Do you remember, in the ‘before’ times, when the phone would ring? Are you at the age where the phone was a plastic thing with numbers on it, which was connected to a special socket in the wall? So it rang. Ring. Ring ring. Who is it? Wait! Skip a few years later, and this other plastic gadget-thing which dad bought showed us the number that was calling us. Nope, we don’t know this number. Ring ring. Sync A few
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By Ran Arad | July 14th, 2010 | Filed under Standardization
Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror wrote some months back on the fake user interface, and its ability to trick innocent users into running malicious software. It was on my to-do list for a while, but now I noticed a link to another post from three years ago, discussing the “dancing bunnies” problem (aka the “dancing pigs” problem), as formulated by Larry Osterman: It’s a description of what happens when a user receives an email message that says “click here to
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By Ran Arad | November 12th, 2008 | Filed under Development
So I was instant messaging my wife the other night. We were both in the living room, with a laptop in each lap, and we could just talk, but we used IM instead. Now, Mrs. Code of Contact is a great at multi-tasking – she is known to have two IM conversations going on while she is talking on the phone and watching TV (Happy Birthday dear). So sending her an IM is the best way for me to get
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By Ran Arad | August 15th, 2008 | Filed under Standardization
In the standardized human behavior series, I discuss human behavior, compare it to a protocol and see what we can alter or learn from it. Previously I considered whether people want to be standardized at all and concluded that they do not. Nobody wants to think of himself as a puppet manipulated by external forces or to act just as is expected of him. It’s possible to take the “Soup Nazi” episode from the Seinfeld sitcom as an example. The
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By Ran Arad | May 14th, 2008 | Filed under Interoperability, Standardization
I took a break after the last time discussing standardization of human behavior, but now I’m back with a new problem: if I call someone, and I hear the call waiting tone, how long should I hold? How long must I back off before I call again? Back-off time is especially problematic here, since humans are notoriously bad random number generators. Random back-off time is critical to prevent crowding of servers, but how do you prevent parents to a new
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By Ran Arad | March 24th, 2008 | Filed under Standardization
I called a friend of mine the other day, and he answered and immediately (accidentally?) disconnected. I thought of calling back, but then I thought maybe he it was in the middle of something, and just wanted the phone to stop ringing by opening and closing his clam-phone; or maybe he’s trying to reach me right now, and if I call him we’ll both get a busy tone. On the other hand, he may be expecting me to call him,
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By Ran Arad | March 3rd, 2008 | Filed under Standardization
