Monday, August 20, 2012

passwords for services storing inconsequential information

will not force contortions for extra "security" where it is only questionably necessary. why have at minimum one letter, one number, and one non-letter, non-number character in a password for a service storing my cereal preference? also, let's be clear: 1) no one endorses repeating passwords across services, 2) services storing important data should have strong security (a single password, no matter how complicated, seems inadequate. give me multifactor). a sense of appropriateness and occasion is indispensable in diplomats and products both. when i am king, etc. 

Friday, March 2, 2012

an error message

should declare a) its source, b) its unique identifier and the system in which that identifier is unique, c) a human-readable description of the error, that we may never again gnash our teeth and resist in a kingly fashion the urge to throw the monitor out of the window. when i am king, etc.

Monday, February 27, 2012

journals requiring idiosyncratic formatting and citation styles

will publish a typesetting and bibliographic style file, so that we will not spend many hours fiddling with existing style files to do the work that the journals should have done to start with. when i am king, etc.

Monday, January 16, 2012

favicons

will be informative and intentional so that never again are we confronted with rows of browser tabs, half of which have the little globe symbol denoting a website that forgot (or didn't care to) design itself a favicon. on pain of pain, when i am king, etc.