I've just been looking at the Mozilla 2010 Annual Report. It makes terrific reading. But most of all I really love the video that they have brought out to accompany it. To say it's inspirational to the open source world doesn't do it justice. I have rarely seen so clear an exposition of the ideals that have led me to serve the Python community and the Python Software Foundation for the last few years.
Sure, Mozilla had problems when they inherited the Netscape code base. They have matured as an organization, and are currently clearly demonstrating the meaning of release early, release often with high-quality feature releases at frequent intervals. It makes me wish I could offer such inspiration to the Python community.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C Clarke
Musings from the technological frontier
Showing posts with label corporate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporate. Show all posts
October 10, 2011
October 25, 2010
Lazy Programmers, Installment 315
So, during a brief engagement with ING Direct's web site I receive the following error message:
It was complaining because a) I had used a one-digit form for the month (i.e. 9/19/2010 rather than 09/19/2010), and b) because I had just entered the telephone numbers, as is my wont, as ten-digit strings.
What I want to know is, is there any user-centered QA in effect on this site? Who exactly decreed that dates had to be entered in that inflexible format? Who reviewed the stupid decision to require that specific format for telephone numbers, when it's actually much easier to simply throw away anything that isn't a digit, store that and then format numbers when they are printed? Finally, does anyone at ING care how much trouble they put their users to?
See, I've been in the business long enough to remember the days when computers were there to make things easier for user-type people, not for the programmers. This is clearly a lost approach, one sees so many ridiculous requirements such as the above.
What I want to know is, is there any user-centered QA in effect on this site? Who exactly decreed that dates had to be entered in that inflexible format? Who reviewed the stupid decision to require that specific format for telephone numbers, when it's actually much easier to simply throw away anything that isn't a digit, store that and then format numbers when they are printed? Finally, does anyone at ING care how much trouble they put their users to?
See, I've been in the business long enough to remember the days when computers were there to make things easier for user-type people, not for the programmers. This is clearly a lost approach, one sees so many ridiculous requirements such as the above.
August 27, 2010
Apple Going Over the Top?
Yet again I rejoice that I am not an iPhone user. Indeed, given this latest news I might well just chuck my Mac mini away in protest (no, you probably don't want it - it's an aging obsolete PPC mini from about six years ago).
In news from the Electronic Frontier Foundation I learned today that Apple has applied for patents on method of spying intrusively on the users of their devices. Here's a partial list of possible applications:
In news from the Electronic Frontier Foundation I learned today that Apple has applied for patents on method of spying intrusively on the users of their devices. Here's a partial list of possible applications:
- The system can take a picture of the user's face, "without a flash, any noise, or any indication that a picture is being taken to prevent the current user from knowing he is being photographed";
- The system can record the user's voice, whether or not a phone call is even being made;
- The system can determine the user's unique individual heartbeat "signature";
- To determine if the device has been hacked, the device can watch for "a sudden increase in memory usage of the electronic device";
- The user's "Internet activity can be monitored or any communication packets that are served to the electronic device can be recorded"; and
- The device can take a photograph of the surrounding location to determine where it is being used.
August 12, 2010
Eric Schmidt Looks Forward to Big Brother
 |
| "You only need to give up just a little bit of freedom" |
"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."
Any government that requires individuals to give up their rights to anonymity is a government past its sell-by date. To my mind this reveals further insight into Schmidt's "what's good for business is good for the people" view exemplified by the much-discussed recent joint statement with Verizon on network neutrality. It's fairly obvious that Schmidt sees government's role as paving the way for corporations to increase their profits, not preserving the freedoms of the citizenry who elected it. This is so far from "government of the people, for the people and by the people" that it's apparently time "do no evil" was replaced by "make more money".
 |
| "But that would hurt Google's stock price!" |
April 10, 2010
Digital Rights Repression
There's something about the phrase "Digital Rights Management" that gets right up my nose. I suppose it's because it makes it sound as though we have digital rights and other rights, and they are somehow different. The digital age has definitely brought new approaches and new legislation which infringe on our freedoms.
The US Digital Millenium Copyright Act has had a "chilling effect" on free speech by allowing copyright holders to achieve censorship of publication without any prior scrutiny by a court being required. This is very definitely a bridge too far.
Now the UK has gone the same way with the second reading of the Digital Economy Bill. This reading was cynically timed to assure the bill's passage and enactment in the "wash-up" process following the dissolution of parliament prior to the general election of May 6. The most sinister and at the same time the most ridiculous aspect of the Bill is its provision that someone about whom three complaints have been received will be liable to have their Internet services removed - again without the intrusion of any legal process, let alone the requirement for conviction in a court of law. The Bill makes no mention of the collateral damage caused to other people living in the same domicile, nor does it propose any sensible way of stopping such disenfranchised individuals from using the many free wireless access points that are available throughout the world. The law is, in short, an ass.
