While I applaud the publicity for the efforts of a local-ish (to me) researcher to study the patterns of computer hackers, I always cringe when press articles focus on money and personal info.
No question that getting into your bank account is a valuable thing for a hacker. Stealing your identity is theft one step removed: The hacker (or thief who buys the info. from said hacker) aims to steal your identity to steal from others.
My point is that it doesn't end there.
To wit: You could be flat, busted broke, and have a negative credit score, and hackers will still be interested in you as long as you have a functioning computer connected to the internet.
Here are just a few ways you can still be victimised, even when you think that you are "safe" because you're not Warren Buffet:
Spam - the original flavour. All the email addresses in your contacts list? Those can be stolen and spammed. I'm sure your Mom, your boss, and/or your BFF will all appreciate that...
Spam - now with new and improved Sleaze Factor(TM). If the hacker (or hacker's client) isn't spamming your friends with dodgy V1@gr@ or Nigerian Prince come-ons, they're trying to trick your contacts into infecting their own computers. (War story: The one and only virus that happened on my 2-year SysAdmin gig happened because a normally vigilant someone expected an email with an attachment and double-clicked it. Bottom line: It can happen to anyone. And I mean anyone.)
Spam - the social media version. If you have a social media account, those passwords can be sniffed and stolen. Love those sleazy DMs you sometimes get in Twitter or Facebook that are followed by an embarrassed apology from a friend who's just wrested back control over their account? Yeah, me neither. Want to be the one making those apologies to your aunt? Me neither.
Borgifying your computer. You may never think you have a fast enough CPU or half the RAM you could use. But believe-you-me, you have more than enough power to (unwittingly) help someone mine Bitcoins. And, holy moly, if you think your computer is slow now...
Borgifying your computer + bogarting your bandwidth. Remember the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that nearly took down the XBox network last Christmas? That dick move was brought to the world not only by hackers, but by hordes of infected computers (otherwise known as a "botnet.") Also, remember all that spam we were just talking about? Yeah, that's likely being pumped through compromised computers as well. Did Netflix streaming just sputter out? Oh, your ISP just billed you b/c you went over your monthly bandwidth ration? Sucks to be you...not to mention everyone else on the receiving end of your computer's shenanigans.
So, it could be just me being cynical about the human race (see afore-mentioned SysAdmin stint), but the whole "I don't have anything to hack" meme is being used as an excuse not to keep computers patched. And that, even a decade down the road from babysitting networks, just pisses me off.
As much as I despise the codified knee-jerk hysteria that masquerades as cybersecurity legislation, sometimes I wish that people could be legally barred from having admin. rights on their own computers after Computing While Lazy. Because when our digital lives are eating so deeply into our meatspace time, responsibility comes with the power to instantaneously connect with people all over the planet.
Showing posts with label The I/T Lexicon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The I/T Lexicon. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Monday, August 24, 2015
Innovation iconoclasm: Beyond the cult of the start-up
I stalled out about a quarter of the way through Geoffrey Moore's Dealing With Darwin, which has nothing to do with the quality of the book (which is excellent), and everything to do with my ability to be distracted. Now I'm picking it up again as my "nightcap" reading.
It kind of hit a nerve when I learned that the office where I spent the best years of my career has been broken up into functional "pods" (for lack of a better term). That's on the heels of a shake-up that saw a spike in my LinkedIn social circle. Zo wellz--the silver lining is that it spares me the risk of nostalgia. I mean, yeah, I can be nostalgic about the days when 20 or so of us were proudly referred to by the boss as "The Island of Misfit Toys." But we were also working on a scrappy new bet-the-branch-office product then. That takes a particular alchemy--not mere chemistry, which is far too predictable--of personalities to pull off.
And then at some point, you wake up and find youself and your product find yourself in a more mature market--which is a whole 'nuther game. That's what Dealing With Darwin is about. And probably why it's overlooked on most business reading lists. After all, Moore (and his colleagues) are known for the consulting work that preceded and spun out of Crossing the Chasm. The latter focuses entirely on growing a product market from the adventurous early adopters to the more sceptical mainstream (by bridging the gap between their very divergent needs).
