you hold the terms of a license against someone who can't even refer to it? What court would enforce the terms of a contract that the customer is allowed to see once and never again? Vendors need this rule as much as customers. Without it, they might sometimes be tempted to make terms irretrievable or to allow a product to ship with terms that happen to be irretrievable. In either case, they would face severe problems in the courts under current law, (including UCITA) because judges would be so unlikely to enforce such terms. 9) Open Source Software--Noncontractual Permissions As the Reporter of the UCITA Drafting Committee pointed out in the November meeting, UCITA already does not cover permissions that are not intended as contracts. However, all of the open source and free software licenses / permissions that I have seen are in fact contracts. This amendment provides zero or almost zero protection to the Open Source / Free Software communities. 10) Warranties for "Free" Software UCITA provides an important protection for free software and broadens it in a way that will also often serve vendors of non-free commercial software. It eliminates warranties for software when there is "no contract fee for the right to use, make copies of, modify, or distribute" the software. The critical word here is OR, which should be AND. With the OR in place, the vendor need only satisfy one of these conditions in order to claim that the software is free. Here's an example: under this new definition of free software, Internet Explorer is free software because there is (currently) no contract fee for the right to use the software. That's all that is needed. You don't have to have the right to make copies of the software or modify it or reverse engineer it or obtain source code to it or distribute it, as long as you get a free right to use it. So, if Vendor X sells you installation and support services and "throws in" the software "for free", the Vendor achieves free software status and no warranties apply. This is an easy way for a traditional software vendor to escape all warranty liability. Warranty liability cannot be excluded, under this amendment, if the licensee is a consumer. Thus, genuinely free software is fully subject to consumer warranties. This is still going to be a big problem. A point was made at the UCITA meeting that no one would sue free software developers anyway, because they don't have any assets. But universities and libraries and many businesses post free software at their websites. That makes them distributors, under UCITA, even if they are giving away software that was written to be given away. Universities, libraries, and many businesses do have deep pockets (i.e. they have insurance policies) -- if a credible threat of liability can be made against them, they will stop distributing free software. So, what do we have? Microsoft gets to completely avoid warranty protection for business users of some of its products, and organizations that distribute free software (which Microsoft now appears to consider a competitive threat) can still be targeted for consumer lawsuits and thus might be successfully intimidated out of distributing the free software. This is not a victory for the Free Software community. 11) Transfer Software that comes with a computer can be transferred WITH THE COMPUTER as a gift to a library or K-12 school or from one consumer to another. This still allows the vendor to kill the market in used software and it allows only a minimal number of transfers of software. The general rule under UCITA will be that if you buy a copy of the software, you will not be able to sell it when you are done with it, or give it away unless you are willing to give away your computer with it. 12) Express Warranty by Sample, Model or Demonstration This amendment improves the current UCITA by stating that the product must conform (rather than "reasonably conform") to the sample, model or demonstration. However, even as modified, UCITA section 402 provides that the following does not create a warranty: "a display or description of a portion of the information to illustrate the aesthetics, appeal, suitability to taste, subjective quality, or the like of informational content." It is not a breach of contract if there are differences in the user interface and usability (or in the aesthetics, appeal, suitability to taste or subjective quality) between the demonstrated model and the model shipped, even if these are material to the consumer. 13) Infringement and Hold Harmless Duties I'm not sure of the effect of this amendment and therefore will not comment on it. 14) Implied Warranty Scope The amendment specifies that the implied warranty runs from the licensor to ITS end-user licensee and to ITS distributor. I'm not sure, but it looks to me as though UCITA is re-establishing a privity rule. I am unsure of the intent, but I expect that we will see the argument in court that Vendorsoft provided no warranty to Consumer because Consumer is the licensee of Distributorsoft, who distributes Vendorsoft's software. Given the other sections of UCITA, I don't think this argument would prevail, but if it is not to make room for an argument like this, I don't understand why this restrictive language is here. 15) Delete Section 308 In Section 308, current UCITA allows a vendor, after the sale, to terminate a license by determining that the duration of the license, as long as that duration has been "a reasonable time". It was never clear to me that this was a big deal (in comparison to the rules that would apply under Article 2) nor that this deletion offers a big advantage over what the courts will do in the absence of specific terms. 