We work on the Internet and are constantly consuming information. There's a lot of it out there. We'd forget it if we didn't write it down someplace…
Visual Lizard's blog covers everything from web standards to the muppets, from php to comic books to music, just about anything we find interesting
A research survey done by Akamai has shown that the average person who makes purchases online has very little patience for slow loading websites. According to this BBC news article, 75% of users will not consider returning to a site that takes longer than a few seconds to load. According to the survey the number one priority for online shoppers is the display speed of a site. One of the interesting findings of the survey was that when it came to slower loading sites users found them more difficult to navigate and the checkout process was also very slow.
As a web developer it has become apparent to me over my years in this industry that the separation of content, design, and functionality and the development of a site adhering to web standards significantly increases the speed and efficiency of a site. So if speed is the primary concern of online shoppers, it behooves the online merchant to make the online shopping experience both simple and quick. Having graphics and media heavy merchant sites, while pretty to look at, do not serve the consumer’s best interest, which in turn means fewer sales for the merchant.
All politics aside, I am looking at this documentary from the software developer point of view. This documentary is about some of the software used in the current electoral system in the United States. The idea and ideal behind the system is to take in the votes of the public, store them electronically, and bring them to a central tabulating system to count the votes for the various candidates. Seems simple enough. Problem - what if the system were tampered with? With the last two federal elections in the U.S. being so controversial, HBO supported a documentary looking into the computerized electoral system to see if it is possible to influence the result of an election by the equivalent of high tech ballot-box stuffing.
As a web developer I know a little about software programming and what is possible in terms of influencing data results. The big question asked by the documentary makers is as follows:
Is it possible to hack the software in order to modify the results of the vote?
Alarmingly it turns out that not only were they able to modify the results of a test vote using the actual machines used today in the U.S. electoral system, but the software that is supposed to detect any tampering was also tricked. The system they used to trick the system was a simple math sequence which technically started one candidate with a negative vote count and another with a positive vote count. The non-profit organization "Black Box Voting", formed by Bev Harris of Seattle, Washington, contacted computer scientists from Johns Hopkins University and a well known Hacker from Finland to look into the voting software used by the largest voting machine manufacturer in the United States.
The software at which they looked (which was supposedly classified as secret) was found on the company’s public FTP site (oops!). A second security flaw was found on the central tabulating software which allows access, by an individual, to the datatable which contains the tabulated vote data. This access gives the individual unhindered access to modify the data. By modifying the data in the datatables themselves there is no way to determine if the data was tampered with. The company who developed the software has made claims that their system is secure. They make a fallacious analogy at one point that what Black Box Voting has done is the equivalent of...
Stealing a car which has the doors open and the keys in the ignition.
The problem with that thinking is that this system should have some security internally beyond the people watching over the machines themselves. Once you’re in the system, it seems there is nothing stopping anyone from modifying the data.
The other major issue involving the election process in the United States is that there is no transparency to the electronic process. The companies who create this software regard the process as "Trade Secrets". This means that the process is also hidden from the governments who are elected through this process. It is no wonder that the U.S. election system is coming under fire if the people trusted to make the elections fair are hiding the process so that nobody can tell if it is fair or not.
Originally I thought the documentary was going to have a major political slant and go after the administration. What I saw was not political at all. It was just a very disheartening look at how corporate greed flouts its power at the average citizen saying there is nothing you can do to stop us. Let us hope that those with the power will not let this continue to slide.
The Entrepreneurs Organization Winnipeg is a chapter of EO Worldwide. This site was an opportunity for us to flex our programming muscles by applying flash video using a content managed system making the flash videos a dynamic part of the content. The client required the ability to add short promotional videos associated to upcoming events. Rather than describing the events through copy, they decided to use edited video promotion. We therefore had to provide them with specific functionality to upload images, flash video files, and specific flash players for each video.
The second part to this site was to provide a members only section with videos targeted specifically to members of the organization. This required a site login which would allow access to this section. The client also wanted to provide the viewer with a video about us section. This allows them to add and update video messages providing the viewer with an explanation of what the organization is all about.
The third part of the site was to allow members to register for the listed upcoming events. By providing this functionality we are able to supply the event organizers with a logistics tool indicating how many people will be attending a specified event. Some additional functionality allowing non-members to purchase event tickets online will be added at a later date.