That early stage company bringing something brand-new to a market with no mental map for what they're making/selling is what (nearly) everyone associates with "innovation," right?
Darwin, however, hammers home the much-neglected truth that there are more species of innovation than the brand-new product. Things like the following require "innovation":
The point is that established companies can't rest on their proverbial laurels. Any good idea will have copycats--some better and faster than others--and the "first to market" advantage has a limited shelf life. After that, it takes management discipline (and probably no small amount of luck) to stay ahead. Which will yield higher returns--investing R&D dollars into making a better product, or into reducing costs? Or maybe (just maybe) is it time to start exiting the race to the bottom and bring that skunkworks project into the light of day?
Those are not easy questions to tackle, particularly with all the baggage and politics of an established money-making track-record. While individuals may too often throw away tangible good in pursuit of phantoms, organisations are not so often guilty. Maybe it would easier if we'd more readily recognise innovation when it wears business casual in Toronto instead of just a Red Bull-stained hoodie in Silicon Valley.
It kind of hit a nerve when I learned that the office where I spent the best years of my career has been broken up into functional "pods" (for lack of a better term). That's on the heels of a shake-up that saw a spike in my LinkedIn social circle. Zo wellz--the silver lining is that it spares me the risk of nostalgia. I mean, yeah, I can be nostalgic about the days when 20 or so of us were proudly referred to by the boss as "The Island of Misfit Toys." But we were also working on a scrappy new bet-the-branch-office product then. That takes a particular alchemy--not mere chemistry, which is far too predictable--of personalities to pull off.
And then at some point, you wake up and find youself and your product find yourself in a more mature market--which is a whole 'nuther game. That's what Dealing With Darwin is about. And probably why it's overlooked on most business reading lists. After all, Moore (and his colleagues) are known for the consulting work that preceded and spun out of Crossing the Chasm. The latter focuses entirely on growing a product market from the adventurous early adopters to the more sceptical mainstream (by bridging the gap between their very divergent needs).
That early stage company bringing something brand-new to a market with no mental map for what they're making/selling is what (nearly) everyone associates with "innovation," right?
Darwin, however, hammers home the much-neglected truth that there are more species of innovation than the brand-new product. Things like the following require "innovation":
- Adding new features to an existing product (e.g., a camera to a phone)
- Making an existing product do more with fewer resources (e.g., lower-power computer chips)
- Tapping a new (unexpected) market for an existing product (e.g., Viagra was originally a failed treatment for high blood pressure)
- Up-scaling an existing product/market for higher profit-margins (Starbucks, Apple Computer, Whole Foods)
- Streamlining and standardising supply chains and work-flow (e.g., Ford Motor Company, McDonald's, Dell Computer, etc.)
- Re-tooling work-flows and supply-chains to emphasise quality and reduce the cost of mistakes (e.g. Toyota Motor Corporation)
- Reducing transaction friction/overhead with the end-consumer (e.g., Zipcar, Netflix)
- Abdicating responsibility for labour and safety laws by declaring your employees "contractors" and yourself a "technology platform" (e.g. Uber, TaskRabbit)
- Itemising core services and adding surcharges for them (e.g., airlines, banks)
The point is that established companies can't rest on their proverbial laurels. Any good idea will have copycats--some better and faster than others--and the "first to market" advantage has a limited shelf life. After that, it takes management discipline (and probably no small amount of luck) to stay ahead. Which will yield higher returns--investing R&D dollars into making a better product, or into reducing costs? Or maybe (just maybe) is it time to start exiting the race to the bottom and bring that skunkworks project into the light of day?
Those are not easy questions to tackle, particularly with all the baggage and politics of an established money-making track-record. While individuals may too often throw away tangible good in pursuit of phantoms, organisations are not so often guilty. Maybe it would easier if we'd more readily recognise innovation when it wears business casual in Toronto instead of just a Red Bull-stained hoodie in Silicon Valley.
