Yes it's a cool hack but unless the trojan was coded to only execute on machines with a certain MAC address it was ethically wrong.
I believe that's a perverted ethical viewpoinnt. The thumbdrives were obtained unethically and you cannot hold OTHERS ethically responsible for any potential damage. Is it unethical to leave a pencil out, knowing a child could grab it and stab themselves in the eye? Yes it's probably unethical to knowingly put a candy wrapper around a laxative (ok, that was me) on a playground, but in America, the idea of personal responsibility for adults (especially a bank) exists.
I found out that in the real world, where I have lived and worked since PHP/FI, that every BUSINESS runs PHP5 and will be running PHP6 regardless of whatever reports anyone punches up on Google. I have worked on HIGH traffic sites like Amazon.com, Drlaura.com, Bizrate.com (different kinds of traffic:p) all the way down to sites like MikeFerry.com. Hobby sites in PHP4 mean nothing by comparison. Every host I have contacted since 2001, offered both 4 and 5.
I worked for a web company that hosted, designed and coded websites. I tried to get them to make the jump to PHP5. While they didn't have any commercial code that would interfere with upgrading, the senior programmer, sysadmin and management agreed that it would take at least two weeks of auditing all the sites they have in order to upgrade the machines. My attempt to get them to upgrade failed.
I have NO DOUBT that this is factually correct. However, I would contend every one of those sites is quite small. You don't need to migrate, just set up another server and start building on a more robust platform. Sites die off and the ones that need to grow, find they want more than the gum and bailing wire approach. You can just CROSSLINK. The OO scaffolding that is in PHP4, allows you to quickly convert to true OO in PHP5 if you have people who actually believe in programming in OO fashion religiously.
If a REAL business is in the business of making money from their website, they are using the most current version of PHP across the board. Managing a team of 5 programmers, using PHP4 templates, is a versioning balance act (scales to millions of requests per second with proper hardware and bandwidth). It's a bad idea, but not impossible to use PHP4 for a high profile site. I have never had the experience of a client dictating my platform, so this has never been an issue. My contention is that your criticisms are heavily influenced by bad experiences and the multitudes of crappy 3rd party apps. When you contract or work solo, the common tools like OSCommerce, phpMyAdmin, etc would affect anyone's perspective. I still contend those critcisms are not based in the world of authoring PHP tools, but on being forced to use what you can get.
When discussing the qualities of a language, why are we talking about PHP4? Yes a lot of people use it. We call those people "incompent", that isn't a reason to call the language. Why aren't you bitching about how crappy C was prior to K&R? Why aren't you bitching about how incomplete Postgresql 0.9 is?
That's an interesting bastardization of what the Constitution actually says. More importantly a nuclear armament would technically be something a US Citizen should have a right to bear, right? Referring to centuries old legislation INACCURATELY to argue a contemporary issue is absurd on its face.
If I shop lifted a DVD, why do I need to buy it from the retailer?
If I recorded the music from a concert, why would I need to buy it from a retailer? There is NO reason I would NEED to buy a copy of something that I can make myself. It's an option. Just as I don't have to buy a copy of Linux but I do because it's convenient.
I do like the bread analogy. However it's not about making bread, it's about bread recipes.
There's nothing inherently good or necessary about retail distribution of music. It's akin to selling bread recipes. Yes music (as well as computer programs) are more complicated forms of information, they are still both traded information. You cannot shoplift information nor legislate it without completely obscuring it. Unfortunately that would make it unsaleable to the public!
I dont see how anyone can SUPPORT proprietary IP, as if it's a demonstrable concept.
Why would the invalidation of CC and GPL be a bad thing? CC and GPL are necessary responses to insane IP laws, not virtuous in and of themselves. Sounds like a ridiculous philosophical stance to me.
While I do not disagree with your point of view I believe you miss the poitn. The original question is how to best approach an IT learning regimine. I am a pragmatist and believe that suggesting one learn higher order concepts is self defeating, as one would invariably be that much farther from practice for every conceiveable topic that might help them be a better tech. Howabout ethics, howabout contract law, howabout fridgerator maintenance and repair for those occasions when hardware is overheating? Coupled with the realistic assessment of the average intellect, let everyone start with such abstractions as servers, file descriptors, networking protocols, and then HTML. having taken a class in Discrete Mathematics may help them produce higher quality code, but I rather a coworker have actually USED Assembly to produce an optimized demo in the past. Discrete is a byproduct of experience. As most programmers find, the most valued resource is not someone's intelligence, but how efficiently they use their time.
