DeCSS does not make it any easier to pirate DVDs, it merely makes it possible to play the media back on hardware without the encrpytion. Pirate DVDs have existed since the format came out, and will probably continue to exist.
You can copy the encrpted media without DeCSS; you'll just have to play it back on hardware that supports the encryption.
DeCSS makes it possible to play it back on your computer without purchasing software or hardware decoders. As far as I know, there are no hardware DVD players without encryption (decoders) that will playback the unencrypted media. So what's the big deal? Certainly no company large enough to manufacture such a machine will do so - they'd piss off the big boys and be drummed out of business.
So we've got essentially the same situation we have with MP3s. MP3s have put no dent in the sales of CDs, CD players, or home media systems. Nobody wants to crowd around a PC monitor to watch a movie, and it's still cheaper to buy one of their damn DVD decoders than it is to set up a PC capable of playing a DVD with any degree of quality.
What's the problem? Got me. DVD piracy probably won't change all that much. Nobody will make DVD playback hardware without the encryption.
No one may be convicted except according to law, or be punished except after a court judgment. Interrogation by torture must not take place.
He hasn't been convicted (yet!) or punished. No food for 6-7 hours certainly won't qualify as torture. I don't see (unfortunately) how this article is relevant.
No one may be taken into custody except in the cases determined by law and in the manner prescribed by law. For unwarranted arrest, or illegal detention, the officer concerned is accountable to the person imprisoned. The Government is not entitled to employ military force against citizens of the State, except in accordance with the forms prescribed by law, unless any assembly disturbs the public peace and does not immediately disperse after the Articles of the Statute Book relating to riots have been read out clearly three times by the civil authority.
Again, no violation here because...
Search of private homes shall not be made except in criminal cases.
... it looks as if he is to be charged criminally. For what, I don't know. I imagine the Norwegian government has been under considerable pressure from the media conglams to "do something". The fact that it's taken this long to move in on him means they've probably done their homework and know exactly what they're doing vis a vis their constitution and the laws.
Sad fact is, they're doing their job. If he's broken a law he should be brought to justice, it's the job of the authorities (police, prosecuters etc.) to do this, and it's his responsibilty to hire a competent defense attorney to prove he DID NOT. If the laws are wrong, then they should be changed.
Having laws on the books we don't enforce is a very bad idea (look at the handgun laws, like the Brady bill). It gives the impression all laws can be broken.
Hopefully this will bring to light laws that just don't make sense. If posting the source code to something that was reverse engineered on a website stirs your sense of moral outrage, then there's a problem!;)
I was reading the comments, getting angrier and angrier with the price difference between IDE & SCSI, when I thought this: 'I wonder if it would be possible to rip of the IDE controller board from a hard disk and replace it with a SCSI one'
No need. There are motherboards out there with onboard SCSI, for example the ASUS P2B98-S/DS. You can disable the onboard IDE to release those valuable resources.
I am just wondering where they keep getting these huge figures on the costs of replacing one html document with another.
It's just not that simple. There's no doubt that most of these monetary claims are vastly exaggerated, but it's not just a matter of replacing an index.html file. If someone broke into your house and spray painted a tag on your bathroom wall, would you just shrug it off, clean it, shut your doors, and continue on with life? No. You'd beef up your security.
Fact is a lot of these sites may be "asking for it" with their poor admins and shaky security, but that doesn't make it right. If a tourist gets mugged because they're seen carrying large amounts of money is that right? If a person is wearing "suggestive" clothing and gets assaulted, is that right? These crackers are breaking the law, plain and simple, and we need to stop pointing our fingers at the victims for blame. Even if they are stupid. It's amazing that script kiddies can even find sites to crack, I mean come on! It takes ONE mailing list to find out about these problems in advance most of the time. If their sites are worth so much money to them why can't the invest the 2-45mins each day to check this stuff out!!??
Oh yeah, for those of you out there who are not Asimov fans, the name of his fictional company (which appears in very many short stories and novels) was the reason that a certain modem company chose a certain name for themselves.
Asimov's company is US Robots, the modem company is (was actually, 3COM now) US Robotics.
That's the catch. According to the patents they have filed, it'd most likely be able to run ANY OS, and hence, any software. There chips would morph x86, etc, calls, to it's own internal architecure, hence, 'emulating' nearly any chip on the market currently..
