HMM, does this mean Microsoft software is one of the reasons for the delay in the National Movement for Free Elections quick count, heh 
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Go said Namfrel volunteers “had to modify the program” on Tuesday morning. But aside from the software problem, he also admitted an apparent lack of training of volunteers.
Namfrel uses Microsoft Excel, said Go.
“I thought there were people who have perfected the systems already [but] we’ve never tested the program, [which was] developed by Muntinlupa for the 2004 [presidential] elections,” said Go, who assumed Namfrel chairmanship on April 13.
May 19th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
And btw, I meant this blog article and not the news article.
May 18th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Yes, that’s right. Your article was implying in one way or another that Microsoft was at fault for the delay in the Namfrel quick count, when the blame should have been on somebody else’s shoulders.
Did Microsoft develop the actual election software? No. Go explicitly said that “we’ve never tested the program, [which was] developed by Muntinlupa for the 2004 [presidential] elections.” It was Muntinlupa - or a person/team from Muntinlupa - who developed the software using Microsoft tools.
Let’s say that I made an appliance using Fedora, RH or Ubuntu (or any other Linux distro for that matter), and that I made a configuration or programming mistake. Would it be fair then to point the fingers on Red Hat or Canonical when that appliance crashes?
Go said Namfrel volunteers “had to modify the program” on Tuesday morning. But aside from the software problem, he also admitted an apparent lack of training of volunteers.
As PVinoya already stated, it was a glaring negligence of the software development life cycle on Namfrel’s part.
You probably summed it best by: “The quotation you were citing was just to substantiate the whole story that Namfrel had software problems.”
Well, the quotes I cited were exactly _the substance_ of the story dear.
May 18th, 2007 at 12:16 am
To Erol: Are you saying that my article had been misleading? The quotation you were citing was just to substantiate the whole story that Namfrel “had software problems” (those are Namfrel chair’s words, by the way.)
May 16th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
The CTO/IT officer/whatever should be replaced. They blundered in 2004 because they used an apparently not well-tested SMS system. Now, they have another software problem again.
Why are they using Excel? I’m an open source advocate and I won’t recommend Calc, gnumeric or other open source spreadsheet applications. These are simply not the right tool.
How hard is it to develop customized software with a much more simplified and much more straightforward interface than Excel? One year is more than enough and that already includes testing. A web-based interface can even be use to simplify things more. They can restrict access to the tabulation center’s LAN if they are paranoid.
I guess I really should volunteer now. I’ve been trying to volunteer for the last two elections but I am not able to join. I am not a hacker/programming guru but with the current state of affairs, I think I can help improve it.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I don’t think Microsoft should be held accountable to software problems if Excel should be the primary cause for problems in the counting of ballots. They’re just using the wrong tools for the job.
Moreover, if these problems ever did occur, I begin to wonder what has happened to 2 years of product testing, training and bug-tracking.
I’m disappointed in today’s software developers who are unable to bring up the ante on utilizing the full Software Development Life Cycle from start to finish - including testing and documentation for this kind of major event. If the government cannot give software companies/individuals the payment for projects, give these companies TAX-breaks.