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The CPython implementation has a global interpreter lock that makes threading worthless in some situations, but the language certainly supports it (and other implementations can use it without restriction).

There certainly are mediocre Python programmers out there, but I hadn't seen "Java-bad" Python code until the most recent TDWTF: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Python-Charmer.aspx

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Python-Charmer.aspx

There are bad programmers everywhere, but yes, the concentration of bad coders in Java, ASP, VB, C# and anything .net related is 10 times that of any other language.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx

But none of them have yet, hence the innovation.

It could also be everybody that has looked at this idea has decided it was stupid. They might have thought of it and instead said to themselves "gloves".

Rollercoaster.

The phone can at most, when dropped (as opposed to "be thrown"), accelerate at 1G, no? You can exceed that in a car. Or taking off in a plane. Rollercoasters can get upward of 4. Nothing like this thing exploding in your pocket when the light turns green.

And the directional stuff I've seen on most are pretty laggy. Is there really time for it to wake up, determine which way is down, that it's heading there, that it's not a whale or bowl of petunias, and deploy an airbag?

Another word: GLOVES.

Yea, exactly. And, provided you do your coding right, those versions can be one and the same. Perhaps some extra css for nonstandard features(like rotating text), but it could probably be done with a single version. And, honestly, compared to the VB applications that are probably in use(see http://www.thedailywtf.com/ ), it could easily feel snappy.

Allegedly 42 for just the kernel just from MS.

But the main comment about such numbers has been "[citation needed]". MS's patent-violation claims seems to be trade secrets. We can't recode the purported violations, because we don't know where in the code they are and what specific patent they violate. MS won't tell us.

This is part of the "patent troll" concept, and it's why people are classifying MS's patent "agreements" as shakedowns and a protection racket.

Myself, I'd be happy to rewrite any of my code so as to avoid patent and/or copyright violations. As an experienced coder, I can usually come up with several ways to do any particular task. But to do that in a way that violates patents or copyrights, I have to know what they are, and how they violate someone's patent or copyright. This information has become nearly impossible to get from claimants, other than by spending millions of dollars on legal expenses.

The whole "IP" fuss in the US is essentially due to the change in the laws some time back, so that patents can be written in legalese rather than engineerese, making them incomprehensible to anyone but lawyers. And often not even to lawyers, who often respond to questions with "I don't know what that means; we'll have to ask the courts." Again, millions of dollars and many lost years before we get an answer.

Copyright is even more bizarre, with corporations even making copyright claims on nothing at all, or blank lines. Some time back, when SCO claimed a specific number of copyright violations in the linux code, someone did a bit of grepping, and reported that the number agreed almost exactly with the count of "/*" and "*/" lines in the code. But again, SCO never actually told us which lines were in violation of a copyright, making it impossible to rewrite them so they didn't infringe.

Anyone know a fast, efficient way to find out exactly what lines of code are in violation of some corporation's patents or copyrights? Until we can quickly determine that information, they can continue their protection racket unhindered by legal concerns.

Uuum, dude: I had 3 years of psychotherapy after having designed a web app that was supposed to run in IE in fall 2005. This is not a joke. And I have to really pull myself together to not rage and say you should die or something. :/

I got to know IE extremely well over the years. Every tiny quirk. Even the race conditions depending on a dozen independent factors. Even that horribly illegal code (illegal according to MS too, that is) does not only often work, but in some rare cases even is necessary for it to "work" (this case is also a race condition on top of it all!). And yet I still haven't found the bottom of the pit of chaos, where some inner sense and logic is supposed to be.

The problem with IE is, that it must have the most advanced AI in human history inside, as it manages to simulate utter irrational and unpredictable behavior with sheer perfection.

Yes, you can say IE has "improved" since then. But the problem is, that it's still Trident. The engine that is named after a tool of the devil for a good reason. ;)
It's an utter mess. Calling it "spaghetti code" would insult even the worst spaghetti code any twice-outsourced enterprisey consultant called "The late Paula Bean" could ever write. It just doesn't fit it anymore.

So apart from a complete rewrite, there is no chance in hell (literally? ;) that it will ever be something even remotely acceptable.

If MS decides to throw away Trident, we may get a good IE. Until that, anyone who defends IE, just doesn't know shit and never has done some real coding for that monster. And so he should better keep quiet, as every time an IE loads a page, a thousand web developers shiver and shed a tear of past mental rape horror.

Enter http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-No-Quack.aspx in the URL field to read No Quack.

Indeed they could have got an internal security person. But how do you tell if security is *actually* improved? They genuinely might be paying $100k for a bullshitter who sits there watching youtube and writing paula beans.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Brillant_Paula_Bean.aspx

Reminds me of something... http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx

I saw some open source the other day riddled with gotos. I learned (in the early 70s) how to write structured code (where any statement in the code has exactly one entrance point and exactly one exit point). To this day and millions of lines of code later, I still don't use gotos (and pseudo gotos like iter). I wasn't shocked to see the cruft in the open source, but I am disappointed that the review didn't mention structured coding.

