Saturday, December 12, 2009

Opera Turbo

Someone asks me if is it safe browsing with Opera mini (which defaulted to use Turbo)? The safe here mentioned refer to the data sent being stored by Opera Turbo (remember, all data traffic goes thru Opera Turbo so that it could compressed the content and sent the result to the browser). This question is answered on the following link:
http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/03/13/

If you are using ssl, Opera Turbo is bypassed and we're communicating with the SSL site directly. Which implies that turbo is turned "off" and you're back to the old way of browsing. Opera Turbo also declares that it doesn't store any user's information.

The conclusion is if we're looking for a cheaper way to browse, which is the case where the price mostly depends on the data being transferred (usually per KB), Opera Mini will be a great choice. Bear in mind, the statement declares that no user's data is stored. If you don't trust it then it simply mean don't use Opera.

Before I finished, I read one of the comments on this blog. It mentioned that Opera is a Norwegian company, which means that it follow the Personal Data Act (http://www.datatilsynet.no/templates/Page____194.aspx). And it is extremely strict.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Agile Manifesto

The thought of using agile methodology started about 3 years ago. Never been involved in a project using agile, I was looking for one to be involved in or have "my" project using it.
It seems to be challenging enough to use it, to know the advantage and of course the weaknesses. To find out the know how-when to use agile or waterfall. I'm not all for agile, but I have to admit agile excites me more. Adopting one of agile practice in one of the projects I'm involved in, which is daily meeting (face to face communication), opened my eyes to realize that the team starts to become more alive. Everyone starts to involve themselves more, discussion on the requirements become more often. As opposed to developer works only as they're told to.

Reading on agile manifesto, quoted below

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.


quite confirms that agile might be the one we should use for the development. But still I'm not all for agile, there're still some factors that drives me to choose the old methodology. Such as large complex projects, the number of developers involved. Maybe it's me not knowing in depth on how agile methodology really works.

After all, it fall back to one step at a time. Welcome agile, I'm looking forward to really understand you more :)