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Former Hacker Irks Microsoft in EU Dispute
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal profiles Neil Barrett, 'a former computer hacker who once infiltrated the system controlling a telescope at a Hawaii laboratory' and is now an expert witness causing problems for Microsoft in its antitrust battle with the European Union. Barrett 'has helped put the British glam rocker Gary Glitter behind bars for pedophilia. And he also has helped prosecute a teenage hacker from Wales, who claimed to have stolen Bill Gates' credit-card number and sent the Microsoft founder a shipment of Viagra. [...] In the corporate world, Mr. Barrett once met a challenge to hack into a large multinational company's system in four days to win a security assignment. He stole the company's undisclosed new logo as a trophy, he wrote.'"
of herrings...that's what he should've sent Bill. And a first anonymous post!
This summary doesn't actually say anything of how he is causing problems for microsoft. It is just his hacking resume.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Or much better, he should have "donated" 8,500 dollars to FSF or Open Source Linux... man that would be rich...imagine calling the press anonymously and telling them that all the time Bill was against Free Software, he is supporting them quietly in order to "embrace" better ideas from them...
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Looking at Microsofts history and some of their stunts they pulled off I wouldn't put it beyond them to indeed produce unusable crap.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I have been programming for 20 years, I have created extensive systems using Cobol and C++. I am able to debug programs from large memory dumps over the phone. In my time I have come across loads of code in many different languages, and I have to say even though a peice of code may documented it doesn't make it readable, understandable or even usable. Especially when said documentation starts with "I don't know exactly why this was included, what it does, or how it does it but the system won't work without it" or simply "Sorry about this..."
googling brought this up. http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/3/2/53239 546-efee-460c-a583-11c20cdea9ab/03-02-06Supplement ary Response SO final NC.pdf
Basically it says 'he is in a anti-microsoft conspiracy', and 'he don't know how to program'
Grtz Drz
WARNING: no tag line. . .
.. was actually a technician working at UK computer chain 'PC World'. You could say that he's more responsible for Glitter's incarceration than this guy. Though I guess Glitter himself is most responsible. Thing is, the computer technician actually got the sack because he was breaking the Data Protection Act my snooping.
The problem was that the documentation said different things at different places without specifying wich way was the correct way. A documentation should do that, else its pretty much useless. You could just as well just reverse engineer if the end result of using the documentatin is random.
HTTP/1.1 400
More like cracking.
My pics.
I was pleasntly surprised during the US anti-trust case that Microsofts legeal team was so inept. Microsoft surivived that because of politics.
Thier lawyers seem even better at p****ng off European judges. Only this time there is no President of Texas to ride to the rescue. They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state, and, they cannot legally contibute to any European polititions campaign fund. Thier only hope was a sound legal case and ass kissing, but, its too late for that now. I think this is just starting out and Microsoft will be paying anf paying for years to come.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
I read his profile, he's Dr Barret a computer security expert, not a hacker, I can't find anything relating to a hack in Hawaii:i +telescope
a rds/story/0,1456,717426,00.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=Neil+Barrett+hawai
He does seem to be a normal expert.
http://money.guardian.co.uk/creditanddebt/creditc
This looks like a Microsoft inspired misinformation campaign.
(you've put spaces where %20 were needed)
"neil barrett" site:microsoft.com Google search gives two (pdf) results, the one you were linking to is here
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Well hindsight is 20/20 but its definitly a grey area as it depends what "Pissy World" was doing to the PC. IF scanning for viruses then its feasible the files would be opened. If just being nosey...
SolarVPS - Quality Windows and Linux Virtual Servers
ummm try reading many OSS documents or SUN or IBM for that matter. They are all full of badly documented API's. I had one IBM MVS manual that contradicted itself on the same page. It was still a 100 times more usefull than reverse engineering as it gives you a starting point and even the most incompetent programmer can work out which piece of doco is correct with a short test piece of code.
