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Two Assinine Points of View for the Price of One

I was recently reading an article entitle "Coffee with Steam" on the website of the St. Petersburg Times.  I was thrilled to discover that this article contains not one, but two ridiculous ideas!

The first is the core text of the article: people (read: Americans) are complaining because Starbucks coffee cups have quotations from "liberals" printed on them.  Leaving aside the dicey definition of "liberal" in the article, this strikes me as flat out idiotic.  A coffee house run by liberals???  The scandal!

Furthermore, to all of the conservatives out there who are going to end up Googling this and emailing me, all I can say is this: Starbucks is a private corporation.  Isn't one of your core values that a company in the US can do whatever it wants to make a profit?

Anyway, on to my second charming discovery.  Click on the "Reuse or republish this article" link above the text of the article.  At first, I thought this was a clever idea --- buy the rights to reuse the article in a book or commercial brochure.  Then I saw the option for "email this article."  I punched in 1 email and asked for a quote...  $1.00.  That's $1 per email, whereas I could have chopped it out of yesterday's newspaper for free.

To add hilarity to this situation, there's an "Email this article" link that lets you do it for free on the same page.  Glad to see that the left hand has a clue what the right is doing over at the St. Petersburg Times.

Mamma Mia Closing in Toronto

Sorry for not posting for a while...  I've been feeling a bit under the weather.  It's good, in a way...  I'm getting caught up on my reading.

I wanted to point out that Mamma Mia is closing in Toronto after five years.  It's a great show, so go see it before May 22 if you can.

Testing a Stapler

I rediscovered one of my favorite articles on software testing today at work whilst cleaning out my bookmarks.  How many test cases can you write for a stapler?  Destined to be a future interview question.

Security Concern When Implementing Unicode

The Unicode Consortium has a draft paper up about security considersations when implementing Unicode.  Good reading for testers and developers alike.

There are many potential problems, the most prominent being International Domain Name (IDN) spoofing.  In this attack, a malicious user sets up a site at a domain name using Unicode characters that look nearly (or completely - this could depend on the font your browser uses) to an existing site.  They then go phishing.  The average users is completely lost as their address bar is displaying an apparently perfect URL.

Once again, thanks to Bruce Schneier for the heads up.

Using Test Patterns in Software Testing

I've recently had success with using "test patterns" in software testing.  A test pattern is probably familiar to you from other manufacturing processes.  Your local TV station broadcasts one in the middle of the night.  The box of cereal you eat every morning has a few coloured squares printed next to each other to check the alignment of the various colours used in printing.

Test patterns in software work using the same principle - it is easier for a human being to remember and recognise a pattern than a set of details.  As an example, when asked to enter a budget amount for each month, I entered the numbers 1 through 12 sequentially.  Wherever else this data was accessed, I could immediately check the pattern, instead of the individual values, to ensure that everything was working correctly.

I find this sort of testing to be more effective than the usual approach of hammering in "random" values on the keyboard and then saying "this looks right" or of entering "realistic" values which may not have a unique entry for each field.  A human tester can easily recognise off-by-one errors and the like by noticing that a pattern is incorrect.

Other examples include picking dates that increment by one year, using paragraphs of text beginning with sequential letters or creating graphical patterns using multiple radio buttons or checkboxes.

Update:  A few other test patterns I find useful:

French Characters

ÀÁÄÈÉÊËÎÏÔŒÙÛÜŸàâäèéêëîïôœùûüÿÇç«»

HTML / SQL Server / JScript

<!--<"'\"\'""''&''""\'\"'">-->

"Illegal Linking"

Some people just never get it.  NewsHounds.us, an American political blog that tracks FOX News received a cease-and-desist letter from the fine folks on Bill O'Reilly's show.  The O'Reilly people demanded that an "illegal link" to one of O'Reilly's columns be taking down.

As Professor Lawrence Lessig was quick to point out, there's not such thing as an illegal link.  So, in protest, go and read the original article.

Downtown Toronto as a Sphere

Squiggle has put up a very cool spherical picture of downtown Toronto, as seen from the SkyPod of the CN Tower.  You can see my workplace quite clearly...  my condo is just behind one of the skyscrapers.

What's Wrong with This Dialog?

Now what could possibly be wrong with this picture?

Bug: the application gives no feedback to the user indicating that it is calculating install steps.  The "Next" button magically appears as soon as this is done.

Kudos to Simon for pointing this one out.