Monday, July 6, 2015
The irony of "Internet time"
Normally, moving code and data from one server to another is something I try to do in the middle of the weekend (e.g. late Saturday night). Alas, even the best-calculated schedules sometimes are thrown awry. In this past weekend's move--a.k.a. "migration"--I was actually ahead of the usual curve of permissions not being correctly set up (which is normally the biggest show-stopper). But then my connection to the server would drop intermittently.
I've chosen the new hosting company for this application (and others yet to come) largely based on the fact that customer service is a matter of sending an email or picking up the phone. Not punting a form submission into a queue picked up halfway around the globe.
True to form, debugging has been ongoing since Saturday evening, and the preliminary diagnosis is a DNS issue.
Now, if you're not in I/T, the only thing you really need to know is that DNS (or the Domain Name System) basically functions as the phone book of the internet. Networked servers, just like phones, are known by a number. But we humans know the people (and companies) associated with those phones as names. So, just as you would search WhitePages.ca by name (and city) to find a number, your web browser queries a DNS server to translate the human-readable "www.duckduckgo.com" to the network address "107.21.1.61."
That lookup and translation happen so immediately and (usually) so seamlessly that it's easy to take for granted. (Unless, of course, you're a Rogers customer.) Until it doesn't work and a website you know is legit. 404s.
Unlike many other networking issues, DNS problems can take a long time to completely resolve. The reason is that when a web URL moves from one server (which is a number, remember!) to another, it can drop off the internet's radar. That's because not all DNS servers update at the same rate--some of them can take up to 72 hours. It's the price we pay for the decentralisation (and thus the robustness) of the internet.
But boy howdy, does a potential 3-day lag ever slow down debugging. Not to mention that having a key feature of the modern internet move so glacially feels more than a bit ironic when everything else has been speeding up over the past 20+ years. But it's not like irony and the internet are strangers, right?
I've chosen the new hosting company for this application (and others yet to come) largely based on the fact that customer service is a matter of sending an email or picking up the phone. Not punting a form submission into a queue picked up halfway around the globe.
True to form, debugging has been ongoing since Saturday evening, and the preliminary diagnosis is a DNS issue.
Now, if you're not in I/T, the only thing you really need to know is that DNS (or the Domain Name System) basically functions as the phone book of the internet. Networked servers, just like phones, are known by a number. But we humans know the people (and companies) associated with those phones as names. So, just as you would search WhitePages.ca by name (and city) to find a number, your web browser queries a DNS server to translate the human-readable "www.duckduckgo.com" to the network address "107.21.1.61."
That lookup and translation happen so immediately and (usually) so seamlessly that it's easy to take for granted. (Unless, of course, you're a Rogers customer.) Until it doesn't work and a website you know is legit. 404s.
Unlike many other networking issues, DNS problems can take a long time to completely resolve. The reason is that when a web URL moves from one server (which is a number, remember!) to another, it can drop off the internet's radar. That's because not all DNS servers update at the same rate--some of them can take up to 72 hours. It's the price we pay for the decentralisation (and thus the robustness) of the internet.
But boy howdy, does a potential 3-day lag ever slow down debugging. Not to mention that having a key feature of the modern internet move so glacially feels more than a bit ironic when everything else has been speeding up over the past 20+ years. But it's not like irony and the internet are strangers, right?
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
The I/T Lexicon: Responsive Design
Blogger's Note: "The I/T Lexicon" is a recurring series on this blog. Its intent is to break down an I/T buzz-word for folks who aren't in the industry, but who might need to understand it when buying the services of web-mongers like myself.
For various reasons, I'm in the market for a place where the bits and bites of my business website can hang their hats, kick off their boots, and drink beer in their underwear. So to speak.
Bits and bytes are intangible things, but it's advantageous to me to keep them as close to hand (geographically speaking) as possible. Not purely out of some "digital locavore" kind of ethos, mind. In my experience, smaller, more regional outfits tend to be more responsive--particularly when the lights suddenly go off. In other words, one has a better chance of dealing with actual system admins, rather than the harried script-readers of a GoDaddyBorg cube call centre.