- Oracle
- IBM (this dumbass news site thinks they're still International Business Machines)
- Sun
- Novell>
Even if they can undermine belief in his competence, they can hardly do the same for companies like those.It's just a shame that all that this will lead to are chump-change fines that probably won't even equal the money made by all the lawyers - the real winners. I'll go as far as to say that the EU would have spent its money better on OpenOffice development.
IIRC, Mr Gadd brought his laptop in for repair for something mechanical (battery issue or something), and specifically told the technician not to look at the contents of the hard disk.
Third-rate glam rockers clearly do not make great study of basic human psychology, it seems. The technician proceeded to think 'hmm, I wonder why he's so worried about people looking at the OH MY GOD OH NOES AAARRRGH MY EYES MY EYES THE GOOGLES THEY DO NOTHING!'
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
From what I've been reading from him and in articles quoting him, he seems to be a very outspoken security consultant. His analyses seem very even-handed. He is able to praise Microsoft's security efforts when they do well, but he is also able to criticize them when they do poorly. He doesn't take any sort of hard stance against anyone except criminal hackers, a stance which is very firm. His credentials seem to give him and his security business quite a bit of gravitas.
Does that qualify him to sit in judgement of something which he could arguably be considered uninformed or unqualified about?
Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with Barrett personally or politically, but is he really the best person to provide expert witness in this case? Wouldn't someone from, say, the Samba team be more qualified to judge whether Microsoft's internetworking protocol documentation was sufficiently made open?
I'm not aware of any virus scanners that would say "Hey, this JPEG looks infected, want to open it?".
;o)
That being said, I've not tried the Microsoft "One Care" solution
Given your extensive experience in programming, would you be qualified to hack into a locked down network and retrieve a file?
Maybe yes, maybe no. But given your experience, and given Barrett's experience, wouldn't it be better to ask Barrett to do the deed rather than you?
No one is questioning his ability to do what he does well (maybe someone is, but they are irrelevant). But what he does well and what is being judged are not overlapping fields. He is a network security consultant. The manual is for network filesystem programming (unless I'm way off base here and thinking of another trial).
According to someone in the same department at that branch, Gadd brought the laptop in partly because it wouldn't work with image files (the association between JPEGs and an image viewer program was lost).
So, in order to confirm that everything was fine again, he opened some random files to check everything was ok. Oops.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
but has he hacked the Gibson?
Evil Microsoft aside. Let us suppose that this is the same level of documentation Microsoft's internal development teams get:
Could this be why Microsoft projects consistently run over deadlines and behind expectations? (At least in the first iteration.)
This isn't Microsoft trying to screw the competitor, but just a peek into the hole that Microsoft has dug themselves into. Afterall, Microsoft hires can't all be dull-witted-code-monkeys, but perhaps the existing codebase has become a steaming pile of sh*t.
Working with c# and attempting to do anything beyond the immediately supported seems to support this. (Try overriding an OnPaint event on a ListViewBox for instance)
I realised this the moment I hit Submit. If only I didn't word every single thing I write so strongly. God only knows where that idea came from. Thank you for not being a prick about it - this is the nice thing about Slashdot in the morning.
...is able to debug programs from large memory dumps over the phone
While looking for Occupations from the pre 1900's, i came across the following in the list.
HABERDASHER - Seller Of Men's Clothing
HACKER - A Maker Of Hoes
HACKNEY MAN - Renter Of Horses & Carriages
HANDWOMAN - Midwife Or Female Attendant
So the true definition of a 'Hacker', was a Maker of Hoes.
This isnt a case where Microsoft can point at a random OSS project and yell "they suck too!".
If the sentence is hard then tough luck, dont break the law in the first place. Its a punishment and its supposed to sting. It doesnt matter one bit if its hard to document the protocols but its pretty strange they arent already documented.