Bingo on the emulation. If we wre to explect a native Linux on this platform, we could also expect a large chunk of new, untested code in the kernel; something Linus has been heavily against in the past.
What do we expect if we depend on software to tell us when our children are having problems? I'm lucky if I can get through a day without something on my computer not working properly, and all I do is web design.
The idea that a software package can tell you when someone is a problem is beyond ridiculous. Teachers these days are just as bored and apathetic as their students, and it shows. Something needs to be done to our school system. Instead of fostering thought, it's a depressing example of civil service-style beaurocracy.
This wouldn't even be so bad if the teacher hadn't awarded the student a perfect grade to being with! Incredible!
Re:The best Sci-Fi doesn't have much to do with te
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Quite honestly I think the best Sci-Fi ends dealing with philosophy. Star Trek, Clarke, Gibson and many others. While I do enjoy various types of sci-fi, I think the real purpose is to make us think.. What is it to be human, what should we do with the power of technology etc. Sci-fi provides this by allowing androids, AI, aliens and other elements which make us question. This is Sci-Fi
Indeed. You have just illustrated the difference between SciFi and Science Fiction.
Re:Greg Bear's Psychotherapy
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One of Greg Bear's themes that has alway disturbed me is his apparent belief that all humans require some form of psychotherapy. In "Eon", the entire human race is basically sedated by future versions of ourselves. In "Slant", only rare and exceptional individuals can survive in society without some form of therapy. Personnaly, I like me and don't want someone messing with my head.
I never came away from his novels with that impression. The impression that all humans would be expected to undergoes some form of psychotherapy, yes. Given the touchy feely attitude prevalent in today's society, and the fact that it's just getting worse I think it makes for a rather realistic (and scary!) view of the future.
He's also partial to his main characters NOT requiring this help. Look at Olmy in Eon for example. He's entirely self-contained, extremely private, and considered somewhat anarchistic by his peers. A throwback, but a necessary throwback. I think what he's saying is fiddling and fixing is all well and good, but shit gets done by unmodified, crazy humans.;) Larry Niven takes the same slant in his Known Space stories (at least the pre-Man-Kzin war stories) where the ARM pretty much runs the show and keeps the population uninformed and conditioned. Who runs the ARM? Old men who are not well adjusted by their own standards. Who does the dirty work? Borderline wackos and paranoids kept in check with medicines.
It's the wackos that get things done, and I don't want anyone messing with my head either!;)
I hate when writers make their acronyms mean something, rather than have what the acronym stands for mean something. "SHEVA" is a obvious anagram of "Shiva", the Hindu god of Destruction and it obviously stands for the destruction of humans. Dumb, but every writer has it drilled into them at school that EVERYTHING in a novel must have meaning, no matter how obvious or cheesy it is.
I dunno. I think it's realistic given the tendancies real people have for forming these silly acronyms.;)
Re:Hard science fiction is soft
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I think we should discontinue all further use of the term "hard science fiction" - there are NO hard sci-fi writers, even among those (like Bear) with strong science groundings. Let's enjoy these books for what they are - great stories - but remember they're works of fiction and fantasy, not bound by the laws of physics.
I disagree. Let me start out by saying your post SHOULD NOT have been moderated to Flamebait. It's certainly on topic, and while it will probably draw considerable fire, Flamebait it ain't.
That being said, I need this term! Without it I could be saddled with crappy Piers Anthony books (no offense to the legions of 13 year olds who seem to enjoy them!) and no way to tell them apart from the good stuff.
Hard Science Fiction is just that... fiction. Part of the fun lies in finding the scientific errors and debunking them.
Take Ringworld for example. As an abtract idea, it's brilliant! An artifical ecosystem that offers the benefits of a planet on a huge scale. The first novel however, left glaring holes in it's implemenation. (The ring world is unstable! The ring world is unstable!) Erosion, instability, and numerous other snafus were detected and addressed in the next novel (which also contained it's share of snafus).
Hard Science Fiction, while giving us a healthy dose of entertainment, also gives us an opportunity to exercise our intellect and decide for ourselves what's plausible, possible, and probable.
I was about to start debunking...