We are currently undergoing a bit of a realignment, please pardon the interruption.
Over the next week or so we are going to be implementing the following:
Stay tuned loyal visitor. We appreciate you coming by and hopefully you like the new visuallizard.com as much as the old one.
Well, Apple has finally added the Core Duo 2 processors to their Macbook Pro line. Santa .... are you listening?
In the past two years, I’ve had to learn how to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL on a Windows machine, a process I was able to leave to another department in the past. I had to learn how to deal with my.ini files, php.ini files, httpd.conf files, moving the htdocs folders, move MySQL’s data folder, etc. And every time, every time I thought I had the process down, the next time I touched a box, guaranteed I ran into a problem that had me fiddling with settings for over an hour or two.
Maybe it was just me. :) Needless to say, I was sick and tired of wrestling with it. When a new project came up that required I relearn the whole installation over to accommodate PHP5 and MySQL5, it nearly broke me... but luckily WAMP5 was there to save me!
After 10 years of building web sites, I found many of these links to be pretty good resources and reminders. This page is the kind of resource I would have paid money for when I started out. For all you up and comers, bookmark this one and refer to it often. A List Aparts Resources for Beginners - Part 1 and Part 2.
Enjoy.
US and UK scientists using a "metamaterial" made of fibreglass and copper successfully cloaked a copper cylinder rendering it invisible to the microwave detectors they were using. While the object was still optically visible, their microwave measuring instruments indicated that the copper cylinder was not there. According to these scientists, microwaves behave in a similar fashion to radar waves. Essentially what is being said here is that will eventually be possible to render an object invisible to radar. The military applications are of course stupendous.
From the standpoint of a lay person, we have been informed of stealth technology which renders some high-tech bombers almost invisible to radar making them very effective military weapons. This new discovery could make current stealth technology seem like a medieval weapon in modern warfare. The application of this technology, once perfected, could render a fighter jet or bomber completely invisible to radar.
It is probably very fortunate that this technology was not found during the Cold War. Imagine the weapons proliferation that would have taken place if it was available. First Strike capability was the real worry in those days, and this technology would allow that capability. Let’s hope that this discovery will not lead down that road.
I have a beautiful husky that I love taking to one of the few off leash parks in the city. There is currently construction going on at the park and most of the dog owners that I have talked to don't really know what is going on in regards to this issue.
I have contacted the City Councilor for the area Gord Steves with regards to this matter and he has sent me the plans for the park which doesn't look as bad as I first thought..
Click this link to open a PDF of the plans so you can see the proposed development.
Hopefully this construction phase will lead to a better facility for all and that we can all co-exist together.
Microsoft offically released the latest version of Internet Explorer 7, and we immediately downloaded and installed it on one of the test boxes here at Visual Lizard. Julian has posted his first impressions on the new browser, focusing on how websites render in the new browser. I’ll probably spend some more time with it next week, but I warn you now... it’s looking like I will not be a fan of it. Also, it seems IE7 still completely buggers up FTP through Windows Explorer (though, we had IE7 Beta3 running on the same machine and it might be that version’s fault.
So, in the spirit of things, I downloaded and tried out Firefox 2.0 RC3, the pre-release candidate of Mozilla’s excellent browser. It isn’t a major rejiggering, as in IE7, but rather a realigning of existing elements and addition of popular features. Here are a couple quick impressions:
Overall, I’m liking the latest version of Firefox. Familiar enough that you’re immediately comfortable with it, but sprinkled with many new "hey, that’s neat" moments. Unfortunately, the FCKEditor crash issue makes it near unuseable as my regular browser, but I’ll cross my fingers for a fix and be looking forward to the final release. :)
Internet Explorer 7 has officially been released. It is live and you can download it from Microsoft.com/ie/. If you have been building web sites for any number of years, you are familiar with the dread that is IE 6 when it comes to CSS and how it interprets the specifications [1] [2.1] [3]. Well, IE 7, out of the box, does certainly do a better job than IE 6.
Today’s post is a really quick review of the IE 7 browser. Here are a few things, in no particular order, that we have noticed so far:
As for when the general public will be getting IE 7 pushed to them, that happens on November 1st. For all our developer friends, prepare your fingers, there are many hours of upgrading CSS coming before Christmas.