Its not surprising that it takes for ever to do patches when nobody inside Microsoft seems to know how things should work. They have to test every single line they alter because they dont know how things are supposed to work.
HTTP/1.1 400
Thing is, the computer technician actually got the sack because he was breaking the Data Protection Act my snooping.
Rightly so. He "helped" catch one pedophile, but so what? We all know that paticular suspect was under surveillance for quite some time anyway. And you're simply naive if you this this paticular tech only snooped once and just happened to stumble over one celebrities hidden cache. Dollars to doughnuts the tech regularly slurped customers hard discs for porn and the like.
To paraphrase:
It were better that Ten Suspected Pedophiles should escape, than that the Innocent Person should be subject to warrantless seizure.
May the Maths Be with you!
Thier lawyers seem even better at p****ng off European judges. Only this time there is no President of Texas to ride to the rescue. They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state, and, they cannot legally contibute to any European polititions campaign fund. Thier only hope was a sound legal case and ass kissing, but, its too late for that now. I think this is just starting out and Microsoft will be paying anf paying for years to come.
They should have used the tried and tested method of offering 'Sales commissions' and 'Consultancy fees' to key officials like Lockheed did to convince certain European leaders to spend obscene amounts of money on a mediocre combat aircraft called the Locheed F-104 Starfighter. Judges may have strange delusions of independence over here but our politicians can certainly be rented, leased or bought just like their US counterparts and politicians as we all know can 'persuade' judges to think of the 'greater picture' by dropping hints about career death.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Especially when said documentation starts with "I don't know exactly why this was included, what it does, or how it does it but the system won't work without it" or simply "Sorry about this..."
Oh, nothing beats this one!
I was working on an asp project a few years back, and did something just like this; except it was far, far worse.
Basically, a variable was coming back from a SQL statement after hitting a NULL value, and I needed to evaluate it. Trouble is, not matter what the logical statement was, the check always evaluated to false. To whit:
variable or not variable
evaluated to false. Regardless. To prevent this, I believe I wrote code along the following lines:
varcheck = "NOT OK"
if variable then
varcheck = "OK"
else if not variable then
varcheck = "OK"
end if
end if
The comment was essentially a long, intricate writ of apology, pleading with the reader to attempt to understand my hopeless position and to accept the presented obscenity before the gods of computer logic.
Shortly afterwards, I resolved to never program in ASP again as long as I lived. I think that code is still out there somewhere. Here's hoping Microsoft never update the ASP interpreter to pre optimise!
May the Maths Be with you!
a gibson? THE Gibson!
if variable = null
and
if isnull(variable)
Of course maybe like the original story you found the documentation too difficult?
According to who? These things are arbitrarily defined and subjective...
I am able to debug programs from large memory dumps over the phone.
How would that even work?!
May the Maths Be with you!
Sounds like you're talking about commenting within the code. Which is there to help some one who comes along later to work on it to understand what different routines are doing and why.
Mr. Barrett was talking about interface documentation intended to be given to other developers working on thier own projects so that they might properly interact with Microsofts' OS.
So if all they did was put out comments from witin the code then, yea it would be totally useless for the porpose for which it was intended, i.e. an interface document.
But I don't think this is what they did. It sounds as if they threw together a bunch jargon laden instructions, obfuscated it with interchangeable naming conventions, put it in a book and said "See what a good boy I am?"
I want to shoot the messenger!
It makes perfect sense (to me) that null is a special case which is neither false nor true.
Then you either must have gone to a very strange school of programming, or have been using VB and ASP for far too long.
In fact VB supplies a two ways to check for null;
Yes I know. Neither worked. If the variable was present in a logical expression, the expression evaluated to false.
May the Maths Be with you!
... Then I suppose hacking a lock down is quite a bit different from creating applications that interface themselves to a microsoft server and do something useful
What I found the most interesting in this Wall Street Journal piece.