16) Delete Section 307(c) Current UCITA 307(c) states that "(c) An agreement that does not specify the number of permitted users permits a number of users which is reasonable in light of the informational rights involved and the commercial circumstances existing at the time of the agreement." I'm not sure that deleting this will offer any advantage over what the courts will do in the absence of specific terms. 17) Section 605 Automatic Restraints This is a clarifying amendment that closes a loophole that was apparently not intended by the drafting committee. 18) Corrects a typo, no policy impact 19) Reverse engineering This is very narrow and not very useful. It is narrower than the provisions in DMCA that allow reverse engineering. It does not permit reverse engineering in order to detect security holes or defects or to enable repair of the security holes or other defects. Additionally, if "the elements" to be reverse engineered were ever previously "readily available to the licensee" (when he didn't need them) then the licensee can't reverse engineer to discover them now, when he does need them. K) Scope As the comments point out, the electronics manufacturers (who will be able to opt their goods within the scope of UCITA under the current scope) support the current scope. And no wonder! They get to apply UCITA's rules to their customers instead of Article 2's. We proposed a rule that addressed safety-critical software, rather than one that tried to distinguish between embedded and nonembedded software. The drafting committee did nothing to restrain UCITA's application to safety-critical embedded software. Never during the UCITA drafting meetings did we discuss the potential consequences of applying UCITA to embedded software or, especially, safety critical software. There will undoubtedly be unintended consequences of the application of UCITA to this domain. Where lives are involved, I think it is grossly irresponsible to press forward with the application of a new body of law to an ill-considered domain. ###################################################################### Working Group on Software Engineering Education and Training Fall Meeting Report Compiled by Jorge L. Diaz-Herrera Southern Polytechnic University jdiaz@spsu.edu Working Group on Software Engineering Education and Training Fall meeting Report University of Nevada, Reno October 9-10, 2001 The WGSEE&T met for one and a half days at University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, in conjunction with the FIE annual conference. The group was welcome by Dr. Yaakov L. Varol, professor and chair of the CS department at Reno. We also want to thank Dr. Ted E. Batchman, Dean of the College of Engineering, for his support. Dr. John Black, from the University of Nevada, Reno, gave an informative presentation on his experiences teaching a software engineering course. There were two subgroup brief presentations: Curriculum, and Industry/University Collaboration. Subsequently we split into two subgroups for working sessions. The Curriculum subgroup ----------------------- The Curriculum subgroup continued the discussion of SE curriculum issues; a copy of a partial draft of a first year curriculum was distributed to start the discussion. The following topics were added to the agenda and discussed: * Review of goals, strategic direction, etc. * Continue discussion at 1st year courses * Broaden from 1st year into intro (as in CC2001-CS) * Influence CC2001-SE (coordination) Review of goals, strategic direction, etc. We spent a fair amount of time discussing foundation issues. What are we doing? Where did we come from? What are our immediate goals? Etc. As background information we recalled that the group was formed after the SEI education program ended in 1995. We came up with the following present goals for the introductory curriculum: * support for completion CC2001 * Serve as a catalyst for advancing BSSE * Promote the acceptance of SE profession And, drew up a list of (near) future activities: * 1st year intro sequence curriculum * keep track of BSSE programs in the USA and abroad * get more BSSE players involved in the WG (include CSEE&T) * directly influence related societies * reach out to high school and other source groups * write white papers and organize special issues in professional journals Continue discussion at 1st year courses. The group reviewed Tom Hilburn's draft specification for degree programs that focus in software engineering; the document also establishes relationships to guidelines, SWEBOK, and CC2001. The following learning objectives were identified: * grasp of the fundamental problem: complexity and change (evolution) * understand the general engineering approach: software life cycle * apply computer science fundamentals (engineering science), engineering management (process), and technical communication (oral and written) to solve moderately complex problems * apply discrete mathematics (engineering science) in some aspects of SE * design simple experiments * perform team work * reflect on professionalism We then discussed implementation strategies, prerequisites, pedagogy, and such, addressing