Category Archives: Rants

MoinMoin sub-page linking is confusing

23 December 2008 – 20:50

MoinMoin supports sub-pages, which is a great thing for organizing the lots of wiki-pages. However, the way you write links violates the principle of least surprise: to specify an absolute link, you simply write the target name (e.g., HelpOnLinking), but to specify a relative link to a sub-page, you prepend the sub-page name with [...]

By Emil Sit | Also posted in Technology | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Porting social networks into FriendFeed

19 December 2008 – 17:42

The other day, I complained on Twitter that it was impossible to check-in occasionally to see what people I know had been up to, and separate all that activity out from the prolific people that I’ve followed just because they occasionally say interesting things. And just to prove that fact, I totally missed the [...]

By Emil Sit | Also posted in Technology | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Nexenta insecure by default

24 October 2006 – 12:12

The concept of providing operating systems that are secure by default should be second nature to OS vendors. All major operating systems vendors have been affected by exploits that allow remote attackers to take over the computer and have realized that it is a bad thing: much better to reduce the possible avenues of attack as much as possible without relying [...]

By Emil Sit | Tagged | Comments (2)

MBTA Bus Idiocy

22 September 2006 – 23:18

Today’s post is a cautionary tale for usability testing. The MBTA in Boston has been in the process of upgrading the entire T infrastructure to support automated fare collection, in the form of Charlie Tickets. The stated goal of these upgrades, including the new fare boxes being installed on buses, is to provide faster and simpler service. Public transportation is [...]

By Emil Sit | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Choosing Online Services

17 July 2006 – 16:32

Decline in storage costs, Web 2.0, and other trends have led to a profusion of online services clamoring to host your data. At this point, even if you are the most conservative user and a stalwart late adopter of online services, you have likely heard about a wide range of online services: storing and sharing calendars, lists, photos, bookmarks, [...]

By Emil Sit | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Boycott Performance Bike

24 March 2006 – 15:40

Boycott Performance Bike.

Performance is a company that sells bike components. They’re pretty big and have acquired their former competitors like Nashbar and SuperGo. That’s too bad because I really don’t like Performance. Maybe you shouldn’t either.

In 2001, Kevin Fu and I (along with some other members of the Applied Security Reading Group) were looking into the security [...]

By Emil Sit | Tagged , , , | Comments (19)