In my experience there's the end user, administrator, programmer (builder), and software engieers (designer). Each have their own overlapping niche. Learning to program, in general, does not require one to be overly familiar with discrete mathematics. My brother is 12. He can program in BASIC.
That's pretty much the worst (and really elitist) advice I've seen regarding what to start with in IT!
If the questioner can't even decide on what technology to learn (not knowing the dependences of AJAX on Javascript on HTML, etc) recommending a Discrete Mathematics book is a complete waste of time. That's telling someone to learn how to drive a car by researching SMELTING. You are assuming they will ever make good use of such high level concepts (as far as American college students are concerned) which is a very small % of the population...even IF they are interested in learning IT.
I disagree that If nothing else, then a bunch of attractive side effects; is a reasonable reason to pursue a goal that is epic in scope, to reap benefits that are achievable NOW. If it was funded, it would not be worth it, but people are still talking about it, why? Why not put continue research into personal flight devices which are easier to engineer and infitely more pratical? Ah, there's the truth of it! Advocates of the space elevator are communal fanboys* interested in a "new" scifi mind-game because there's not a lot of work involved in arguing future possibilities. The old scifi toys like jetpacks aren't in style anyone! Why? Most people are just plain tired of talking about 50's scifi given the demonstrated difficulties which trashed their childhood dreams. That space elevator though, VERY POSSIBLE! WHOO HOO because nobody is going to waste money on it and crush those dreams similarly for some time.
*Note: This is not to say fanboys are bad, many fans are righteous advocates of good concepts, products, and ideals.
People who always spout "fix things here first" are often myopic and don't actualyl know much about the problems they propose we solve first.
It's a different approach to problem solving, not an indication of knowledge. I dont particularly remember saying you should always fix things first, many problems are completely subjective! (read: previous) Many are intractable. I think it's worth noting that you cannot engineer ANYTHING without refactoring and it is a solid approach. Try programming without a "fix things here first".
there's no such thing as a 'simple' social problem
As any introductory sociology class would contradict that, your response is laughable. Stay in school, stay away from studying space elevators.
And by your argument, we should never, ever, EVER research anything new, EVER, until we've solved EVERY problem we currently face.
That's not a logical conclusion from my argument. A logical conclusion would be that we should not research anything new of a similar scale, before solving smaller problems. Which is both what I believe and practically what would NEED TO HAPPEN to simply make a WIRE that would reach from the ground to an orbiting body.
The "Space Elevator" isn't even well DEFINED. My description is completely arbitrary. So all the discussions are about everyone's individual fanstasies being treated as a collective one. All equally implausible. You end up with a goal that can never be reached.
Real bright idea. Totally worth thinking about./sarcasm
Spreading into the universe is our most CRITICAL social/biological/mechanical problem.
That's a difference in perspective, not a truth. You're also under the delusion that speading *HUMANS* into the universe is critical, important, or even a good idea. Theoretically, sending samples of DNA in random directions from our solar system is a much more efficient idea. Then again, almost all space elevator advocates are trapped in sci-fi utopian fantasy worldview.
The strongest argument against it, is that we haven't solved simpler CRITICAL social, biological, and mechanical problems. Why support this? It deserves derision.
I am not engaging in an argument, I am pointing out a fact. They are both conspiracies and therefore both have elements of hidden agendas and obscured facts.
Are you saying that you think noobs should defeat experienced players? Get over yourself. Fact is, it was a stupid question with, so it begat a half answer.
I'm saying that experienced players will farm lower level players. There's nothing to prevent it. The question is (paraphrased), what do you have in place to prevent griefing? Answer was, LOOK OVER HERE LOOK OVER HERE! Which is, nothing.
I dont know how many games you play, but I play a fuckton. I do know exactly what I'm talking about, within the context of article. In CS, the difference between someone wearing armor+helmet with extra ammo and a nades versus some noob without, isn't theoretically enough to matter, since 1 bullet can kill for both players. On the other hand, the "experienced" player with the items is probably going to see 20-80 kill streaks versus the noob on cs_cock because it is an overwhelming advantage (+ the experience garnered to reach the level of a person with a buy script and practiced on cs_cock). Theory is fine and dandy. I'm sure they have even tested it extensively with, now seasoned, testers. In practice, all things are not equal and it will be a massive problem.
This isn't a game-killing problem, they will just have to change the gameplay. The big worry is that this gorgeous game has a designer who doesn't recognize basic consequences of releasing a game to the public, where you pit players with huge advantages versus new players. GG
Slashdot Mirror
They may have just been opening them up to see who the drive belogned to so they could return it.
That's what I said about the last safe I found.
Yes it's a cool hack but unless the trojan was coded to only execute on machines with a certain MAC address it was ethically wrong.