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... but then I answered my own questions.;)
Fossil evidence indicates Homo Sapians/CroMagnons lived alongside Neanderthals. Oddly enough, though they often lived peacefully RIGHT beside each other, there's no evidence they ever lived WITH each other (that I've heard of anyway). This co-existence would seem to put a damper on the virus in the book, which seems to be quite communicable. If it's so damn communicable to warrant mass graves, how could the poor infected Neanderthal population hope to survive alongside proto-humans long enough to leave the fossil records they did?
Of course, they would be two different viruii, with two different levels of communicability. Maybe the Neanderthal variant just took longer? I get one head smack there.
Not to mention the fact that these proto-humans weren't as crowded as we were. Even up to the last few centuries, certain populations were spared the horrors of viruii that are common all over the world today. Look at the affect Europeans had on the native American populations! Not anymore; the global economy and environment today is in the chute for some nasty virulent surprises.
Since I can't debunk the premise, I'll have to buy it. Looks damn interesting!;)
For what it's worth, I found GTK programming disarmingly simple when I bought Eric whatever his last name is's book on GTK. It explained those concepts quite well. I like the way he explained packing by comparing it to HTML tables - GTK formats widgets automatically in a very similar way.
I owe it to myself to check that book out, I've heard nothing but good things about it.
On the other hand, a lot of direct user interface programming has been replaced with software that spits out HTML for a browser - and I, for one, applaud that trend.
It makes designing UIs very simple, and certainly opens things up to people who under different circustances wouldn't take a stab at a project. But... Usability issues. With a toolkit you hav definite constraints on what you can and can't do. On top of that, there are usually guidelines as to what makes a good interface. Nothing like this applies to HTML... the sky is the limit. While this cam make for some intersting and exotic interfaces, it also produces a lot of horrible ones. When HTML is your interface, you have to be very careful designing your UI. The amount of planning involved may make it worthwhile to use something that on the face of things may seem more complex.
Peformance. Browsers are slow! Rendering a complex UI in HTML can be noticibly slower than a similar one in even Java. When you start using applets and geegaw addons to make up for the lack of basic controls (spin buttons, intelligent combo boxes, list views etc) it just gets slower. While I think many applications would benefit from such an interface, I certainly wouldn't want everything moving in that direction.
Gah, return in the subject field should not post the comment... Suppose you make a query that you know will result in an empty result, then store the value. You could then try to compare to that value to see if you've got an empty result.
I got around it a different way, but that might work. Point is, nothing whould be null, maybe zero, and under the worst possible circumstances an empty string. I'll try this next time though!;)
Every time I attempt to do any work in Win32, I feel like I have to undergo a lobotomy first. Win32 IDE may look like eye candy up front, but when you strip away all the makeup, underneath you'll find one ugly beast. The Win32 API is a complete and utter joke. In fact, it's so bad that you can't really work with it directly, and you have to use MFC to get a barely workable API to work with. Ever tried to put together a simple process, under Win32, to listen on a socket for connections, for some simple processing? This is a ten minute job in *NIX. Win32 forces you to use a convoluted event-driven architecture that absolutely makes no sense, and is a royal pain in the ass. This is just an example, but is quite typical of Win32's idiocy.
Everytime these development comparisons pop up there are posts like this. Let me start out by saying : I feel your pain!. That being said, let me make the same point I make everytime in an effort to be fair.
Yes, Win32 programming is difficult and convoluted. Unfortunately, so is raw XLib programming. No points scored there for X/*NIX. MFC can be overwhelming (and often is). I don't have fond memories of my first MFC steps. But I'm playing with GTK now and to be honest, I'm having an awful time dealing with some of the core concepts (packing for starters!). Programming isn't simple, a learning curve is to be expected and should be embraced if we are to understand the systems and methods we should be using; regardless of the platform or environment.
With regards to sockets, putting together a small app in ten minutes for Win32 isn't all that difficult if you know what you're doing, and I actually think a network application is a prime contender (in most cases) for an event driven architecture. The bottom line is familiarity. Just because we're not familiar with something doesn't mean it's not a viable method!
IDE means different things to different folks. Some are happy with a multitude of xterms running various tools, some like to have it all in one window with widgets and geegaws. I'll take the geegaws, and I don't think my preference belittles me as a programmer. There are plenty of accomplished programmers who share my preference, and there are plenty that don't.
In short - choice is good! Different is good! If you're happy and productive don't let anyone tell you your methods are wrong! Fight the good fight.
As a developer for Windows, I hate the way that with every new release of one of their developer packages a 'new' API or programming model is introduced.