It's easy to see in both the DMCA and the DEB the hand of corporations seeking to enforce their copyright and bolster their profits. It's also easy to see that the laws were framed by people who either didn't understand the broader implications of their work or who didn't care. The DEB is the brainchild of Lord Mandelson, an effete politician who's too snobby to tread in dogshit and no more a servant of the people than Dick Cheney.
This handover of power to the corporate world has now officially gone way too far. The legal notion that corporations should be granted the same rights as individuals, although enshrined in case law, is fundamentally unconstitutional. Corporations wield a disproportionate amount of wealth and power in today's society. The recording industry lobbied for a levy on blank audio cassettes because (to use their slogan) "Home Taping is Killling Music", yet twenty years later music seems very much alive.
I have railed against the DEB, unsuccessfully. The DMCA is ten years old. I've been a supporter of the open source movement for over twenty years, and I can tell you that it's a harbinger of new approach. In the short term the corporations may feel they are winning, but in fact they are merely sowing the seeds of their own eventual destruction. You might care to bear that in mind in your investment strategy, if you have one. The music industry is like the boy who cried wolf; pretty soon nobody will care when they get eaten.
The US Digital Millenium Copyright Act has had a "chilling effect" on free speech by allowing copyright holders to achieve censorship of publication without any prior scrutiny by a court being required. This is very definitely a bridge too far.
Now the UK has gone the same way with the second reading of the Digital Economy Bill. This reading was cynically timed to assure the bill's passage and enactment in the "wash-up" process following the dissolution of parliament prior to the general election of May 6. The most sinister and at the same time the most ridiculous aspect of the Bill is its provision that someone about whom three complaints have been received will be liable to have their Internet services removed - again without the intrusion of any legal process, let alone the requirement for conviction in a court of law. The Bill makes no mention of the collateral damage caused to other people living in the same domicile, nor does it propose any sensible way of stopping such disenfranchised individuals from using the many free wireless access points that are available throughout the world. The law is, in short, an ass.
It's easy to see in both the DMCA and the DEB the hand of corporations seeking to enforce their copyright and bolster their profits. It's also easy to see that the laws were framed by people who either didn't understand the broader implications of their work or who didn't care. The DEB is the brainchild of Lord Mandelson, an effete politician who's too snobby to tread in dogshit and no more a servant of the people than Dick Cheney.
This handover of power to the corporate world has now officially gone way too far. The legal notion that corporations should be granted the same rights as individuals, although enshrined in case law, is fundamentally unconstitutional. Corporations wield a disproportionate amount of wealth and power in today's society. The recording industry lobbied for a levy on blank audio cassettes because (to use their slogan) "Home Taping is Killling Music", yet twenty years later music seems very much alive.
I have railed against the DEB, unsuccessfully. The DMCA is ten years old. I've been a supporter of the open source movement for over twenty years, and I can tell you that it's a harbinger of new approach. In the short term the corporations may feel they are winning, but in fact they are merely sowing the seeds of their own eventual destruction. You might care to bear that in mind in your investment strategy, if you have one. The music industry is like the boy who cried wolf; pretty soon nobody will care when they get eaten.
February 16, 2010
Customer Hostility
Seth Godin is right: the world is full of commercial dinosaurs, due to expire shortly. And I will be happy to dance on their graves.
I have written before about the rigors of modern day travel, and the travel industry (or a large part of it) appears to be doing its best to discourage people from traveling. Part of it, of course, is the TSA and its associated stupidities, but I will not again go into the irrationality of spending billions of dollars to make what is already the safest mode of transport in the world even safer (assuming that the TSA is indeed living up to that dubious claim, which I frankly doubt -- otherwise why aren't they shouting from the rooftops about the number of plots they have foiled?)
So today, for "convenience" I am flying to Atlanta. To minimize the airport hassle I have already checked in on-line, and paid $23 for the privilege of checking a bag. Assuming the charge on the way back is the same, this will amount to just over 24% of the price I have already paid for the ticket.
I have always disliked unbundling, ever since I argued in Sun against Eric Schmidt's proposal that Sun unbundle the C compiler from what was then SunOS. Since I was a minion and Eric was a big-shot you can guess how that one went (though Sun's eventual fate makes me glad that I sold my stock at $28). I suppose that's why I'm a socialist: while it may not give each user of a service the absolute lowest possible cost, it's much more efficient to spread the load around. If the rich weren't so mean, the poor could enjoy better lives. Sorry, where was I?
