Jeff's Lunchbreak

Well, I fell a little behind in keeping up with my goal of at least one update per month. I've actually been spending much of the time that I'd normally devote to this site writing essays. Normally, I add my essays to this site, but for various reasons, I'd rather not do that with these. But, in the interest of adding something to this site so that it can continue to grow, I've added four photos to the Miscellaneous page of my Photo section. They're pictures from a day trip my family took about a year ago to Palo Duro Canyon, just outside Amarillo, TX. I'd originally intended to make a whole new section for those pictures, but once I got to looking at them, there really just weren't enough good ones. And while I was at it, I updated this section to my new format, where clicking on a thumbnail takes you to an html page with the picture on it, instead of linking directly to the picture. I hadn't done it before because there were only two pictures, but now that there are six, I figure it's worth the improved navigation.

Posted by Jeff on A, Jun 22 | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

I was reading an essay yesterday on the Microsoft technet site about the problems of trying to secure your network by focusing on technical solutions and ignoring the users. It's a serious problem, but it was summed up very succintly and humorously with this passage.

Finally, host-based outbound firewalls are a perfect example of why pure technical solutions can fail. These firewalls ask users intelligent questions, such as the one you see in Figure 1.

Figure 1 What We Show the User

The problem is that these dialog boxes were not exactly written by people people. They were written by propeller heads, for propeller heads, because the propeller heads typically do not know any real people. When the average user is confronted with this dialog, he does not actually see it at all. What he sees is a lot like Figure 2.

Figure 2 What the User Actually Sees

That hits the nail right on the head.

Posted by Jeff on A, Jun 16 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)