I left a message with a Moncton design firm whose website listed "Web hosting" as a service. Plus, I'm always game for meeting folks who are better at the graphics/design part of web development. What they do and what I do are kind of yin and yang.
Naturally, each design firm has its strengths, so I poked around the website a bit more, and noticed an emphasis on something called "Responsive Design."
Now, it's part of my job to know what that means. But someone else--let's say a business owner or the administrator of a community organisation--may well not. If anything, the phrase "responsive web design" all but begs the question, "Who would want an unresponsive website?" (Amirite?) And it surprises me that media-centric design shops aren't at more pains to make sure potential clients know that's not just another buzzword. By which I mean being able not only to define it, but also to quantify its value.
Personally, I don't have a horse in this race. I do data-crunching, not design. But it's in absolutely no one's interest to have clients nodding and smiling because they're afraid of looking ignorant. That just leaves people feeling cheated. Particularly when selling services, it's not good for business.
So in the interest of a more knowledgeable clientele, here's what the term means to you.
First, some background history.
If you're above the age of 20, you might remember a time when computer monitors weren't flat, when they seemed to weigh as much a refrigerator, and they likely consumed as much electricity. The bigger the screen size, the more they stuck out in the back, and the more desk real estate they chewed up, right? That put definite limits on screen sizes.
Those hard limits and relatively primitive web browsers (and standards) vastly simplified things for the people who made software--particularly for the web. The conventional wisdom was to design for a screen size of 640 pixels by 480 pixels--effectively, a 4:3 ratio of width to height.
Along came LCD technology. And then its cost plummeted. TV screens became huge. Cellphone screens offered more than a postage stamp of dark grey on light gray. Laptops could be monstrous "road warrior" slabs...or small enough to tuck into a man-bag. And then the iPad landed...followed by half a bajillion knockoffs. And then smartwatches.
Which brings us to 2015 and a Cambrian explosion of internet-connected devices with LCD screens. Two factors in particular delivered the one-two TKO punch to the 1990s rules of designing for the web:
For instance, we're pretty familiar by now with the home page formula of a logo & company name sitting on top of a menu sitting on top of the content, all sitting on top of a page footer, right? That should work on a laptop or PC, with plenty of eye-pleasing padding to spare.
But open the site on your mobile phone's browser, and....ooof! The text could be cramped, unreadably small, run off the screen, wrap around to the next line, etc. Even browsing the site on something larger like an iPad could be a nasty surprise, particularly if you hold the iPad in "portrait" orientation.
Going the other route and optimising for small screens and portrait orientation will more than likely look ridiculously chunky back on the PC screen.
Maintaining multiple versions of the same material (a.k.a. "content" in the parlance of web designers & developers) is not the optimal solution. For one thing, it's an unnecessary expense. For another, web developers don't enjoy it any more than their clients. Probably less, in fact.
That's where responsive design comes to the rescue. Don't get me wrong--it's not magic pixie dust that developers sprinkle into their coffee every morning...or even on the web pages themselves. It's planning and it's work and it generally requires compromise on top of basic empathy for the people who will ultimately use the website.
For the client, this has several ramifications. Because whether or not they currently realise it, are part of the design team, too. For their sake, I include the following "do"s and "don't"s:
So there, design-firm-in-Moncton-who-shall-remain-nameless: I've done you a solid...even though you never asked for it. Now would you please return my call? I have bits and bytes to schlep.
For various reasons, I'm in the market for a place where the bits and bites of my business website can hang their hats, kick off their boots, and drink beer in their underwear. So to speak.
Bits and bytes are intangible things, but it's advantageous to me to keep them as close to hand (geographically speaking) as possible. Not purely out of some "digital locavore" kind of ethos, mind. In my experience, smaller, more regional outfits tend to be more responsive--particularly when the lights suddenly go off. In other words, one has a better chance of dealing with actual system admins, rather than the harried script-readers of a GoDaddy
I left a message with a Moncton design firm whose website listed "Web hosting" as a service. Plus, I'm always game for meeting folks who are better at the graphics/design part of web development. What they do and what I do are kind of yin and yang.