Oh, right. So, I have got through the security theater (doubly inconvenient this trip, since I am carrying two laptops) and I decide that, to conserve battery, I will find a venue that allows me to plug my power brick in. What do I find? Each and every establishment in the newly-refurbished Dulles airport appears to have been designed specifically to exclude any possibility that the on-line traveler such as myself might steal a few joules at their expense.
So, for the record, let me squeak this into the ears of any future airport Eric Schmidts who might be reading. If you provide power and wifi (assuming, of course, that your license from the airport doesn't force you to make your customers rely on the airport's crappy facilities) in your establishment, and advertise that fact, I will support your business in preference to the short-sighted idiots who insist on trying to milk me dry whenever I come into contact with them.
So now we come to Verizon Wireless. Having finally found a place quiet enough that I can plug into the power without creating a trip hazard (which, believe me, would be impossible when the airport was anything like busy), and to avoid whatever extortionate rates the airport authority might choose to charge, I plug in my cellular broadband card and fire up the Internet,only to be confronted by a dialog box telling me that I can upgrade. Upgrades are always good, right? Well, yes, but ... here's the dialog box, at the left.
Call me picky if you like, but this seems to me like the ultmate failure in quality assurance. I have to wonder how many pairs of eyeballs scrutinized this dialog box before it went into production, and how come none of the owners of said eyeballs thought to ask the question "What 'Update' button"? I am imagining that each scrutineer, supposing they notice any discrepancy at all between the text in the dialog box and the reality they were presented with, thought to themselves (consciously or otherwise) "Well, clearly they mean the 'Download' button". To which my immediate response is that they cannot possibly be geeks. I am a geek, and believe me I am intimately familiar with all the shit that can land on your head in short order when you make that kind of dumb-assed assumption. So being a geek, I decline to either "Download", or "Update" or whatever kind of trouble it is that Verizon would like to get into.
Next I am presented with an opportunity to "view my account". Now I actually have two accounts with Verizon Wireless, one of which seems to be uncomfortably and inextricably intertwined with my home-based FIOS account. So I am impressed to see both a "register" link and a pulldown that allows me to select "Business Account" rather than "Personal Account". Which I do before clicking the "register" link, whereupon I am presented with a form that asks me for quite a bit of information including both my Employer Identification Number (EIN) and my Dun and Bradstreet number.
Being in an airport, I figure I have done pretty well to produce the former, and I happily fill in the other fields, only to be presented with the message shown at the left. Now, this is telling me a number of things I don't particularly like.
First off, there is something "invalid" about my company name. But of course I am left to guess what; it would clearly be far too easy to provide any description of the rules that are declaring my company name to be invalid.
Next I am informed that the Tax ID is invalid. I discover by reading the form (not the error message) that this is because I have failed to put a dash between the second and third digits, but apparently the programming monkeys who have put this application together have never thought about maybe, hey, just throwing anything that isn't a digit away. Even though only the digits in this particular identifier carry any meaning. Give me a break.
There is a similar problem with the telephone number, though in this case the programmers have taken the trouble to tell me exactly how the number needs to be formatted (thank you!). I especially like the double period at the end of that line, which implies that not only do I have to put dashes after the third and sixth digits, I also have to put a period at the end of it. This reminds me of many interactions where people have asked me my telephone number and I have replied "eight hundred dash four nine four dash nine one one nine". Not. This is getting quite cussworthy, but I am restraining myself.
Now the message about the email address again throws me into confusion, since I have (as a look at the form clearly shows) entered my email address one hundred percent correctly. username@domain.com, just like I always type it. So again I am left to guess exactly what about my email address the Verizon system has chosen to declare "invalid". The f-bomb is now hanging in the air, poised like the sword of Damocles above a web site that has clearly been programmed by monkeys, and not even monkeys with brains.
Lastly, just in case I didn't understand that I should have put that oh-so-important dash between the second and third digits, I am presented with a message that my "Federal Tax ID" was incorrect, as though the form has requested two separate tax IDs (which, by the way, it hasn't).
At this point my almost-forty-three years of programming experience, integrally connected to my geek identity, makes me want to scream "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? DON'T THEY WANT MY [expletive deleted] BUSINESS?". I swear, at this moment, if there was a button I could click with the label "Consign VerizonWireless and all its employees to hell" I would click it whether or not there was the slightest chance that the click would have any positive effect. It would just make me feel better. I am trying to interact with a corporate entity (which due to a strange and to my mind totally obsolescent notion of law has most of the legal rights of an individual) that doesn't give two hoots what its customers think about it or how infuriating its systems are to use.