I was about to disagree with you (nicely of course!) when I read the next line:
In Vb there are at least four different APIs to develop DB applications - can't they get it right first time (not to mention careless bugs in the components??
Hear hear. I admit to being to complacent in my acceptance of Microsoft technology. It's not just VB folks, it's every MS development platform. Each API has it's benefits and downfalls, and each API accesses THE SAME DATA TYPES!!
Another bitch: I write ASP pages for a living (but dream in Perl and PHP). If you do a SELECT AVG(fieldname) FROM table and there are no records, you would expect a NULL returned, no? Maybe a 0? Okay, you're using VBScript, so maybe it'll return an empty string? None. All of these checks will fail even though printing out the result prints out nothing. What is this mystery variable!!! Aie!!!!
This is rediculous. WhatsHappening is a phrase, and cannot (or should not) be a trademark. How the heck they think they can sue because this phrase exists in other languages is beyond me.
Not only that, it's not even a phrase; just one word and part of another! Last time I checked it was h-a-p-p-e-n-i-n-G, not "happinin" (which doesn't translate to anything since it's not even a word).
The folks at whatshappinin.com should surf on over to whocares.com or, even better, bitemyleftnut.net. (turn head and cough...)
Bottom line. I understand you could be feeling violated, and this feeling I can understand. But, you aren't going to get sympathy by stating this in an impercise manner. We're geeks, and we're anal. We expect that if you say something, you should know what it means.
Being a geek does not mean being anal. Get over yourself.
I don't even remember how this started so I'm going to shut my cakehole right after my final attempt to bring understanding to you anal folks:
All private message boards (which this certainly is, I don't see them syndicating or transferring these disscussions elsewhere) usually have a disclaimer stating that they may use comments for anything they want... customer testimonials etc. This site explicitly does the opposite, stating on every page of the site that "comments are owned by the poster".
How can I state this any more precisely? It's obvious - Comments are owned by the poster. Comments are owned by the poster. You can't renege on a clause that's on every page of your site, no matter what crap a third party puts in their post. Can you understand that?
This is NOT a public discussion forum. Each and every post is owned by the poster.
Yes, I understand in reality this is not important. I am making a point. Regardless of what someone says to you before they do it, it is WRONG to take something belonging to someone else without explicity asking them for it.
if you can read plain english you clearly understand the implications of a simple "if...then" statement.
I'm pleased that someone else stooped to making snide comments before I did. It's unusual that I'm not the first to do so in a discussion.;)
My bottom line: Don't take my shit. If it's not mine, don't tell me it is. There's the disconnect, not complex at all.
First, copyright infringement != privacy risk. By posting your comments in a public forum, you've made those comments public, not private.
I beg to differ. Well, I'm not begging, I'm just differing. It's not a copyright issue in my mind. According to Slashdot, I *own* my comments. These people are taking something (information) belonging to me without my permission and using it to generate profit for themselves. How is this not a violation of my privacy again?
For the record, they're not taking anything of mine. I've long since given up commenting on security articles, theories, opinions, etc. because I'm afraid someone's going to open up a can of OpenBSD and slap me silly.
Second, anyone who posted to the original article should have known that their comments could show up in the Jane's article. That was, after all, the whole idea of soliciting comments from slashdot. As the gentleman from Jane's states in the original slashdot article: [stuff deleteed] If you didn't want to "risk your privacy" then you should've posted as AC.
Again, not a personal issue since I didn't offer anything worth stealing. But there's my point - taking something belonging to someone else without asking them FIRST is stealing. Putting a disclaimer on their post to the contrary is BS... you can't get away with crap like that under other circumstances.
"Oh, and by the way, regardless of the fact that you own [something], we may take it and use it for profit without asking you first. Inf act, not only are we not going to ask you, we're not going to even tell you! figure it out for yourself!Thanks!"
Is it a big deal in this case? Realistically - No. Morally - Yes. It is indeed a violation of privacy, and trust.
Slashdot Mirror
You can copy the encrpted media without DeCSS; you'll just have to play it back on hardware that supports the encryption.
DeCSS makes it possible to play it back on your computer without purchasing software or hardware decoders. As far as I know, there are no hardware DVD players without encryption (decoders) that will playback the unencrypted media. So what's the big deal? Certainly no company large enough to manufacture such a machine will do so - they'd piss off the big boys and be drummed out of business.
