Nobody cares.
People talk about Mona Lisa and not the brush used.
People love Shakespeare for his works, not his pen.
Your product will win or lose because of its quality, and not because of the choice of tools used to build it. Programming languages affect the quality of your products only if you design the product based on the limitations of the tool.
Design your product first. With all its beauty. Then use the best tool to build it.
Security is meant to be the building block of every computer system. But usually we see that security is just a feature in many products – like it is not an integral part, but an extra add-on. And in the windows operating system, security is not even a feature – it is absent. If you want to protect your computer from malicious programs in the wild, you have to install some antivirus software from third-party vendors.
But there are some problems with these antivirus softwares. Firstly, they are pure annoyances. They increase the booting time of your PC, they show some flashy windows and dialog boxes every now-and-then, and they eat up a lot of RAM and CPU. And as if these were not enough, antivirus software need to be updated almost daily. Then there is a problem of which product to use. Which one should we install? Foo Antivirus, Foo Internet Security, Foo Mail Security, Foo Firewall, or Foo Antispyware ? Or should we install all of them? Its confusing. And even after installing the required software, there is no assurance that your system will be completely secure.
This is the reason why many professional computer users do not use any antivirus software in their machines. They think that antivirus software is more nuisance than the virus itself. They will deal with an occasional internet worm rather than dealing with the creepy antivirus software all the time.
So how do we protect our computers from malicious programs without using any anti-virus? It can be done with a little care. Here are some tips for preventing trojans, worms an viruses from infecting your machine. I am preparing a detailed article on detecting and removing malwares. Consider this as a preface for that. And keep in mind that these are just some pointers and you should not think that you are protected from viruses just by following these steps. Security can never be assured. But it can be maximized. So these are just some tips to get you going if you are not inclined to using an antivirus software in your computer. If you are a basic computer user, you should probably install an antivirus software. If you are a pro-user, you already know how to protect your computer from viruses. And if you are something in between, read on…
Prevention
If you need extra help, install an antivirus. 
You may disable it from the startup of your PC so that it is not a nuisance, but when in need, you can use it to scan suspicious files.
Remember that human beings are the weakest link in any security system. So educate yourself about the fraudulent activities in the IT space, and spread the knowledge.
The Internet is a world on its own. For many people around the world, it is the alternate world. And for many of us, it is where we live, and we dream – it is our primary world. But it turns out that the Internet is so broken, so insecure, and so dynamic that it is very difficult to live peacefully in here. Here are some problems I see with the Internet and why it works in spite of all these.
No or low Standards
99% of the websites (including this) are not made adhering to the standards and this is magnified by the fact that our major browsers are worse in standards compliance. People will respect the web standards only if the web browsers strictly follow the standards. But the current trend is that developers of the major browsers are competing in making standards of their own. Yes, the IE8 passed the Acid2 test, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft will not introduce any proprietary standards in it. And every new proprietary standard they introduce will result in a more broken web some years down the line.
Interoperability
There is nothing like this in the whole Internet, and most of the people don’t know what the term means. Interoperability is a big issue in today’s social web. Users would like the different web services they use to be helping them in combining the services. I would like to see the different web services to merge their services seamlessly and thus giving a unique experience to each user by forming a large application that incorporates all the small web services.
Data Portability
Data portability is an issue being discussed by many, related to the Facebook-Scoble debate. As Mathew Ingram puts it, the main question here is:
Who does that data belong to? It might have been collected and organized in the way it has because of Facebook’s tools, and he obviously agreed to the terms of use that he has since broken, but there’s no question that the information itself should belong to Scoble (and the rest of us). So what rights should he have when it comes to removing that data from a site like Facebook? And who gets to decide?
Obviously, the problem is that most of the big corporations ignore this right of a user. And this persuades users to continue with the crappy web application because their data is trapped in it for ever.
Privacy
Again, privacy issues are all around the place and people are enjoying the furious debates. Google knows what you searches for, what is in your e-mails and what videos you watch. And if you think that Google would not know you visited this site, think again.
The Adsense ads in this site may be tracking the cookies in your computer and it knows exactly who you are. It know exactly what tabs are open in your browser. We have heard the Facebook Beacon row too. Also I don’t mean privacy issues are related to just Google and Facebook. Something must be done fast before privacy becomes history.