At this stage I realize I am not complaining just as a programmer, or even just as a web systems designer, I am complaining as a human being. Where, I ask myself, is the VerizonWireless Quality Assurance department in all this? (They must have one: no corporation of that size can possibly have failed to consider the liability implications of not doing). Did anyone actually take the time to interact with this application and deliberately provide "invalid" answers to determine whether the systems response would be considered reasonable by a human being?
I swear, sometimes, I truly believe that top-level corporate managers' ultimate dream is a system that requires no human intervention at all. If this really is the case then I have to explain (and will do so, given access to the Verizon top level management and a sock full of wet sand, in explicit detail) that they are a long way from reaching their goal.
Sure, we all understand (even those of use who aren't lucky enough to hold stock in public corporations) that a publicly-owned business has a duty to be cost-efficient. We also understand that in a capitalist world we are likely to be forced to interact with entities that don't always choose to employ human labor to interact with its human customers. But in the final analysis, if I personally can choose to pay a few percent more to deal with a business that bothers to pay someone to listen to my problems and help me get my confusion sorted out, I will always take that option.
That is why, being the bloody-minded socialist that I am, I usually choose to stand in line at the supermarket checkout rather than take the option of the "self-service" checkout. I don't want to serve myself. I want the companies I deal with to pay someone to help me, and I want to be sure that my own business always presents a human face to its human customers. All Holden Web's customers are corporations, but it's their employees that I have to satisfy.
So, if you happen to be a Verizon Wireless stockholder, please ask some awkward questions at the next stockholders meeting. This laziness should be stomped on quickly, and hard.
If you happen to be in the IT industry, please make sure you don't phone it in by producing this kind of shabby excuse for a human interface.
And now I am in Atlanta, and things feel better.
I have written before about the rigors of modern day travel, and the travel industry (or a large part of it) appears to be doing its best to discourage people from traveling. Part of it, of course, is the TSA and its associated stupidities, but I will not again go into the irrationality of spending billions of dollars to make what is already the safest mode of transport in the world even safer (assuming that the TSA is indeed living up to that dubious claim, which I frankly doubt -- otherwise why aren't they shouting from the rooftops about the number of plots they have foiled?)
So today, for "convenience" I am flying to Atlanta. To minimize the airport hassle I have already checked in on-line, and paid $23 for the privilege of checking a bag. Assuming the charge on the way back is the same, this will amount to just over 24% of the price I have already paid for the ticket.
I have always disliked unbundling, ever since I argued in Sun against Eric Schmidt's proposal that Sun unbundle the C compiler from what was then SunOS. Since I was a minion and Eric was a big-shot you can guess how that one went (though Sun's eventual fate makes me glad that I sold my stock at $28). I suppose that's why I'm a socialist: while it may not give each user of a service the absolute lowest possible cost, it's much more efficient to spread the load around. If the rich weren't so mean, the poor could enjoy better lives. Sorry, where was I?
Oh, right. So, I have got through the security theater (doubly inconvenient this trip, since I am carrying two laptops) and I decide that, to conserve battery, I will find a venue that allows me to plug my power brick in. What do I find? Each and every establishment in the newly-refurbished Dulles airport appears to have been designed specifically to exclude any possibility that the on-line traveler such as myself might steal a few joules at their expense.
So, for the record, let me squeak this into the ears of any future airport Eric Schmidts who might be reading. If you provide power and wifi (assuming, of course, that your license from the airport doesn't force you to make your customers rely on the airport's crappy facilities) in your establishment, and advertise that fact, I will support your business in preference to the short-sighted idiots who insist on trying to milk me dry whenever I come into contact with them.
So now we come to Verizon Wireless. Having finally found a place quiet enough that I can plug into the power without creating a trip hazard (which, believe me, would be impossible when the airport was anything like busy), and to avoid whatever extortionate rates the airport authority might choose to charge, I plug in my cellular broadband card and fire up the Internet,only to be confronted by a dialog box telling me that I can upgrade. Upgrades are always good, right? Well, yes, but ... here's the dialog box, at the left.
Call me picky if you like, but this seems to me like the ultmate failure in quality assurance. I have to wonder how many pairs of eyeballs scrutinized this dialog box before it went into production, and how come none of the owners of said eyeballs thought to ask the question "What 'Update' button"? I am imagining that each scrutineer, supposing they notice any discrepancy at all between the text in the dialog box and the reality they were presented with, thought to themselves (consciously or otherwise) "Well, clearly they mean the 'Download' button". To which my immediate response is that they cannot possibly be geeks. I am a geek, and believe me I am intimately familiar with all the shit that can land on your head in short order when you make that kind of dumb-assed assumption. So being a geek, I decline to either "Download", or "Update" or whatever kind of trouble it is that Verizon would like to get into.