"With their orders to Microsoft, the regulators are aiming to level the global playing field and make it easier for rivals' inexpensive, easily modified "open source" software to interact seamlessly with Microsoft's more-expensive, less-flexible products."
OSS - inexpensive, easily modified
MS - more-expensive, less flexible
well actually it should be a case of pointing at others and saying they suck too. The IT industry in general does an atrocious job of documenting, to single out MS implies they are doing worse and to say a hacker could not work it out shows either incompetence on the hackers side or simple bullshit. If everyone gave up because of bad doco there is hardly a product around that would have ANYTHING written to its API's. You can't hold up MS in court and say they do a bad job when they do as "good" or in this case as "bad" a job as everyone else, that is hipocrasy.
"a guy who is able to hack locked-down networks in four days [...], he sure seems to be giving up quite easily when claiming that Microsoft's manuals are "totally unusable" after four days of use."
Well, yes, and that's reasonable. Remember, he's judging the documentation that MS has produced to help every programmer understand their interfaces, not just the ones of special talents and ability.
Unless you think its *reasonable* that MS's documentation should only be understandable by a tiny fraction of the programmers on the planet.
If that's what you consider "good documentation", then yes, this guy should have tried harder.
Conversely if you are one of those programmers who insist that Microsoft document their interfaces in a reasonable way, then you'd probably agree with this guy.
He can speak baud, of course.
The white zone is for loading and unloading only. If you need to load or unload go to the white zone. It's a way of life
However, having considered all the available evidence, I have concluded that I acted in good faith, even when I did not, and should not be punished in any way.
Okay, so I read the article.
... and Blah blah
* Microsoft offered a list of people, including Neil Barrett whose opinion they would respect
* EU rejected most of them but accepted Mr. Barrett
* Mr. Barrett evaluates the Microsoft offer of compliance and deems it useless
* other [competing] professionals agree
* Microsoft changes its position regarding Mr. Barrett because of Barrett's opinion
Yay!
Just love it.
EU: Gimme a list of people you think could be unbiased when evaluating your offer of compliance.
MS: Blah blah, Blah blah, Neil Barrett, Blah blah,
EU: Our experts don't like your Blah blahs but Neil Barrett will do
EU: Neil? What do you think about MS's offering?
NB: Uh... it sucks. I talked to everyone I'm allowed to speak with about it and they couldn't make it work either.
EU: MS, your stuff sucks.
MS: Neil is the devil!
I am sorry but the statement variable or not variable is necessary true, whatever the language you use. Why ? because even if variable has a state which connot be true or false, it shouldn't return true or false. Worse, here, the result means that the not operator has been redefined for the null value. That's a terrible witness about asp language. A language should not do that. You must not redefine operators if you can convert data. That means that variable should be converted to a boolean value and the not operator be applied to a boolean value. Because this is the expected behaviour. If this is expected, this is the correct behaviour. Ok, you can say "But the null value cannot be converted to a boolean value !". Then if it cannot be done, the language should not allow it, and refuse to compile for compiled ones or break the code path for interpreted ones. Not return an arbitrary result.
If the current market will bare only one dominant operating system, who the hell is the EU to complain? There arguments to this extent for some time about Nintendo, but eventually competition -- not regulation -- broke the monopoly and now provides us with a fairly diverse market. Everyone whines about the largest companies in the world. Whether it's Microsoft, Walmart, GM, or Standard Oil, the big "monopoly" of any day will always be the object of contempt while people flock to its products. If closed practices alone are the standard for whether a company sucks, where's the Apple bashing? Apple's practices, historically, have made MS looked like an Open Source company. And if you think how you feel about a product or company justifies not using the product, you're sorely mistaken. The question on any product is and will always be: does the damn thing work? All things being equal, the average consumer is convinced that Windows does work for their purposes, because the average consumer will just an operating system by whether it can run their $10 card game they just bought off the shelf from Walmart.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Best I can tell is "documentation".
But documentation for what?
