Photo by Badly Drawn DadI don’t know if it’s just instinct, but we humans have this sincere need to limit the amount of variation in anything we do. Ever sincy we started to live in stationary communities and worked our way up to professional farmers, we have been trying to eliminate variation as much as possible. Selecting the finest crop and weeding out the bad ones.
When after many centuries a certain Mr. Darwin explained to us that evolution actually depends on variation, nobody wanted to believe him. And we still don’t. Yet nature does what nature does best, defy human efforts towards standardization. And somehow we do the same. We come up with new stuff regularly and we call it progress.
But every time something new comes up, certain people start crying out that ‘this will replace that’, ‘this will win over that’ or ‘this must be phased out because of that’ etc.. It is a habit we’re born with, comparing things and classifying them as either good or bad. Recently I saw another example on LinkedIN Answers. Someone asked the community there whether PHP will win over .NET. I can’t help but feel a bit annoyed. Why can’t different species coexist and share an ecosystem where both can prosper? Why should the whole IT landscape be a monoculture?
And of course, it shouldn’t. Monocultures have significant disadvantages. We have seen that in agriculture a lot of times. One disease figures out a way to attack a certain crop and because of the monoculture kills every single plant or animal. This sort of thing has caused famine, disease and mass migration in humans and still does from time to time. Monocultures are vulnerable because the variation in disease resistance that occurs naturally has been selected away. This gives viruses and other pests a good chance to have an impact. Did you wonder why computerviruses are called just that? And why do they thrive in ‘monoculture’-IT-Landscapes?
In fact, there are more links to biology in the IT terminology field. How about bugs?
what about farms. What about LifeCycles, In fact we are also using biology-derived scientific fields like Taxonomy for IT related things as well.
We have these ‘climate-change’ like discussions on Google Chrome versus Microsoft Internet Explorer, and about Linux versus Windows. We have the Evolutionists versus the Religion-buffs when it comes to different development platforms. I guess there’s nothing new in IT when it comes to these subjects. So maybe, just maybe, we should learn a thing or to from biology, agriculture, and most of all history. Maybe variation isn’t a bad thing after all, maybe it brings stability while actually supporting us best. Maybe standardization aimed at minimizing variety is at least in part a bad choice that should be made carefully. Maybe we should ‘relearn’ choosing in the first place. (And I’ll come back to that in another post, promise!).
What about you? Don’t hesitate to comment below!
Photo by eir@siLast year around this time i posted a blog with predictions. Let’s see if I got it right…
Windows 7 came and was an instant hit. I didn’t think things would move so fast. I guess people were more fed up with Vista then I expected.
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Lately there has been a lot of discussion about this poor little character, the asterix: *. One example of this is this site. This character has been a very frequent site on every login screen you might encounter. It hides your real password (unless you actually had ******* as a password…) The question is whether this is good or bad practice. In this little post I’ll give you my opinion on it.
The original argumentation was to hide the password from peeking eyes. Look over someone’s shoulder and you know… then, you might look at what someone is typing on the keyboard and know as well. Especially if someone is typing slow. The added value is limited. In fact, security by obscurity isn’t real security. As it turns out, not seeing what you are typing increases the likelyhood of making mistakes. This is frustrating, but also costly. Unlocking accounts, retrieving passwords by e-mail etc. is timeconsuming and therefor pricy. Now we have two sides of the scales, which one is heavier?
In fact, that may not at all be the question. You could argue that the asterix’s make people feel good. They’re not only nice to look at, but also give a (false) sense of security, something people like (and not just after 9/11). The feel-good-factor hasn’t been taken into account in all the discussions I’ve read on the internet. Even if the added value in terms of real security is limited, what about making people feel safe (even if they aren’t. You want safety? Shut down that computer Now!).
Another factor that hasn’t been discussed is the simple fact that if we were to change this habit, it would take a very long time to reach an asterix-free world. There would be a mixed environment for years which might confuse people so much they call on the helpdesk anyway. No savings here. Is it really that bad? Or should people learn to type without looking and improve their skills that way?
Even further, one could (and I do) argue that the password itself isn’t a very good idea. There are better ways of securing stuff from unwanted access. Multifactor authentication, biometrics (although there are strong arguments against that one as well. maybe worth another post one day), smartcards, PKI, etc…. If we’re going to change at all, let’s not just do the superficial and aesthetics…
As you see, I don’t have the answer. do you? I hope you will comment on this post and give me your views on this little subject.
Now before y’all sceptics out there start getting into the disagreement mode, let’s see what actually is the reason for this rather controversial heading…
Good Usability means a application, apparatus, thing or whatyamightcallit (my spellingchecker had some problems with that one…) is sufficiently easy to use by those needing to use it and for the purpose they’re using it for. In general it’s a good thing for things to be usable. If we’re talking computer programs and websites this applies, too. But…
Recently a colleague of mine wanted my opinion on a situation he discovered with one of his clients. This client had an Oracle Database server with one database configured which was beeing used by multiple applications. He thought it wasn’t a good idea but wanted to hear my opinion on this. This is what I told him.
1. performance
Which application is causing bad performance? Monitoring separate databases is much simpler to setup than monitoring use on separate tables or weeding through all logging to see which parts of the database get pounded.
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Yes, it’s that time of the year… Let’s tell you what I think 2009 will bring.
Windows 7. That’s one. The replacement of Vista should become available. Should we expect a lot from it? I guess so. Vista hasn’t seen the great support Microsoft surely hoped it would get. Many organisations will be skipping Vista in the hope Windows 7 will be better. But will it be better? I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but the reviews I’ve read are promising. The end of Q2, or maybe the beginning of Q3 will see the release. Consumers will adopt it pretty quickly (since they can’t avoid it when buying new computers). Businesses will probably start adopting Windows 7 after the first servicepack comes out. I expect to see that before the end of 2009 which means that the real start of the race towards market domination starts at the beginning of 2010. Is this a good time to move to an alternative platform?
Since some time I have been using OpenID to log into some services that support it. I have come to a number of conclusions that I’ld like to share with you, so here goes.
First conclusion
Signin up isn’t really that practical. Basically you add an extra step. The service will accept your openID and then ask you to sign up as if there hadn’t been an openid. You have to fully create your account, including username and password. Naturally your openid is connected to your account, but you could do it the other way around as well, sign up normally and add your openid later. No win…..
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