intent

If all malicious crackers were like McKinnon, we'd be safe

jp.stacey 3 September 2008
Everyone's searching the US government computers for hidden secrets about UFOs except me, it seems. Or maybe that's what they'd like me to think.

Mathew Bevan, an earlier scapegoat for incompetence in governmental security, discusses the non-threat that Gary McKinnon posed:

"Gary is a self-confessed stoner and perpetrated the 'biggest military hack of all time' whilst completely wasted. This is clearly a sign of how lax the security of these systems was.

UK government demonstrates lack of comprehension of web standards

jp.stacey 10 September 2008
Top-down-first governmental web guidelines unsurprisingly full of FAIL.

The UK government’s Central Office of Information (COI) has produced a draft report on governmental departments' adherence to browser standards and asked for feedback.

Google and its Developer Day

jp.stacey 21 September 2008
Google would be considered more trustworthy if along with REST, WSGI and AJAX it finally admitted to embracing NASDAQ.

The past couple of evenings I've been away from a computer and so not free to consolidate my copious notes all the interesting stuff that happened at Google Developer Day on Tuesday. I should start by saying that all the organizers, especially Liz Ericson, should be proud for planning and running such a fun event, and so smoothly.

How not to help your users

jp.stacey 10 October 2008
Unless you have a monopoly you can't force a software user to do anything except switch to a different product. And we all know how well monopolies fare in the long term.

If a user asks for something, it's probably because they want it.

In fact, if a user actually asks you, with their mouths or their keyboards, then you should be grateful: especially if they ask nicely. Most users won't say anything: they'll plod along, fightig against your software's behaviour, until the cost in time eventually far outweighs the benefits. Then they'll move on, and you'll never know.

Retrospective design is not a sin

jp.stacey 1 December 2008
Flowcharts aren't necessarily harmful unless, when printed off, they run to enough pages to fracture a metatarsal.

Sean McGrath suggests that you should implement first and design later:

A design phase, wedged between two implementation phases, makes sense if you are doing rapid prototyping.