Anonymity
Anonymity is different from privacy, but both are related. By anonymity I mean the inability to know who did what in the web. For example, in the real world you know who bought an item from your shop. You may not know his address but s/he has an identity. But in the web, you cannot know for sure who commented on your blog and who downloaded a software from your website. People do not have a face in the web. Anonymity or rather the feeling of anonymity is what boosted file sharing networks and caused widespread Piracy.
Others
There are other problems which I will just list here. These are mostly irritations which causes junk data in the web.
If you can think of any others, please list them too.
So, how does the Internet work in spite of these?
The answer is simple. Millions of people out there are wasting billions of man hours trying to make the things work. It is not that the whole Internet is working in spite of it being broken. It is the magic of the hard work by human beings that make it work.
Many people advocate the use of only the keyboard in the computer and they argue that it is much faster than using the mouse. This is indeed true to some extend. Using a keyboard can be a good idea to increase your productivity in some cases. But not in the Internet. And not when using your graphics editor. And not when skipping to an arbitrary time in your media player. And not in many other cases.
The computer mouse is an essential part of our technology lifestyle, and there is no escape from that. The mouse is not going anywhere in the near future.
But the mouse comes with a set of some serious usability issues. The biggest problem is that the mouse is a separate device, an extra device other than the keyboard and it needs a hand specifically for using it. But the keyboard needs the user to dedicate both of his hands to use it. And thus we are in serious trouble. We have to switch our hands between the keyboard and the mouse and balance the act perfectly to get our things done.
I have always had the feeling that the mouse and the keyboard should be combined into one more usable device, or make the mouse-keyboard transition smoother. But I am not in favor of the unusable trackballs or touch-pads either. It is not essential that we invent a new device that does the job of both. But if we can do that, it is the best solution. But I don’t foresee any change in this field for a reasonable time. So we will have to concentrate on making he existing mouse-keyboard configuration more productive.
The main problem with the mouse is that it does not have sufficient number of buttons. Most of us usually use two button mouse with a scroll-wheel that can work as a third button too. And we have seen that the scroll-wheel is an excellent addition to the mouse. There are some gaming mice that have extra buttons, but they are of no use for other purposes. But what we actually want is not some cute buttons for firing your secondary weapon in Quake 4. We want some highly useful buttons that help very much in increasing the productivity of a user.
I think that it will be better if I could have the Enter or Return button on the mouse. An enter button is different from the single click. A single click sends the command to the control which the mouse pointer is currently pointing to. The Enter button sends the command to the default control or the highlighted control in the active window. Having this button would really help users to dismiss many dialog boxes and other forms that pop-up every now and then in every application they use.
I have encountered a series of dialog boxes that must be dismissed to do some simple task in many common applications. That is the reason why I think it is essential to have e Return button on the mouse. Not that I am pressing for a return button. Rather, would like to have any change that makes using the keyboard-mouse combo more usable.
What worries me is that even after so many years, there is very little change that happened to the mouse other than the scroll-wheel and the optical motion detector. Now it is time for an innovation; we must add some more buttons to the mouse. Yes, we have been using sophisticated input mechanisms like the keyboard and the mouse for so many years now and I strongly feel that some extra buttons on the mouse is what we can perfectly get along with.
Orkut is famous for the never ending list of bugs in it. Users have even spotted bugs that can be exploited to view locked private albums. Today while browsing through a forum, I spotted this*:
As you can see, the forum shows messages 1-10 of 10. This means that there are no further messages. But the next link is active!!! What for?
This is just a case of not applying thought to the development of the product. Adding more features, bells and whistles and then more, you forget to get the usability right. If you have millions of users, who cares to fix these small bugs? You will be working on the ads. Won’t you?
As if it weren’t bug enough, I found something more when I clicked the next link just out of curiosity:
Yes. 11-10 of 10. Clearly, someone got his loop wrong.
*I have squeezed images parts to show the relevant portions.
Designing websites can be very challenging if your client do really care about the work you do. Some clients will not understand what is good or bad for their business and they will agree if we tell them “This is the best design you will get” or “This is a special type of design – you won’t understand”. But then there are some clients who think a lot, who care about their business and who really want their website to enhance their business. Continue Reading »
Browsers are the most important applications in the modern world. Many people spend lots of time surfing the internet, so choosing the right browser should be a priority. I have been trying out Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Opera to find out the right one for me. There are many things people want in a browser and they advocate browsers based on that. Standard compliance and security may be features many would be looking forward to. For me, it is ease of use. The functions I need freuquently should be the ones that are easiest to do. Continue Reading »