So we've got essentially the same situation we have with MP3s. MP3s have put no dent in the sales of CDs, CD players, or home media systems. Nobody wants to crowd around a PC monitor to watch a movie, and it's still cheaper to buy one of their damn DVD decoders than it is to set up a PC capable of playing a DVD with any degree of quality.
What's the problem? Got me. DVD piracy probably won't change all that much. Nobody will make DVD playback hardware without the encryption.
He hasn't been convicted (yet!) or punished. No food for 6-7 hours certainly won't qualify as torture. I don't see (unfortunately) how this article is relevant.
No one may be taken into custody except in the cases determined by law and in the manner prescribed by law. For unwarranted arrest, or illegal detention, the officer concerned is accountable to the person imprisoned. The Government is not entitled to employ military force against citizens of the State, except in accordance with the forms prescribed by law, unless any assembly disturbs the public peace and does not immediately disperse after the Articles of the Statute Book relating to riots have been read out clearly three times by the civil authority.
Again, no violation here because...
Search of private homes shall not be made except in criminal cases.
Sad fact is, they're doing their job. If he's broken a law he should be brought to justice, it's the job of the authorities (police, prosecuters etc.) to do this, and it's his responsibilty to hire a competent defense attorney to prove he DID NOT. If the laws are wrong, then they should be changed.
Having laws on the books we don't enforce is a very bad idea (look at the handgun laws, like the Brady bill). It gives the impression all laws can be broken.
Hopefully this will bring to light laws that just don't make sense. If posting the source code to something that was reverse engineered on a website stirs your sense of moral outrage, then there's a problem! ;)
No need. There are motherboards out there with onboard SCSI, for example the ASUS P2B98-S/DS. You can disable the onboard IDE to release those valuable resources.
And I'm looking at a book that has "US Robots and Mechanical Men" listed several times.
Don't feel bad, even though I know it's wrong, my brain still says US Robotics too. ;)
It's just not that simple. There's no doubt that most of these monetary claims are vastly exaggerated, but it's not just a matter of replacing an index.html file. If someone broke into your house and spray painted a tag on your bathroom wall, would you just shrug it off, clean it, shut your doors, and continue on with life? No. You'd beef up your security.
Fact is a lot of these sites may be "asking for it" with their poor admins and shaky security, but that doesn't make it right. If a tourist gets mugged because they're seen carrying large amounts of money is that right? If a person is wearing "suggestive" clothing and gets assaulted, is that right? These crackers are breaking the law, plain and simple, and we need to stop pointing our fingers at the victims for blame.
Even if they are stupid. It's amazing that script kiddies can even find sites to crack, I mean come on! It takes ONE mailing list to find out about these problems in advance most of the time. If their sites are worth so much money to them why can't the invest the 2-45mins each day to check this stuff out!!??
Asimov's company is US Robots, the modem company is (was actually, 3COM now) US Robotics .
Bingo on the emulation. If we wre to explect a native Linux on this platform, we could also expect a large chunk of new, untested code in the kernel; something Linus has been heavily against in the past.
Username: slashdot-wizard Password: slashdot
The idea that a software package can tell you when someone is a problem is beyond ridiculous. Teachers these days are just as bored and apathetic as their students, and it shows. Something needs to be done to our school system. Instead of fostering thought, it's a depressing example of civil service-style beaurocracy.
This wouldn't even be so bad if the teacher hadn't awarded the student a perfect grade to being with! Incredible!
Indeed. You have just illustrated the difference between SciFi and Science Fiction.
I never came away from his novels with that impression. The impression that all humans would be expected to undergoes some form of psychotherapy, yes. Given the touchy feely attitude prevalent in today's society, and the fact that it's just getting worse I think it makes for a rather realistic (and scary!) view of the future.
He's also partial to his main characters NOT requiring this help. Look at Olmy in Eon for example. He's entirely self-contained, extremely private, and considered somewhat anarchistic by his peers. A throwback, but a necessary throwback. I think what he's saying is fiddling and fixing is all well and good, but shit gets done by unmodified, crazy humans. ;) Larry Niven takes the same slant in his Known Space stories (at least the pre-Man-Kzin war stories) where the ARM pretty much runs the show and keeps the population uninformed and conditioned. Who runs the ARM? Old men who are not well adjusted by their own standards. Who does the dirty work? Borderline wackos and paranoids kept in check with medicines.