I believe that's a perverted ethical viewpoinnt. The thumbdrives were obtained unethically and you cannot hold OTHERS ethically responsible for any potential damage. Is it unethical to leave a pencil out, knowing a child could grab it and stab themselves in the eye? Yes it's probably unethical to knowingly put a candy wrapper around a laxative (ok, that was me) on a playground, but in America, the idea of personal responsibility for adults (especially a bank) exists.
I found out that in the real world, where I have lived and worked since PHP/FI, that every BUSINESS runs PHP5 and will be running PHP6 regardless of whatever reports anyone punches up on Google. I have worked on HIGH traffic sites like Amazon.com, Drlaura.com, Bizrate.com (different kinds of traffic :p) all the way down to sites like MikeFerry.com. Hobby sites in PHP4 mean nothing by comparison. Every host I have contacted since 2001, offered both 4 and 5.
I worked for a web company that hosted, designed and coded websites. I tried to get them to make the jump to PHP5. While they didn't have any commercial code that would interfere with upgrading, the senior programmer, sysadmin and management agreed that it would take at least two weeks of auditing all the sites they have in order to upgrade the machines. My attempt to get them to upgrade failed.
I have NO DOUBT that this is factually correct. However, I would contend every one of those sites is quite small. You don't need to migrate, just set up another server and start building on a more robust platform. Sites die off and the ones that need to grow, find they want more than the gum and bailing wire approach. You can just CROSSLINK. The OO scaffolding that is in PHP4, allows you to quickly convert to true OO in PHP5 if you have people who actually believe in programming in OO fashion religiously.
If a REAL business is in the business of making money from their website, they are using the most current version of PHP across the board. Managing a team of 5 programmers, using PHP4 templates, is a versioning balance act (scales to millions of requests per second with proper hardware and bandwidth). It's a bad idea, but not impossible to use PHP4 for a high profile site. I have never had the experience of a client dictating my platform, so this has never been an issue. My contention is that your criticisms are heavily influenced by bad experiences and the multitudes of crappy 3rd party apps. When you contract or work solo, the common tools like OSCommerce, phpMyAdmin, etc would affect anyone's perspective. I still contend those critcisms are not based in the world of authoring PHP tools, but on being forced to use what you can get.
As an aside, you offer PHP4.1 and 5 on your webhost. http://warp99.com/
I bought Herzog Zwei in 1990. It's amazing how people continue to spell it Dune 2.
When discussing the qualities of a language, why are we talking about PHP4? Yes a lot of people use it. We call those people "incompent", that isn't a reason to call the language. Why aren't you bitching about how crappy C was prior to K&R? Why aren't you bitching about how incomplete Postgresql 0.9 is?
RealBasic is quite portable and surprisingly stable. I've used it for a couple months and have VERY few complaints. Python on the other hand...
That's an interesting bastardization of what the Constitution actually says. More importantly a nuclear armament would technically be something a US Citizen should have a right to bear, right? Referring to centuries old legislation INACCURATELY to argue a contemporary issue is absurd on its face.
If I shop lifted a DVD, why do I need to buy it from the retailer?
If I recorded the music from a concert, why would I need to buy it from a retailer? There is NO reason I would NEED to buy a copy of something that I can make myself. It's an option. Just as I don't have to buy a copy of Linux but I do because it's convenient.
I do like the bread analogy. However it's not about making bread, it's about bread recipes.
There's nothing inherently good or necessary about retail distribution of music. It's akin to selling bread recipes. Yes music (as well as computer programs) are more complicated forms of information, they are still both traded information. You cannot shoplift information nor legislate it without completely obscuring it. Unfortunately that would make it unsaleable to the public!
I dont see how anyone can SUPPORT proprietary IP, as if it's a demonstrable concept.
Why would the invalidation of CC and GPL be a bad thing? CC and GPL are necessary responses to insane IP laws, not virtuous in and of themselves. Sounds like a ridiculous philosophical stance to me.
While I do not disagree with your point of view I believe you miss the poitn. The original question is how to best approach an IT learning regimine. I am a pragmatist and believe that suggesting one learn higher order concepts is self defeating, as one would invariably be that much farther from practice for every conceiveable topic that might help them be a better tech. Howabout ethics, howabout contract law, howabout fridgerator maintenance and repair for those occasions when hardware is overheating? Coupled with the realistic assessment of the average intellect, let everyone start with such abstractions as servers, file descriptors, networking protocols, and then HTML. having taken a class in Discrete Mathematics may help them produce higher quality code, but I rather a coworker have actually USED Assembly to produce an optimized demo in the past. Discrete is a byproduct of experience. As most programmers find, the most valued resource is not someone's intelligence, but how efficiently they use their time.
