CouchDb, on the desktop

Initially I saw a few blog posts from Stuart Langridge about CouchDb on the desktop and I just thought:

  1. That's pretty cool, and
  2. Why? Because you can...?

Then I thought about it some more. It does make sense, and not just for us geeks.

Gary Fleming makes a comment asking why, when users don't care about this sort of thing, but I just think that's not true. I deal with regular users every day and although I'm still constantly baffled by things that they ask about, I honestly believe that people don't want to sync things like bookmarks, tomboy notes, etc. between computers because they think it's hard. And they're right, it can be a pain in the bum on the desktop.

For corporate environments some are aware that data replication and high availability is something that can be solved, but still even the users who know this aren't thinking about syncing personal data between multiple machines. Which is a shame. Perhaps it's the fault of us system administrators giving out the wrong vibes[1].

Despite this, there is proof that there is a market for these sorts of products. Just look at Windows Live Sync, MobileMe, UbuntuOne, FoxMarks and so on.

My point is that at the end of the day we need people like Stuart doing the cool things and using existing tools in new and exciting ways to show regular users that things like data replication aren't just a server-side thing; It's something that they really do want. They just don't know it yet.

To all of those working on these sorts of projects, I salute you[2]!

[1] Which goes to show why most (sys|net)admins make bad sales people, I suppose
[2] But you'll have a hard time ripping my beloved rsync scripts from me ;)

Decommissioning users

Until a few weeks ago my personal server was with a "little" company called UK2.net. After the monthly prices got hiked again for a 3 year old Pentium D box, I decided that it was time to move on.

The move went fine, and all was good; no further billing from UK2. Yet I still have access to the box. Now I'm not sure if I should be telling them how to do their job, but it does seem a bit insecure allowing access to something not being paid for. If I was a less honest person it could be quite a fun machine (answers on a postcard).

Naturally I had wiped all of my content, accounts, and effectively removed all additional packages that I'd installed, so perhaps they could've confused it with a clean system. However, this just isn't the case as the root and other account details were reset to something produced by pwgen.

I would like to say that I'm being unreasonable, but knowing the procedures that we take care of for even our smallest clients at work, I know that I'm not. As a generalisation people are not trustworthy and you cannot guarantee that once they leave they will not attempt to regain access, and potentially damage, a system.

If you've not got a working procedure for departing staff, customers, or equipment then I suggest you make one and stick to it religiously, ensuring that all departments are aware of what they need to communicate and when.