It's the wackos that get things done, and I don't want anyone messing with my head either! ;)
I dunno. I think it's realistic given the tendancies real people have for forming these silly acronyms. ;)
I disagree. Let me start out by saying your post SHOULD NOT have been moderated to Flamebait. It's certainly on topic, and while it will probably draw considerable fire, Flamebait it ain't.
That being said, I need this term! Without it I could be saddled with crappy Piers Anthony books (no offense to the legions of 13 year olds who seem to enjoy them!) and no way to tell them apart from the good stuff.
Hard Science Fiction is just that... fiction. Part of the fun lies in finding the scientific errors and debunking them.
Take Ringworld for example. As an abtract idea, it's brilliant! An artifical ecosystem that offers the benefits of a planet on a huge scale. The first novel however, left glaring holes in it's implemenation. (The ring world is unstable! The ring world is unstable!) Erosion, instability, and numerous other snafus were detected and addressed in the next novel (which also contained it's share of snafus).
Hard Science Fiction, while giving us a healthy dose of entertainment, also gives us an opportunity to exercise our intellect and decide for ourselves what's plausible, possible, and probable.
Fossil evidence indicates Homo Sapians/CroMagnons lived alongside Neanderthals. Oddly enough, though they often lived peacefully RIGHT beside each other, there's no evidence they ever lived WITH each other (that I've heard of anyway). This co-existence would seem to put a damper on the virus in the book, which seems to be quite communicable. If it's so damn communicable to warrant mass graves, how could the poor infected Neanderthal population hope to survive alongside proto-humans long enough to leave the fossil records they did?
Of course, they would be two different viruii, with two different levels of communicability. Maybe the Neanderthal variant just took longer? I get one head smack there.
Not to mention the fact that these proto-humans weren't as crowded as we were. Even up to the last few centuries, certain populations were spared the horrors of viruii that are common all over the world today. Look at the affect Europeans had on the native American populations! Not anymore; the global economy and environment today is in the chute for some nasty virulent surprises.
Since I can't debunk the premise, I'll have to buy it. Looks damn interesting! ;)
Actually... they don't. It links back to the same page you're on - on Lycos. ;)
Finally, a show for me!
I owe it to myself to check that book out, I've heard nothing but good things about it.
On the other hand, a lot of direct user interface programming has been replaced with software that spits out HTML for a browser - and I, for one, applaud that trend.
It makes designing UIs very simple, and certainly opens things up to people who under different circustances wouldn't take a stab at a project. But...
Usability issues. With a toolkit you hav definite constraints on what you can and can't do. On top of that, there are usually guidelines as to what makes a good interface. Nothing like this applies to HTML... the sky is the limit. While this cam make for some intersting and exotic interfaces, it also produces a lot of horrible ones. When HTML is your interface, you have to be very careful designing your UI. The amount of planning involved may make it worthwhile to use something that on the face of things may seem more complex.
Peformance. Browsers are slow! Rendering a complex UI in HTML can be noticibly slower than a similar one in even Java. When you start using applets and geegaw addons to make up for the lack of basic controls (spin buttons, intelligent combo boxes, list views etc) it just gets slower. While I think many applications would benefit from such an interface, I certainly wouldn't want everything moving in that direction.
I got around it a different way, but that might work. Point is, nothing whould be null, maybe zero, and under the worst possible circumstances an empty string. I'll try this next time though! ;)
There was another under Windows. Borland's OWL. May it remain dead. ;)
Ever tried to put together a simple process, under Win32, to listen on a socket for connections, for some simple processing? This is a ten minute job in *NIX. Win32 forces you to use a convoluted event-driven architecture that absolutely makes no sense, and is a royal pain in the ass. This is just an example, but is quite typical of Win32's idiocy.
Everytime these development comparisons pop up there are posts like this. Let me start out by saying : I feel your pain!. That being said, let me make the same point I make everytime in an effort to be fair.
Yes, Win32 programming is difficult and convoluted. Unfortunately, so is raw XLib programming. No points scored there for X/*NIX. MFC can be overwhelming (and often is). I don't have fond memories of my first MFC steps. But I'm playing with GTK now and to be honest, I'm having an awful time dealing with some of the core concepts (packing for starters!). Programming isn't simple, a learning curve is to be expected and should be embraced if we are to understand the systems and methods we should be using; regardless of the platform or environment.