What things are microsoft being asked to document?
Specifically, what Microsoft seems to be impeaching is under Section 3 of the Trustee decision is Article 2:
Trustee is to provide ad hoc opinions to the Commission on issues pertaining to whether:
Section 3.b.i: the Interoperability Information that Microsoft is required to make available under Article 5(a) of the Decision is made available completely and accurately.
Microsoft claims 1) that Barrett is unqualified to make such a judgement based on his Trustee Report which they claim shows he knows very little about actual programming and less about industry documentation, and 2) that the valid claims that were reported by Competitors were based on an early version (August) that was subsequently cleaned up and redelivered (December) with most problems fixed.
Section 3.b.iv: the Interoperability Information made available pursuant to Article 5(a) of the Decision is kept updated on an ongoing basis and in a Timely Manner
Microsoft claims that this is exactly what they have done, yet the Trustee has not subsequently given "ad hoc opinion" to the Committee since the initial August evaluation.
Section 3.c: advise the Commission on whether substantiated complaints by third parties about Microsoft's compliance with Articles 4 to 6 of the Decision are well-founded from a technical point of view
Microsoft claims 1) that as above, Barrett is not qualified to make such a judgement, and that 2) Barrett's secret meetings with Microsoft's competitors does not allow Microsoft the right to defend themselves from accusations.
Section 3.3: (paraphrase) The Trustee must make available a means for third parties to make complaints related to Microsoft's compliance with Articles 4 to 6 and is required to keep the identities of those third parties secret from Microsoft. Non-confidential complaints ought to be forwarded to Microsoft for informal resolution of complaints.
Microsoft claims that this violates their right to defend themselves. By keeping secret "confidential complaints" from Microsoft, they are unable to prepare a proper defense.
I would still love to see those Trustee Reports.
Microsoft used a PDF. I'll bet that must've burned to use a PDF instead of the more industry standard CHM or open-source implementation of the MS-Word file format.
In any event, if you read MS's response, they seem to disagree less with his conclusions than object to the way he reached them. In fact, I flipped through the entire document and didn't find any disagreement with the conclusions.
MS is too smart for me. In fact, I think MS is sometimes too smart for their own good. Maybe they should have just documented everything properly. That seems like less work than the amount of work they've put into complaining about the process.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
You guys are a bunch of fucking fags.
Balmer?
This isnt a case where Microsoft can point at a random OSS project and yell "they suck too!".
...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...) ...)
...) ...) ...) ...) ...)
/only/ for the C++ section of Kdevelop... but most of the Linux or OpenSource documentation provided is a joke.
/thousands/ of details why some open source software just can not make it. And the people that closes their eyes and negate it will never get it...
Haha, nice that you touch that point about documentation, just take a look at the KDevelop documentation that "comes" with the IDE suite, now *that* is what I call an unusable worth nothing piece of crap:
From the KDEvelop Handbook:
The Problem Reporter
(... to be written
Code Completion
(... to be written
Creating New Files and Classes
(... to be written
Editing the Templates
(... to be written
Class Hierarchy
(... to be written
Elements of the User Interface
(... to be written
The Workarea
(... to be written
The KDevelop Titlebar
(... to be written
The KDevelop Statusbar
(... to be written
The menubar
(... to be written
The Toolbars
(... to be written
The Tree Tool Views
(... to be written
The Output Tool Views
(... to be written
This one is GREAT:
"Class Tools
The class tool dialog is activated by right clicking on a class in the class view and choosing Class tool...."
Automake Projects
(... to be written
Custom Makefiles and Build Scripts
(... to be written
Compiler Options
(... to be written
Make Options
(... to be written
Chapter 11. Advanced Build Management
Multiple Build Configurations
(... to be written
And that is
Seriously, I may sound as a troll here but, there is *no* way you can tell me that is better than even the documentation on Borland C++ IDE!!!