The reality is that bad code these days is much worse than the bad code of yesteryear (just read The Daily WTF for a plethora of examples). Maybe someday we'll go back to what we had when we were working on "proving" that programs worked instead of just testing them.

There's a name for this sort of security - "Wish it was two factor" security.

And now a judge is ruling that it's enough, along with a "device fingerprint" that can be trivially faked? That is complete bullshit.

From the article linked: "Worse still, the Online Banking industry is perceived to be one of the most secure. Surely, if anyone knows how to do online security, it’s the online banks, right? And if you want your web application to be extra secure, it should be modeled off of an online bank, right?"

I used to work for a bank. They had an NT4 server in every local bank office (over 900 of those), with an empty administrator password (I was a DBA, the database server on those NT machines did have passwords, roles, privs, etc... - but what good are these if there's no secuity on the OS level?). This was in the late '90 so I assume that they have changed that since then (I post his anonymously just for in case that they did not alter their policy in the past decade.)

There's a name for this sort of security - "Wish it was two factor" security.

And now a judge is ruling that it's enough, along with a "device fingerprint" that can be trivially faked? That is complete bullshit.

Either nobody asked the experts or the judge didn't care. I hope he uses online banking and finds himself with a negative balance some day.

There's a name for this sort of security - "Wish it was two factor" security.

And now a judge is ruling that it's enough, along with a "device fingerprint" that can be trivially faked? That is complete bullshit.

Ah, the Inner Platform Effect.

In my experience, there's no point in designing customisation tables because the first thing they'll want to customise is something you didn't think of so you have to re-code anyway.

I'm not exactly sure of his total commit count, but I feel pretty confident that Milo is a strong contender for highest number of commits.

This is exactly what I thought of when I read this headline.

Also see this...

The Digitial Donkey Lives!

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Best_of_2006_0x3a__The_Virtudyne_Saga.aspx

(down the bottom of the page)

The Virtudyne Digital Donkey finally comes of age.

This one: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Digital_Donkey.aspx
(If you ever read anything like that through, please read all four parts of this! This is so worth it!)

When I read the headline, this old story came to mind:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Best_of_2006_0x3a__The_Virtudyne_Saga.aspx

I was actually a bit disappointed to find that the donkeys were just for smuggling videos :/

I think this one dates back into 2006: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer-Friendly_System.aspx

We just need to make sure those heat pumps can't be programmed in JavaScript, then we'll be safe.

See TheDailyWTF: http://www.thedailywtf.com/
I think you'll find that it's /far/ more common than you want to admit. And these companies are /not/ going to upgrade, even if it's cheaper. They would probably just use an ancient bit of hardware instead... Or an insecure old version of Windows.

Indeed, I can't even believe someone in IT needs to ask this question.

IT is treated as a cost and anything but an investment at almost all companies. Bar a few software firms out there that are run by developers.

Seriously, you don't notice the higher ups looking down on you like you're trying to swindle them out of a few more bucks? Its part of that dull dumb look on their face whenever you try to explain something technical and they just can't figure out if you're telling them the truth or just trying to play them, let alone understand what you're saying.

Ship out for better pay, up skill, if you really like the old job: go back later like my parent is saying.

This all reminds me of an old daily wtf post (short version linking to the much more informative article: Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis)

Haven't read that horrid place in years but this article is one I consistently find myself Googling to give to friends in IT wondering if its their time to move on.

Indeed, I can't even believe someone in IT needs to ask this question.

IT is treated as a cost and anything but an investment at almost all companies. Bar a few software firms out there that are run by developers.

Seriously, you don't notice the higher ups looking down on you like you're trying to swindle them out of a few more bucks? Its part of that dull dumb look on their face whenever you try to explain something technical and they just can't figure out if you're telling them the truth or just trying to play them, let alone understand what you're saying.

Ship out for better pay, up skill, if you really like the old job: go back later like my parent is saying.

This all reminds me of an old daily wtf post (short version linking to the much more informative article: Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis)

Haven't read that horrid place in years but this article is one I consistently find myself Googling to give to friends in IT wondering if its their time to move on.

Exactly. This sounds exactly like the Virtudyne business model: Writing a MS Office killer in... brace yourselves... Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)!!

"This is the first article in a four part series that tells of the rise and fall of Virtudyne, one of the largest privately-financed ($200M) disasters in our industry." A truly epic failure.
(A link to the actual company, that, I think, still exists, can be found in the comments.)