Naturally, each design firm has its strengths, so I poked around the website a bit more, and noticed an emphasis on something called "Responsive Design."
Now, it's part of my job to know what that means. But someone else--let's say a business owner or the administrator of a community organisation--may well not. If anything, the phrase "responsive web design" all but begs the question, "Who would want an unresponsive website?" (Amirite?) And it surprises me that media-centric design shops aren't at more pains to make sure potential clients know that's not just another buzzword. By which I mean being able not only to define it, but also to quantify its value.
Personally, I don't have a horse in this race. I do data-crunching, not design. But it's in absolutely no one's interest to have clients nodding and smiling because they're afraid of looking ignorant. That just leaves people feeling cheated. Particularly when selling services, it's not good for business.
So in the interest of a more knowledgeable clientele, here's what the term means to you.
First, some background history.
If you're above the age of 20, you might remember a time when computer monitors weren't flat, when they seemed to weigh as much a refrigerator, and they likely consumed as much electricity. The bigger the screen size, the more they stuck out in the back, and the more desk real estate they chewed up, right? That put definite limits on screen sizes.
Those hard limits and relatively primitive web browsers (and standards) vastly simplified things for the people who made software--particularly for the web. The conventional wisdom was to design for a screen size of 640 pixels by 480 pixels--effectively, a 4:3 ratio of width to height.
Along came LCD technology. And then its cost plummeted. TV screens became huge. Cellphone screens offered more than a postage stamp of dark grey on light gray. Laptops could be monstrous "road warrior" slabs...or small enough to tuck into a man-bag. And then the iPad landed...followed by half a bajillion knockoffs. And then smartwatches.
Which brings us to 2015 and a Cambrian explosion of internet-connected devices with LCD screens. Two factors in particular delivered the one-two TKO punch to the 1990s rules of designing for the web:
- The sheer number of possible screen sizes
- The fact that screen orientation can change between landscape and portrait on-the-fly
For instance, we're pretty familiar by now with the home page formula of a logo & company name sitting on top of a menu sitting on top of the content, all sitting on top of a page footer, right? That should work on a laptop or PC, with plenty of eye-pleasing padding to spare.
But open the site on your mobile phone's browser, and....ooof! The text could be cramped, unreadably small, run off the screen, wrap around to the next line, etc. Even browsing the site on something larger like an iPad could be a nasty surprise, particularly if you hold the iPad in "portrait" orientation.
Going the other route and optimising for small screens and portrait orientation will more than likely look ridiculously chunky back on the PC screen.
Maintaining multiple versions of the same material (a.k.a. "content" in the parlance of web designers & developers) is not the optimal solution. For one thing, it's an unnecessary expense. For another, web developers don't enjoy it any more than their clients. Probably less, in fact.
That's where responsive design comes to the rescue. Don't get me wrong--it's not magic pixie dust that developers sprinkle into their coffee every morning...or even on the web pages themselves. It's planning and it's work and it generally requires compromise on top of basic empathy for the people who will ultimately use the website.
For the client, this has several ramifications. Because whether or not they currently realise it, are part of the design team, too. For their sake, I include the following "do"s and "don't"s:
- Expect to do a lot of thinking and goal-setting and decision-making up front. Good designers/developers should ask "Why?" A lot.
- Respect the limits of each device. Users don't want to thumb-type the equivalent of War and Peace to fill out a web form.
- Prioritise your content from your user's perspective-of-the-moment. What's relevant in the office (on a full-size screen) may not be relevant on a mobile screen during the bus-ride home.
- Be prepared to review multiple designs. Yes, they'll probably all blur together after awhile. That's okay. Just focus on meeting the goals.
- Don't fall in love with any single layout if it means ugly compromises for others.
- Don't rely on Flash or .PDF to get your point across. They won't work on all devices.
So there, design-firm-in-Moncton-who-shall-remain-nameless: I've done you a solid...even though you never asked for it. Now would you please return my call? I have bits and bytes to schlep.
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