Go ahead, mod me down I have tons of karma to burn but this is one of the
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Ireland is but a small country in the EU. Other member states see how Ireland gets revenue from taxes not paid in countries where the actual business was done. They will not think 'hey, that's fair, let them have that money, now let's listen what they have to say'. Other, more important member states will see the economic benefits from MS as stealing, not only from their own IT-business but also directly from their own treasure chest. And they are France, Germany and Italy, not Ireland. By evading taxes, MS might turn out to be penny wise, pound foolish.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Isn't the emphasized word a clear hint of an overlap?
Whoever this guy is, to say an expert witness in court of law is the one "causing problems" for anyone is a wild distortion of the role of an expert witness. Barrett's job in this situation is ostensibly to give a neutral, factual examination of the evidence, as relates to his field of expertise. His skills qualify him to dumb technical facts down so that the court can understand it. He is, more or less, a talking piece of evidence. MS or anyone else blaming him for causing any sort of problems is like Colonel Mustard blaming the lead pipe.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I have a feeling that that would be the reason he was offerred up in the first place. I think Microsoft completely misjudged Barrett's programming abilities based on his reputation as an industry-leading consultant. They looked at "Network Security Consultant" and "Network Programmer" and said close enough.
If anything, I think this highlights the difference between programmers who write programs and sysadmins who shepherd boxen. A valuable lesson, and one to consider when submitting that Ask Slashdot requesting programming help.
I don't see i-tunes API being opened up and they sure seem to have a monopoly on the mp3 market...
Hackers cause problems to Microsoft's OS.
:P
Ex-hackers cause problems to Microsoft's lawyers.
Poor Microsoft, hackers are so bad with you!
...here?
http://www.itwales.com/998622.htm
No. The other poster is right. This is the definition of NULL.
/* This is a nan */
You have the very same thing in C with NaN.
How to test is a value is NaN ?
if (x!=x)
(Would have also probably worked for you)
The IEEE NaN and SQL NULL behaviour are very standard and widely known things. This is *by*design*. Now, you may disagree with the correctness of the design, like C J Date and others...
ms's genuine advantage just screwed my father's computer. It lose all previous restore points and suddenly didn't recognise the anti virus product on the machine (probably because MS pulled some of those from the supported list). All this because those greedy bastards don't trust him buying original XP. The XP was practically shown down his throat when he bought his PC, he couldn't even buy a PC without that crappy OS. Don't talk me about MS is a better product. It is a pile of steaming cowdung.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to read MSDN documentation can see that Barrett speaks the truth.
Hey, thats normal.
I mean, where do you get a usable documentation. My personal top canidates:
Unusable Documentation:
Symbian/S60 (and what is a hbufc anyway?)
Winamp Maki (TODO since years)
Alsa (complete documentation of all classnames. Wow)
Best documentation:
Java
Ogre
Working with external companies since a couple of years I can tell you that I never got a usable documentation. After all, why should they risk the maintenance contract going to their competitiors.
Take a LOOK at firefox. Its gaining market here and there, but my grandma still cant install plugins/addons.
Ah.
I see idiocy runs in your family.
If only their voice is heard, then the outcome of any decisions based on that input is not likely to be useful for anyone planning to use a computer in the EU. sw patents create problems for more than just developers, though the developers are likely to feel the pain first.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
this is hilarious! someone does not comprehend the basics of relational databases and then goes on to blame it on ASP ( never touched that myself btw ).
null for boolean ( or every other type ) : undetermined, never filled in.
for example you have a table with customers. you add a field "mailing_list ( boolean )" which defaults to false, but the values for the present customers will be null. this is handy, because this way you can identify the customers you need to approach for asking wether they want the mailing list or not.
anyway, nz() coalesce() ifnull() are your friends.
bye.
Other member states see how Ireland gets revenue from taxes not paid in countries where the actual business was done.