issues like the level of programming proficiency: what? Prerequisite? Part of intro courses? What we will do with this? Use it in CCS2001? Distribute it in SWENET? Pursue CCLI money (and others)? The subgroup fleshed out a 2-year plan, complete with milestones and assigned group members and lead. Interested readers, please contact either J. Diaz-Herrera and Hilburn for a copy of this plan. The Industry subgroup --------------------- The Industry subgroup began by brainstorming potential future directions. Suggested directions included: 1. Apply CMM(R) to collaborations (from Nancy's work with a group of students) - Develop maturity model for collaborations 2. Measure the transfer of skills (Cindy Tanner's idea submitted by email, Thank you Cindy!) - "incorporating the learning outcomes" - Did industry ask for specific things? - Were "things" delivered? - How do we measure transfer? 3. What doesn't work? - We'll look at this only tangentially 4. Investigate content of successful collaborations. - What did industry want? - What did academia propose? - What is in there? - How does content different from "standard" SEing program? - How is content different based on geography/location/industry sector? After some discussion, it was decided to focus on item 2, the transfer of skills with the understanding that some understanding of the content of the successful collaborations (item 4) would be needed in order to fully carry out item 2. After some discussion, the goal of the next piece of work done by the I/U subgroup was determined: Overall goal: How well do collaborations work to transfer technology/skills to people with non-software engineering background (taking a case study approach)? Transfer of Skills: The group then discussed the steps to be taken to measure knowledge transfer. It was decided to focus on programs that have already been studied. This decision was made because there is easy access to these collaborations and because it was determined that some existing information about the collaborations would be required in order to provide understanding of the knowledge transfer. This information includes: * Number of people involved in collaboration * Significance of collaboration * To academic institution * To industry * Resources committed to collaboration * Duration of collaboration Criteria for selecting candidate programs was identified and includes: A. Collaborations that have documented requirements B. Collaborations that will lend us a copy of their documentation C. Collaborations that have people (academic and industry) that commit to help. Measuring Transfer: Attention then turned to the issue of measuring the transfer. The group focused on the questions of "How do we measure outcomes?" and "What is successful technology transfer?" It was decided that a survey/matrix tool would be used to assess the opinions of the various participants. It was also decided that three separate tools were needed to measure opinions of 1) students, 2) managers of students, and 3) instructors. One suggested form of the matrix for students was Measure against Skills/topics. Suggested questions included: - Did you learn topic/skills? - To what degree were you able to apply topic? - To your work? - On your project? - In organization? - How well can you apply the topic? - Of the topics that you've learned, which ones were you able to successfully apply? - Was topic useful? - What topics are missing? - Was depth of knowledge sufficient? - When did students take course? - Ask students to identify skills used in recent past - Ask students for job description - When did student complete course? Suggested questions for the matrix for the managers included: - How does the collaboration improve productivity? - To what degree were employees able to employ a skill? - How quickly did students perform the roles of the job in which they had been placed? It was suggested that the survey/matrix include a "neutral" option to distinguish "not applicable" from "bad" answers. It was also suggested that the survey tool may need to be specialized for the various collaborations. The group decided to delay the decision on customization until after the initial inputs for the collaborations were collected. Measurement Process: The group discussed the process for measuring the transfer. It was decided that the general approach for measurement was as follows: Input ---------------> Delivery -------------> Output Needs assessment What was taught? What student learned Program desc where Input: Any requirements documents that describe the requirements of the collaboration. These artifacts include documents like needs assessments, program descriptions, etc. Delivery: Description of the material taught in the collaboration program. This information will be gleaned from curricula and course descriptions. Output: The results of the collaboration as measured by the survey/matrix tool. It was suggested that we measure a focus group from each collaboration, and from each cohort group where possible. Dick Lytle suggested that some work already exists in the area of transfer of knowledge and that Greg Hislop may be able to provide some direction for background in "levels of knowledge" and measurement. It was also suggested that we do a literature search for related background. Possible search terms identified were: - Collaborations - Technology transfer - Information transfer - Retraining, models of