Dan Siemon

Category: Musings

  • Bank websites

    It boggles my mind that the banks haven’t figured out how to make their websites more useful than they are. Why are these sites limited to online versions of bank tellers? Here’s what I want my bank’s site to provide: Allow me to categorize or tag every transaction. I want to mark that Subway is […]

  • End-to-end in standards and software

    Two things. Both relate to Microsoft but that is just by coincidence. The first Apparently IE8 will allow the HTML author to specify the name and version number of the browser that the page was designed for. For example, the author can add a meta tag that says essentially “IE6”. IE8 will see this tag […]

  • EBay and voice service

    So EBay thinks that voice calls will be free in the future because calls will be subsidized by advertising. This was their justification for paying way too much for Skype. How they came to this conclusion is beyond me. If anything current trends seem to me to indicate that consumers will use whatever technology they […]

  • Coping with human error in the router world

    The November 2004 issue of ACM Queue contains an article entitled Coping with Human Error in IT Systems by Aaron B. Brown of IBM Research. This article got me thinking about how modern routers cope with human errors. One of the first nuggets of knowledge comes early in the article. Human error happens for many […]

  • A common archive format for web forums and email lists?

    Here’s a little wish list idea for someone with more time than I to work on. Since the idea came from the use of Usenet it is probably best to start with a short description of what exactly Usenet is. Usenet is a method for large groups of people to communicate about particular subjects. These […]

  • History

    I recently completed a summer term history course. The title of the course was Europe 1715 to present. Wow, I actually thought I had a clue about European history before this course. Was I ever wrong. The amazing mess that was Europe in the 1800s brings the current problems in other areas of the world […]

  • Police fund raising

    Yesterday I got a call from the Police Association of Ontario. It was basically a telemarketing call as they were trying to raise funds. This really bothers me for a couple of reasons. I always find it very intimidating when the police associations or the fire department equivalent call looking for money. As a society […]

  • Why are new laws our first reaction?

    For those who are new to the story last year there was a horrible abduction and murder of a young girl in Toronto named Holly Jones. See CBC — Holly Jones for a time line and some background information. On June 16th the trial of Michael Briere, the accused murderer began. He pleaded guilty. The […]

  • Easy to what?

    Is “easy to use” an overloaded UI term?