Erm wut? Thats a good trick. As far as I know, if you do business in a country, you pay that country's taxes. If that means a company will go to where tax rates are lowest, then thats where they go. No one is evading taxes. Don't like it, reduce your own tax rates. In a competitive market, it just so happens that Ireland's offer is the most attractive. No one owes Italy, France, or any other country jobs.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Does anyone else see this as a non-sequitur to the whole article? In general, original article is very interesting, and more than a little amusing - but the OP on /. is, to say the least, addlebrained and lacking any resemblance of article summary (which is what it really should be). The article, indeed, speaks of mr. Barret's role in Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit as a sort of a technical witness, and explains the background and circumstances of his involvement with Microsoft's 'rivals'. And then, out of nowhere, 'Yeah, he also once stole some company's logo from their network'. Talk about going out on a non-tangent.
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
TFA never claimed that Barrett was responsible for Gary Glitter's incarceration:
In the years since, Mr. Barrett, who is also a visiting professor of computer forensics at several British universities, has helped put the British glam rocker Gary Glitter behind bars for pedophilia.
Barrett is an expert witness, he probably testified in the trial against Glitter. He helped, he's not responsible.
I've used the listview pretty extensively in both C# and VB and aside from update issues(flicker, etc.), or adding proper sorting (by columnheader click) I haven't had much of a problem. And both the issues I mention I was able to create code that handled any issues gracefully.
If you're more specific, and I can help in that area, I'd be more than willing to share.
Let me know: nylyst(at)gmail(dot)com
I learned I was fired from a press release
Dan Geer, former CTO @stake Inc. - Sep 25 2003
Yeah. Try and find some usable online documentation for SWT and JFace, for another example. They finally put up some JavaDoc for SWT, but it's useless unless you already know how to write applications using it.
And one of my big beefs with Ruby is the quantity of completely undocumented code in the standard library. I've been trying to help improve the situation, but some people don't even seem to understand that there's a problem.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
"now an expert witness .....Barrett 'has helped put the British glam rocker Gary Glitter behind bars for pedophilia'"
It doesn't say he discovered Glitter's kiddie porn. It says he helped put him behind bars as an expert witness
The Romans didn't find algebra very challenging, because X was always 10
Which documentation, exactly, are you using? I've played with stuff from the wiki, but it's always seemed to me that it was starting partway through. For example, telling you to use various already-built functions which load a prebuilt mesh. However, as the failure seems to be in loading the mesh... it's not very helpful to use the provided functions.
It's interesting that Microsoft has historically called into question the credentials of the Judge when found guilty . er
Lots of good discussion in this thread.
Do you understand the difference between "...to be written..." and "...will never be written..." ?
Web definitions for Pedophilia
Sexual attraction to a child; clinically, a person sixteen years of age or older who is at least five years older than the child. Pedophiles will prefer males, females, or both. Generally considered to be an incurable mental disorder.
http://www.reasoned.org/glossary.htm - Definition in context
It is not an orientation moron, or do you like to rape kids too?
I am. Lower your shields and power down your weapons, they are useless. Your biological and technological distinctivenes
And this is something I find scary. The guy who was fifth (out of what, 6 billion people to choose from?) on the list isnt capable.
Microsoft make *how* much money every year? Could have sent a couple of drudges to check the people on their list out..
I'd say something along the lines of "you nominated him, we appointed him. He's not going away, and you still have to listen to us. If you don't like it, tough shit."
I dislike how some companies feel like they have a right to bend the rules and laws, just because they get caught doing something illegal. Instead of admission of guilt and a promise to do better, they say it isn't fair. Last time I checked, a slap on the wrist by a certain administration wasn't exactly "fair," either.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
I am not a pedophile. Nor do I rape children. But what you have to understand is that the two are not one thing. Pedophilia is attraction to children. Child rape is raping children, i.e. acting on one's pedophilia. Do you see the difference? Whether you want to call pedophilia an orientation or a mental disorder is just semantics. Either way, my point is the same. We should be making neither mental disorders nor sexual orientations illegal to possess.