Next I am presented with an opportunity to "view my account". Now I actually have two accounts with Verizon Wireless, one of which seems to be uncomfortably and inextricably intertwined with my home-based FIOS account. So I am impressed to see both a "register" link and a pulldown that allows me to select "Business Account" rather than "Personal Account". Which I do before clicking the "register" link, whereupon I am presented with a form that asks me for quite a bit of information including both my Employer Identification Number (EIN) and my Dun and Bradstreet number.
Being in an airport, I figure I have done pretty well to produce the former, and I happily fill in the other fields, only to be presented with the message shown at the left. Now, this is telling me a number of things I don't particularly like.First off, there is something "invalid" about my company name. But of course I am left to guess what; it would clearly be far too easy to provide any description of the rules that are declaring my company name to be invalid.
Next I am informed that the Tax ID is invalid. I discover by reading the form (not the error message) that this is because I have failed to put a dash between the second and third digits, but apparently the programming monkeys who have put this application together have never thought about maybe, hey, just throwing anything that isn't a digit away. Even though only the digits in this particular identifier carry any meaning. Give me a break.
There is a similar problem with the telephone number, though in this case the programmers have taken the trouble to tell me exactly how the number needs to be formatted (thank you!). I especially like the double period at the end of that line, which implies that not only do I have to put dashes after the third and sixth digits, I also have to put a period at the end of it. This reminds me of many interactions where people have asked me my telephone number and I have replied "eight hundred dash four nine four dash nine one one nine". Not. This is getting quite cussworthy, but I am restraining myself.
Now the message about the email address again throws me into confusion, since I have (as a look at the form clearly shows) entered my email address one hundred percent correctly. username@domain.com, just like I always type it. So again I am left to guess exactly what about my email address the Verizon system has chosen to declare "invalid". The f-bomb is now hanging in the air, poised like the sword of Damocles above a web site that has clearly been programmed by monkeys, and not even monkeys with brains.
Lastly, just in case I didn't understand that I should have put that oh-so-important dash between the second and third digits, I am presented with a message that my "Federal Tax ID" was incorrect, as though the form has requested two separate tax IDs (which, by the way, it hasn't).
At this point my almost-forty-three years of programming experience, integrally connected to my geek identity, makes me want to scream "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? DON'T THEY WANT MY [expletive deleted] BUSINESS?". I swear, at this moment, if there was a button I could click with the label "Consign VerizonWireless and all its employees to hell" I would click it whether or not there was the slightest chance that the click would have any positive effect. It would just make me feel better. I am trying to interact with a corporate entity (which due to a strange and to my mind totally obsolescent notion of law has most of the legal rights of an individual) that doesn't give two hoots what its customers think about it or how infuriating its systems are to use.
At this stage I realize I am not complaining just as a programmer, or even just as a web systems designer, I am complaining as a human being. Where, I ask myself, is the VerizonWireless Quality Assurance department in all this? (They must have one: no corporation of that size can possibly have failed to consider the liability implications of not doing). Did anyone actually take the time to interact with this application and deliberately provide "invalid" answers to determine whether the systems response would be considered reasonable by a human being?
I swear, sometimes, I truly believe that top-level corporate managers' ultimate dream is a system that requires no human intervention at all. If this really is the case then I have to explain (and will do so, given access to the Verizon top level management and a sock full of wet sand, in explicit detail) that they are a long way from reaching their goal.
Sure, we all understand (even those of use who aren't lucky enough to hold stock in public corporations) that a publicly-owned business has a duty to be cost-efficient. We also understand that in a capitalist world we are likely to be forced to interact with entities that don't always choose to employ human labor to interact with its human customers. But in the final analysis, if I personally can choose to pay a few percent more to deal with a business that bothers to pay someone to listen to my problems and help me get my confusion sorted out, I will always take that option.
That is why, being the bloody-minded socialist that I am, I usually choose to stand in line at the supermarket checkout rather than take the option of the "self-service" checkout. I don't want to serve myself. I want the companies I deal with to pay someone to help me, and I want to be sure that my own business always presents a human face to its human customers. All Holden Web's customers are corporations, but it's their employees that I have to satisfy.
So, if you happen to be a Verizon Wireless stockholder, please ask some awkward questions at the next stockholders meeting. This laziness should be stomped on quickly, and hard.
If you happen to be in the IT industry, please make sure you don't phone it in by producing this kind of shabby excuse for a human interface.
And now I am in Atlanta, and things feel better.
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