[Repost] Usability

Repost from: Vinko’s Satellite Blog

Usability is very wide spread concept that not enough designer pay attention to.

I am not only referring to software design, industrial design, or architect. Of course the concept is much more prominent in these profession now a days, but there are still life threatening design professions that still do not put enough emphasis on usability.

Case in point are the designers for the Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Yesterday an Airbus 320 ran off the runway killing all 189 people on board.

This airport is the busiest airport in Brazil with international flights on jumbo jets landing every few minutes.

Now they reports there had always been complaints fro airline pilots, claiming the runway to be too short for landing. These complaints suppose to have existed for years.

What I don’t understand is how an international airport can operate for so long with such alledged defect.

The most surprising part of the accident, was the fact that everyone died. As many knows there had been many incidents where airliners ran off runways for various reasons. Including the incident in Hong Kong where the Chinese airline pilot ran off the runway of the old Kai Tak International Airport and crashed into the Victoria Harbour.

so why did these passengers die? That is because the plane ran into the airport’s fuel tanks when it ran off the runway and burst into flames; with temperatures of over 1000C. Who in their right minds would put suchdangerous harzards at the end of a runway? Of course we do not expect planes will run off runways, but accidents will happen, and placing dangerous flamable fuel tanks at the end of a runway definitely did not take into account of usability.

Usability

Usability is very wide spread concept that not enough designer pay attention to.

I am not only referring to software design, industrial design, or architect. Of course the concept is much more prominent in these profession now a days, but there are still life threatening design professions that still do not put enough emphasis on usability.

Case in point are the designers for the Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Yesterday an Airbus 320 ran off the runway killing all 189 people on board.

This airport is the busiest airport in Brazil with international flights on jumbo jets landing every few minutes.

Now they reports there had always been complaints fro airline pilots, claiming the runway to be too short for landing. These complaints suppose to have existed for years.

What I don't understand is how an international airport can operate for so long with such alledged defect.

The most surprising part of the accident, was the fact that everyone died. As many knows there had been many incidents where airliners ran off runways for various reasons. Including the incident in Hong Kong where the Chinese airline pilot ran off the runway of the old Kai Tak International Airport and crashed into the Victoria Harbour.

so why did these passengers die? That is because the plane ran into the airport's fuel tanks when it ran off the runway and burst into flames; with temperatures of over 1000C. Who in their right minds would put suchdangerous harzards at the end of a runway? Of course we do not expect planes will run off runways, but accidents will happen, and placing dangerous flamable fuel tanks at the end of a runway definitely did not take into account of usability.

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Problem with Mozy [July 19 Update]

Mozy Error Message

When the set up and scanning of my Mac went some what smoothly I thought Mozy has finally corrected all the problems for this “Alpha class” software for the Mac.

After numerous attempts of the background Mozy application trying to back up my 2.2GB of data to Mozy server. I spent some time looking at the mozy.log (/var/log/) file that Mozy support and pointed me to previously. What I found was very disturbing. I see many many occurance of error:

2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) NSCFInputStream error: NSError “POSIX error: Operation timed out” Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=60
2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) disconnecting…
2007-08-19 05:12:41.653 MozyBackup[7590] (send) Batch failed: NSError “Error com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain -2147483648? Domain=com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain Code=-2147483648 UserInfo={
ErrorCodeNameKey = ConnectionError0;
ErrorMessageKey = “Unable to connect to backup servers”;
}

Over the 2 hours that the backup had ran so far, it encountered this error 8 times. The most disturbing part is that after each occurrence the backup would continue from an arbitrary spot.

Although, I have yet to find out from Mozy support what these errors means, but it is not making me feel secure that Mozy is a reliable backup mechanism.

My recommendation is still… DO NOT RELY ON Mozy on the Mac at the current version.

Hopefully more to come after I receive some responds from Mozy support.

Please see my original article “Problem with Mozy” for background.

Problem with Mozy [July 19 Update]

Mozy Error Message

When the set up and scanning of my Mac went some what smoothly I thought Mozy has finally corrected all the problems for this “Alpha class” software for the Mac.

After numerous attempts of the background Mozy application trying to back up my 2.2GB of data to Mozy server. I spent some time looking at the mozy.log (/var/log/) file that Mozy support and pointed me to previously. What I found was very disturbing. I see many many occurance of error:

2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) NSCFInputStream error: NSError “POSIX error: Operation timed out” Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=60
2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) disconnecting…
2007-08-19 05:12:41.653 MozyBackup[7590] (send) Batch failed: NSError “Error com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain -2147483648? Domain=com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain Code=-2147483648 UserInfo={
ErrorCodeNameKey = ConnectionError0;
ErrorMessageKey = “Unable to connect to backup servers”;
}

Over the 2 hours that the backup had ran so far, it encountered this error 8 times. The most disturbing part is that after each occurrence the backup would continue from an arbitrary spot.

Although, I have yet to find out from Mozy support what these errors means, but it is not making me feel secure that Mozy is a reliable backup mechanism.

My recommendation is still… DO NOT RELY ON Mozy on the Mac at the current version.

Hopefully more to come after I receive some responds from Mozy support.

Please see my original article “Problem with Mozy” for background.