Perhaps we have different meanings of the word "blue-collar". A Machinist is a blue-collar worker, but by no means could you consider such a person un-educated. A machine operator, perhaps - But for every operator or two, you need someone who knows what he's doing writing the cnc code to get the machines running in the first place.
Oh, and what about things like an auto technician or welder? Both blue-collar jobs, both important and both require skills.
Sure, we could all become architects - or managers - but somehow, somewhere, someone actually has to /produce/ something. And while some of it can be exported, quite a bit requires skilled blue-collar work so that the project doesn't end up on the physical equivalent of sites like http://thedailywtf.com/

Can I patent this abuse of a thumb drive?

If the system or data is at all important, it should be virtually impossible to access it without real two-factor authentication. A CA is important. Financial systems are important. The Administrative interfaces to your company's core systems are important.

Ah, but two-factor is also expensive.

That's why banks and other financial institutions have rolled out two factor abortions that are really just more passwords.

Wish it was Two-Factor shows how pretty much most North American banks have things set up. It's just another password, really, and both are "something you know". (And not "something you have" or "something you are")

I, too, would like to find a place where the editors edit. Maybe even research a little. And where they don't comment in the stories. Where non-stories don't get posted. I mean - this is /. You would think that an editor could pick up the phone and actually call the subject of a story on rare occasion and maybe get a little insight into what is really going on.

Oh, and a site that doesn't end up slashdotting the subject without warning.

I use
* http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/ for nano tech news
* http://www.macrumors.com/ for mac news

I would like to find outlets for
* Programmer related news (in addition to http://thedailywtf.com/ :-)
* Hardware related news
* Tech/Social new

To be fair, I think /. has done a pretty good job of covering tech and the recent middle-east events. It's just the other 95% that's pretty much crap.

so the wonderful hippie ethic of the net would continue and rainbows and unicorns would eventually appear, or something.

Have you visited The Daily WTF recently? :-D

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Inner-Platform_Effect.aspx

In case you forget what to do WHEN you do reboot.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Designed-For-Reliability.aspx

You got that wrong... they use SuperRand()...

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/SuperRand.aspx

The following Google query returns some fantastic results (thousands of them):

inurl:select inurl:where inurl:%20

You can't mention SQL injection without reading this awesome thread on TDWTF.

Isn't this technically "Wish-It-Was Two-Factor"

Reminds me of this:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/WishItWas-TwoFactor-.aspx

I once went to a job interview, and got one of those problem-solving questions: How would you determine the number of gas stations in the USA?

My answer was simple: I'd search on Google, because there's probably a news article or government report with a better estimate than I could produce on my own. That got me a nice scowl from the interviewer, who expected me to perform extrapolation based on a sample. My guess is that the guy had never left the New England state he worked in, and had never seen a stretch of 150 miles between gas stations on a Great Plains highway.

The rest of the interview was pretty standard, but that one question still annoys me.

Here's what makes me wonder. I've been following this thread on thedailywtf.com about password stupidities, and someone in that list mentioned this very issue on 1/8. Now I see it on reddit and Slashdot...

You forgot the wooden table!
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Web_0_0x2e_1.aspx

Joke away but, going by some of the shit I've seen at TheDailyWTF, that could well come back and bite you in the ass one day.

You might become overwhelmed by Glorious Leader's use of strength in html.

So does this mean we get to see more "strong" HTML? ;)

You're better off reading The Daily WTF for these types of stories. It's better written than InfoWorld could ever hope to be.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Immaculate_Backup_.aspx

Will there also be a website where you can get Daily WTF updates? This could be interesting. Add some crappy user commenting software are you are all set for a fun time.

You mean http://thedailywtf.com/ ?

"We don't need people like you here," he said, tossing my résumé back at me. "We only accept Math and Engineering majors here!"

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Its-All-About-C,-The-CIA-Interview,--Not-People-Like-You.aspx

Okay, I'll bite: C# is a good language that makes more progress and is more eager to grow modern capabilities than Java is. None of the two will go away overnight, and C# isn't the very best thing ever, but I don't think people would have any problem giving it the credit it does deserve if Anders Hejlsberg worked somewhere else than Microsoft.

I personally mostly prefer to code in other languages than C#, like Ruby, but I'd much rather work in C# than in Java and that's not for a lack of trying. I use and love ASP.NET MVC, which is open source, patterned on Rails and all about the code, with no "insert control here" wizards in sight.

I know that there's a lot of people who drag a grid view onto a Web Forms canvas, hook up the data bindings, bill you the licenses of everything in the server stack and three weeks' work and then can't actually fix anything because they don't know how to code. Aside from conceding that Microsoft has largely traditionally gone out of their way to supply these people with software, I call Sturgeon's Law. Just please don't let that fool you into thinking that everyone who has touched or developed for a Microsoft product has the coding skills (and chair propelling propensity) of Steve Ballmer. If that's all they were capable of, I would be right behind you.