The group briefly discussed the possibility of looking at factors that influenced lack of transfer of skills from the outcome of the survey, but it was decided that this was probably not a feasible outcome of the survey and that these factors would be very difficult to measure. The last action of the group was to determine a set of action items, complete with members and completion dates. Again, interested readers may contact Heidi Ellis for the detailed list. Future meeting dates and locations. ----------------------------------- The next two meetings will be held in conjunction with CSEE&T and FIE respectively. We will meet in conjunction with CSEE&T 2002 in the Cincinnati area (TBD). The meeting will be February 23-24, 20002 (a full day Saturday and half a day Sunday before the conference). We will also meet November 6-9, 2002 in conjunction with FIE in Boston. Please, if you are interested in participating or hearing new about the group, send a note to Jorge at jdiaz@spsu.edu to get added to our mailing list. Attendees: ---------- 1. Don Bagert, Texas Tech University, Don.Bagert@ttu.edu 2. Joe Clifton, University of Wisconsin - Platteville, clifton@uwplatt.edu 3. Jorge Diaz-Herrera, Southern Polytechnic State University, jdiaz@spsu.edu 4. Heidi Ellis, Rensselaer at Hartford, heidic@rh.edu 5. Steve Frezza, Gannon University, frezza@gannon.edu 6. Janet Hartman, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, hartman@db.erau.edu 7. Tom Hilburn, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, hilburn@db.erau.edu 8. Greg Hislop, Drexel University, hislopg@post.drexel.edu 9. Tom Horton, University of Virginia, Horton@cs.virginia.edu 10. Richard (Dick) Lytle, Oregon Master of Software Engineering, rlytle@omse.org 11. Mike Lutz, Rochester Institute of Technology, mikelutz@mail.isc.rit.edu 12. Nancy Mead, Software Engineering Institute, nrm@sei.cmu.edu 13. Fernando Naveda, Rochester Institute of Technology, jfn@rit.edu 14. Kasi Periyasamy, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, kasi@csfac.uwlax.edu 15. Ann Quiroz-Gates, University of Texas at El Paso, agates@cs.utep.edu 16. Dawn Ramsey, Southern Polytechnic State University, dramsey@spsu.edu 17. Steve Roach, University of Texas at El Paso, agates@cs.utep.edu (R)CMM is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ News Items ###################################################################### By: Don Bagert (Professional Issues Editor) Correction Concerning Last Month's Item on UCITA Last month, FASE contained a news item concerning an article in the October 2001 issue of IEEE Computer (Volume 34, Number 10), entitled "Controversial Software Law Hits Resistance". The IEEE Computer article appeared to state that there was an announcement by the American Bar Association (ABA), the leading professional organization for lawyers in the United States, of its active opposition to the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). The article furthermore stated that Torts Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) of its Technology Committee had formed a task force that is now discussing the issue with representatives of National Conference on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), who developed UCITA, a software licensing law developed by the US-based National Conference on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) and submitted to the different state legislatures in the United States for adoption. In response to the FASE news item, Cem Kaner wrote the editors with the following information: "The Torts and Insurance Practice Section of the ABA is only one section. Several sections of the ABA sent representatives to the UCITA drafting committee meetings, throughout the many year drafting process. TIPS was not one of them. "The result of the TIPS proposal to the ABA is that the ABA formed a special committee to study UCITA. That committee met in November and then attended the most recent meeting of the UCITA drafting committee (Don Gotterbarn and Phil Koopman and I proposed amendments to UCITA and spoke at that meeting). [See Dr. Kaner's article above for more information on this meeting.] "The UCITA drafting committee has not voted on the amendments that were proposed. The ABA committee has not given any public indication of its reaction to the meeting or its opinion of UCITA." "For more details on the UCITA meeting and the ABA, see http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO66036,00.html "The more striking event of the past month was a letter from 32 states' attorneys general, who concluded that UCITA is so deeply flawed that it should be abandoned (rather than fixed)." [The Attorneys General letter is at http://www.affect.ucita.com/pdf/ Nov132001_Letter_from_AGs_to_Carlyle_Ring.pdf] Thanks to Dr. Kaner for this information. Through reporting of the IEEE Computer article in the last issue, FASE provided information which stated that ABA as a whole had expressed its opposition to UCITA, which it apparently has not. The FASE staff regrets the error. ###################################################################### From: Don Bagert (Managing Editor) Complete Transcript of 10th Anniversary Roundtable Now Available The complete transcript of the "FASE 10th Anniversary Round-Table Discussion - Academic Software Engineering: Before and After" (compiled by Tom Hilburn and published in edited form in the December 2001 FASE) is