This is something I have believed since a long time, though I seem to make more connections now. Our whole life is a balancing act, our actions are based on balancing acts.
Ying-Yang, and all conceptual variation of it, do hold and can be identified through careful observation. Take for example, when designing interfaces, you want to balance innovation with usability (familiarity); take security protection, you have to balance usability with security, you can't expect users to enter 18 different passwords within 128 seconds and a 3-limit wrong password lockout. I bet this configuration could prove quite secure, but rather unusable. May be thats too much Yang. Have a system that is too usable
, say you missed a capital letter, and the program warns you specifically at this time, check usage of capital letters. Worse yet, no login system...it is an open system, you enter your name from a list at one point and the system identifies you! Too much Ying!!Trying to be more technical - You have a risk present, you implement controls to mitigate the risk. When the system is under-controlled, the risk is beyond an acceptable level, when the system is over-controlled, you may be hurting other factors such as efficiency, usability etc. It is this balance that is needed. As a side note, that is where real
auditors come in, auditors investigate the risks present and controls to deal with the risk, check if the implemented (or said to be implemented) controls are effective, and check if the "implemented" controls are sufficient or is an overkill.I hope no one takes any offence by the term "real auditors", there is the stereotypical image of auditors (contrary to what you may expect, they are not real auditors ... at least in my mind) - people looking for the kill, they smell your fear, and dig deeper and deeper till they can find some bone to chew on ... eeekkk....
Coming back to the balancing act, take anything, you have to make decisions to do something. When you are making decisions, you are evaluating different setups (because of the lack of a better word); you come to a conclusion (balance) based on weighing the different setups. Granted, its not 2 things you are always weighing (at least at first glance ... thats topic for a whole new post
), its still balancing, at different levels, that you are doing.Until next time ... ciao
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( 3.1 / 21 )I have come identified an optimization problem (with real life use and example). Here it is:
Given a set of n items with weights w[j] where 1 <= j <= n, you are required to split the n items into subsets of size m, such that the total weight of each subset is optimally equal.
The ideal weight of the subsets would be ((Sum(w[j])|j=1 to n)/n * m), since this may not be possible, the optimal weights would be achieved through minimizing the distance between the ideal subset weight and the actual subset weights ... is that how R^2 is computed ... ?
I am doing some research into algorithms that can help me solve this problem.
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( 2.9 / 18 )Here are some nice links I found, to make forms that are not the standard type:
1) http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/21448 - nice and simple
2) http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart ... 20Controls - I have not read this yet, but its about creating custom controls
3) http://www.akadia.com/services/dotnet_u ... 20controls - again about custom controls
I realize moving away from the "standard" may not be good for usability, but that really depends on how you move away from the standard. Moving away from "standard" is what leads to innovation.
I also suspect, users would be too bored of seeing the same dull styles all the time. It is a balance of offering something refreshing to the eyes while maintaining the expected reactions that has to achieved - the user should be able to predict what happens when they perform an action, conversely the user should know what to do when they want something to happen - e.g. I want to close this window, I go to the top and click the 'X' button or press Alt + F4 or go to File->Exit, rather than press the 'X' button to play a video, press Alt + F4 to maximize the window or File->Exit to launch a sub-program!
I know the examples may be unrealistic, but unrealistic exaggerations are what help clarify differences and help understanding, at least to begin with
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( 2.8 / 54 )Now, here is my todo list for this site:
* Customize this blog template to fit the site (though I really love this look!)
* Get MySQL based image gallery up and running
* Develop my own blog engine (i started the work about 2 weeks ago, i think)
That is all for now. Time to go
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( 2.9 / 40 )Wow! no kidding. The setup was simple
And now, my blogging (in my own site) journey begins
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( 3.1 / 49 )
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