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The IEEE NaN and SQL NULL behaviour are very standard and widely known things. This is *by*design*. Now, you may disagree with the correctness of the design, like C J Date and others...
All very well, but in a weakly typed langage like ASP, NaN and NULL are both the same data type as everything else. It's all very well to say that x!=x should be true if x is an integer, but when x is simply an ASP var, the rules based on numerical evaluation cease to apply. The result should always return true if var comparision is to be a well defined operation.
May the Maths Be with you!
Am I the only person to be incensed that Mary Jacoby doesn't refer to Professor Barrett by his proper title, instead relegating him to Mr. Barrett?
Mr Barrett could more properly be refered to as Professor Barrett or Dr. Barrett. "Hacker" sounds so much more dramatic than "highly qualified and experienced software development and security expert". Professor doesn't match "hacker", so we get Mr. instead. Journalistic spin.
how about this line "European Commission regulators in Brussels chose Mr. Barrett from AMONG Microsoft's OWN nominees for the job of judging whether the company is complying with a 2004 EU ruling that it help its competitors design software to mesh with its nearly ubiquitous Windows operating system"
Source code never lies or misleads...
God and religion are distinct
Great one.
Wipedia says: "the paraphilia of being sexually attracted primarily or exclusively to prepubescent children"
Sure it is an orientation. It described an attraction, not an act.
Clever signature text goes here.
And that is /only/ for the C++ section of Kdevelop... but most of the Linux or OpenSource documentation provided is a joke
/thousands/ of details why some open source software just can not make it. And the people that closes their eyes and negate it will never get it...
I have 2 big problems with what you say :
- Kdevelop has nothing to do with an API, and most devs (me included, even though I'm no dev) can use it without doc. What's even better, you can ask the authors or the community about a feature you don't find or don't understand in Kdevelop.
- You're quick to assume every doc in FOSS is in the same state
So you failed to talk about the equivalent to what is asked of MS here, which would be kdevelop or KDE API, which are documented, and pretty well. Was this cluelessness or on purpose ?
Even if they were not documented on KDE, the code is available. Which is not an option for MS, which is why everybody have trouble interoperating with them, which is the reason they are on trial. How could you
Seriously, I may sound as a troll here but, there is *no* way you can tell me that is better than even the documentation on Borland C++ IDE!!!
Of course not, you are comparing apple and oranges anyway !! The problem here is not the documentation of the IDE, it is the documentation of API, which is much more important.
this is one of the
People don't close their eyes nor negate it, but as long as everybody using KDevelop can use it without this doc, I don't see the problem.
Switching topic won't prove anything BTW, and your rhetoric about "thousands of details why some open source software just can not make it" won't work either.
It's just poor FUD.
OOPS, CRAPTY-SHIT-SHIT!!!
I am a total numb nuts!
will look at those links next time.
The bad thing is that I am Pagan!
I am. Lower your shields and power down your weapons, they are useless. Your biological and technological distinctivenes
So would you mind if someone deeply desired your four year old daughter? What if this person decided to act on this desire? Would you mind that? This is a mental disorder. Anyone who posses the want for children has issues about their own childhood. It has been proven most people who desire children were once raped as a child. This evidence proves this is an aquired taste, therefore NOT a sexual preference. A sexual preference is something someone is born with, and is not aquired. It should be illegal to possess anything related to child sex acts due to the fact some child had to be molested in order for that material to be created, thusly creating yet another child rapist. It is a viscous circle. Not all people who were raped as children become child rapists, but 99 percent of child rapists were raped as children. I am saddened people like you frequent this board. i thought the members of this board of a higher caliber.
I am. Lower your shields and power down your weapons, they are useless. Your biological and technological distinctivenes
OK, so it's a mental disorder, are mental disorders illegal to have now?
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