now available at http://www.cs.ttu.edu/fase/10thAnnivRoundtableTrans.pdf Thanks again to Tom (the FASE Academic Editor) for such a great job in this effort. ###################################################################### From: Don Bagert (Professional Issues Editor) IEEE Approves Certified Software Development Professional Program The January 2002 issue of The Institute, which is published as a supplement to IEEE Spectrum, stated on page 3 that the IEEE Board of Directors approved the IEEE Computer Society Certified Software Development Professional Exam at their November 2001 meeting. The IEEE-CS certification web page provides further information, including the statement that "The first testing window will open in the Spring of 2002." For more information, go to http://www.computer.org/certification ###################################################################### From: Mary Last Virtual Teams in Computing Education Survey Results Available Aggregate results for the Virtual Teams in Computing Education Survey are available at http://acad.stedwards.edu/~last/virtual_team_results.htm Thank you to all those who responded to the survey, sent me articles, distributed my initial request, and provided encouragement. If you would like further information on the survey results, please let me know. Mary Z. Last Assistant Professor Computer Information Science St. Edward's University 3001 S. Congress Ave Austin, TX 78704-6489 512-464-8834 last@acad.stedwards.edu ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Position Openings ###################################################################### From: Lt. Col. Timothy M. Jacobs Air Force Institute of Technology Faculty Positions Available Computer Engineering and Computer Science The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering and Management, Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright Patterson AFB OH, has several tenure track openings on the faculty with rank and salary determined by qualifications. Positions are open at the assistant professor level, although qualified candidates will be considered at the associate professor level. Applicants must have an earned doctorate in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field. Some areas of specialization to be covered are software engineering, artificial intelligence, database systems, computer security/information assurance, information visualization, and VLSI systems. These positions require teaching at the graduate level and carrying out research under the sponsorship of government agencies. This department has close working relationships with Air Force and Department of Defense research and development organizations. The department has excellent laboratory facilities, and computational facilities are of the highest caliber. Employment at AFIT is only open to U.S. citizens. Submit a complete resume and the names of three references to Dr. Gary B. Lamont, Search Committee Chairman, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, AFIT/ENG, 2950 P Street, Wright-Patterson AFB OH 45433. You may contact him at email address Gary.Lamont@afit.edu or (937) 255-3636, ext 4718, for additional information. The United States Air Force is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Contact and General Information about FASE ###################################################################### FASE is published on the 15th of each month by the FASE staff. Article and Faculty Ad Submission Guidelines Send newsletter articles to one of the editors, preferably by category: Articles pertinent to academic education to Tom Hilburn ; corporate and government training to David Carter ; professional issues, faculty ads, and all other categories, to Don Bagert . If the article is for a FASE topic where there is a guest editor, the submission should instead be to that person, according to the schedule provided. Items must be submitted by the 8th of the month in order to be considered for inclusion in that month's issue. Also, please see the submission guidelines immediately below. 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From there, click on "TTU Faculty Mailing Lists", and then either "fase" or "fase-talk", depending on which list you desire.) _____ Back issues (dating from the very first issue) can be found on the web (with each Table of Contents) at in chronological order, or in reverse order. _____ The FASE Staff: Tom Hilburn -- Academic Editor Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Department of Computing and Mathematics Daytona Beach FL 32114 USA Phone: 904-226-6889 Fax: 904-226-6678 Email: hilburn@db.erau.edu URL: http://faculty.erau.edu/hilburn/ David Carter -- Corporate/Government Editor 807 Hwy 1204 #B-2 Pineville LA 71360 Phone: 318-641-0824 Email: dacarter@bayou.com Don Bagert, P.E. -- Managing Editor and Professional Issues Editor Department of Computer Science 8th and Boston Texas Tech University Lubbock TX 79409-3104 USA Phone: 806-742-1189 Fax: 806-742-3519 Email: Don.Bagert@ttu.edu URL: http://www.cs.ttu.edu/faculty/bagert.html Laurie Werth -- Advisory Committee Taylor Hall 2.124 University of Texas at Austin Austin TX 78712 USA Phone: 512-471-9535 Fax: 512-471-8885 Email: lwerth@cs.utexas.edu Nancy Mead -- Advisory Committee Software Engineering Institute 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA Phone: 412-268-5756 Fax: 412-268-5758 Email: nrm@sei.cmu.edu