With regards to sockets, putting together a small app in ten minutes for Win32 isn't all that difficult if you know what you're doing, and I actually think a network application is a prime contender (in most cases) for an event driven architecture. The bottom line is familiarity. Just because we're not familiar with something doesn't mean it's not a viable method!
IDE means different things to different folks. Some are happy with a multitude of xterms running various tools, some like to have it all in one window with widgets and geegaws. I'll take the geegaws, and I don't think my preference belittles me as a programmer. There are plenty of accomplished programmers who share my preference, and there are plenty that don't.
In short - choice is good! Different is good! If you're happy and productive don't let anyone tell you your methods are wrong! Fight the good fight.
I was about to disagree with you (nicely of course!) when I read the next line:
In Vb there are at least four different APIs to develop DB applications - can't they get it right first time (not to mention careless bugs in the components??
Hear hear. I admit to being to complacent in my acceptance of Microsoft technology. It's not just VB folks, it's every MS development platform. Each API has it's benefits and downfalls, and each API accesses THE SAME DATA TYPES!!
Another bitch: I write ASP pages for a living (but dream in Perl and PHP). If you do a SELECT AVG(fieldname) FROM table and there are no records, you would expect a NULL returned, no? Maybe a 0? Okay, you're using VBScript, so maybe it'll return an empty string? None. All of these checks will fail even though printing out the result prints out nothing. What is this mystery variable!!! Aie!!!!
Not only that, it's not even a phrase; just one word and part of another! Last time I checked it was h-a-p-p-e-n-i-n-G, not "happinin" (which doesn't translate to anything since it's not even a word).
The folks at whatshappinin.com should surf on over to whocares.com or, even better, bitemyleftnut.net. (turn head and cough...)
Being a geek does not mean being anal. Get over yourself.
I don't even remember how this started so I'm going to shut my cakehole right after my final attempt to bring understanding to you anal folks:
All private message boards (which this certainly is, I don't see them syndicating or transferring these disscussions elsewhere) usually have a disclaimer stating that they may use comments for anything they want... customer testimonials etc. This site explicitly does the opposite, stating on every page of the site that "comments are owned by the poster".
How can I state this any more precisely? It's obvious - Comments are owned by the poster. Comments are owned by the poster. You can't renege on a clause that's on every page of your site, no matter what crap a third party puts in their post. Can you understand that?
I'll make it REAL simple this time:
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-99 Andover.Net.
This is NOT a public discussion forum. Each and every post is owned by the poster.
Yes, I understand in reality this is not important. I am making a point. Regardless of what someone says to you before they do it, it is WRONG to take something belonging to someone else without explicity asking them for it.
if you can read plain english you clearly understand the implications of a simple "if...then" statement.
I'm pleased that someone else stooped to making snide comments before I did. It's unusual that I'm not the first to do so in a discussion. ;)
My bottom line: Don't take my shit. If it's not mine, don't tell me it is. There's the disconnect, not complex at all.
I beg to differ. Well, I'm not begging, I'm just differing. It's not a copyright issue in my mind. According to Slashdot, I *own* my comments. These people are taking something (information) belonging to me without my permission and using it to generate profit for themselves. How is this not a violation of my privacy again?
For the record, they're not taking anything of mine. I've long since given up commenting on security articles, theories, opinions, etc. because I'm afraid someone's going to open up a can of OpenBSD and slap me silly.
Second, anyone who posted to the original article should have known that their comments could show up in the Jane's article. That was, after all, the whole idea of soliciting comments from slashdot. As the gentleman from Jane's states in the original slashdot article:
[stuff deleteed]
If you didn't want to "risk your privacy" then you should've posted as AC.
Again, not a personal issue since I didn't offer anything worth stealing. But there's my point - taking something belonging to someone else without asking them FIRST is stealing. Putting a disclaimer on their post to the contrary is BS... you can't get away with crap like that under other circumstances.
"Oh, and by the way, regardless of the fact that you own [something], we may take it and use it for profit without asking you first. Inf act, not only are we not going to ask you, we're not going to even tell you! figure it out for yourself!Thanks!"
Is it a big deal in this case? Realistically - No. Morally - Yes. It is indeed a violation of privacy, and trust.