If I ran a million user load test on somebody's site without permission I could be sued, so I would never do that. But what about public web sites, the ones my tax dollars are paying for? Shouldn't I have the right to know about their scalability and responsiveness?
It seems to me that I do, but that doesn't mean I'll be testing the IRS site anytime soon. Is there some federal department that isn't so important that wouldn't object to being the subject of some scientific research? Or does "unimportant federal department" sound redundant to you?
Speaking of scientific research, don't you think the military should have the most solid web infrastructure on the planet? Not that they are prone to sudden usage spikes caused by young men wanting to sign up for the war or anything. In fact I've never seen www.army.gov so I'll have to pause this blog post for now and come back after I do.
Well, for one thing it's a .mil extension instead of a .gov but you can even sign up online from the looks of it! That would be a great trick to play on your college roomate, wouldn't it? "Guess what? You're shipping out to Afghanistan at 04:00 hours tomorrow, soldier"!
Seriously, the Army has not adopted much Web 2.0 yet so they are lagging way behind. "Tweets from the Trenches" haven't appeared, nor has "GreasePaint Facebook". I didn't dare to read the blog, however, but if you do you are welcome to post about it here.
So what is the verdict? Do I have the right, if not the duty, as a tax paying American citizen to ensure that the US Army web site is up to government standards? And what, pray tell, are those?
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