Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Computers have become indispensable business tools, exceptional multimedia entertainment systems, and are rapidly becoming the primary means of communication for both data and voice.

They've also become prime targets for cyber criminals who want to steal your personal and business information, covertly use your computer and Internet connection to send spam email, hijack your system to commit crimes in your name, or simply vandalize your property out of sheer mindless destructiveness.

This issue of Port Of Call has been a particular challenge. In addition to the usual travails of content and layout, fate - with a fair amount of inadvertent help from me - provided substantially more difficulties than normal. Most of the additional complications originated one way or another in the underlying technology used to produce the newsletter.

I've been distracted lately by a "should'a been easy" digital brain-teaser involving the Desktop Server at one of my test sites. A fringe benefit of solving the puzzle has been a useful addition to the capabilities of the Linux Desktop Server product I'm developing.

My company - and therefore major aspects of my personal life - have been going through a "digital change of life". After extensive testing in parallel with the "old" system, the moment finally arrived!

A fascinating experiment in enlightened anarchism and free enterprise is taking place in cyberspace, called "Open Source". Using the Internet as a distributed development environment, an unknown number of self-motivated individuals and corporations have become involved in a unique self-organizing effort that could well redefine the computer software industry.

The following are a few philosophies of software development that have served me well, but seem to get missed in programming books:

Every tool requires some amount of operating overhead from its user. Any operating overhead required by the tool directly reduces the total mental capacity the user can focus on the task at hand. The ideal user interface would be a single "figure out what I need done and take care of it for me" button.

It was reported on Compuserve by individuals who attended a Microsoft Win95 developer's workshop, that the long delayed Microsoft product "looks just like OS/2 Warp". However, if you install Microsoft's new Win95 product, you'll be getting an additional feature that's not listed on the box.