I actually have an artificial heart valve. 2 open heart surgeries already! Sorry to see you foe me over such a fantasyland topic as a space elevator.
In my experience there's the end user, administrator, programmer (builder), and software engieers (designer). Each have their own overlapping niche. Learning to program, in general, does not require one to be overly familiar with discrete mathematics. My brother is 12. He can program in BASIC.
The correct analogy is "suggesting someone learn about smelting, in order to build a car".
/corrected
Sorry about that.
That's pretty much the worst (and really elitist) advice I've seen regarding what to start with in IT!
If the questioner can't even decide on what technology to learn (not knowing the dependences of AJAX on Javascript on HTML, etc) recommending a Discrete Mathematics book is a complete waste of time. That's telling someone to learn how to drive a car by researching SMELTING. You are assuming they will ever make good use of such high level concepts (as far as American college students are concerned) which is a very small % of the population...even IF they are interested in learning IT.
I disagree that If nothing else, then a bunch of attractive side effects; is a reasonable reason to pursue a goal that is epic in scope, to reap benefits that are achievable NOW. If it was funded, it would not be worth it, but people are still talking about it, why? Why not put continue research into personal flight devices which are easier to engineer and infitely more pratical? Ah, there's the truth of it! Advocates of the space elevator are communal fanboys* interested in a "new" scifi mind-game because there's not a lot of work involved in arguing future possibilities. The old scifi toys like jetpacks aren't in style anyone! Why? Most people are just plain tired of talking about 50's scifi given the demonstrated difficulties which trashed their childhood dreams. That space elevator though, VERY POSSIBLE! WHOO HOO because nobody is going to waste money on it and crush those dreams similarly for some time.
*Note:
This is not to say fanboys are bad, many fans are righteous advocates of good concepts, products, and ideals.
People who always spout "fix things here first" are often myopic and don't actualyl know much about the problems they propose we solve first.
It's a different approach to problem solving, not an indication of knowledge. I dont particularly remember saying you should always fix things first, many problems are completely subjective! (read: previous) Many are intractable. I think it's worth noting that you cannot engineer ANYTHING without refactoring and it is a solid approach. Try programming without a "fix things here first".
there's no such thing as a 'simple' social problem
/sarcasm
As any introductory sociology class would contradict that, your response is laughable. Stay in school, stay away from studying space elevators.
And by your argument, we should never, ever, EVER research anything new, EVER, until we've solved EVERY problem we currently face.
That's not a logical conclusion from my argument. A logical conclusion would be that we should not research anything new of a similar scale, before solving smaller problems. Which is both what I believe and practically what would NEED TO HAPPEN to simply make a WIRE that would reach from the ground to an orbiting body.
The "Space Elevator" isn't even well DEFINED. My description is completely arbitrary. So all the discussions are about everyone's individual fanstasies being treated as a collective one. All equally implausible. You end up with a goal that can never be reached.
Real bright idea. Totally worth thinking about.
Spreading into the universe is our most CRITICAL social/biological/mechanical problem.
That's a difference in perspective, not a truth. You're also under the delusion that speading *HUMANS* into the universe is critical, important, or even a good idea. Theoretically, sending samples of DNA in random directions from our solar system is a much more efficient idea. Then again, almost all space elevator advocates are trapped in sci-fi utopian fantasy worldview.
The strongest argument against it, is that we haven't solved simpler CRITICAL social, biological, and mechanical problems. Why support this? It deserves derision.
Perhaps a future enemy of the Sorcelator?
My 5 yr old nephew told me a joke funnier than ANYTHING in that article, this weekend.
What's red and barks?
A retarded apple.
Yes, THAT is more rewarding than reading the article.
I am not engaging in an argument, I am pointing out a fact. They are both conspiracies and therefore both have elements of hidden agendas and obscured facts.
Too bad that they are still both conspiracies, all the same.
I'm saying that experienced players will farm lower level players. There's nothing to prevent it. The question is (paraphrased), what do you have in place to prevent griefing? Answer was, LOOK OVER HERE LOOK OVER HERE! Which is, nothing.
I dont know how many games you play, but I play a fuckton. I do know exactly what I'm talking about, within the context of article. In CS, the difference between someone wearing armor+helmet with extra ammo and a nades versus some noob without, isn't theoretically enough to matter, since 1 bullet can kill for both players. On the other hand, the "experienced" player with the items is probably going to see 20-80 kill streaks versus the noob on cs_cock because it is an overwhelming advantage (+ the experience garnered to reach the level of a person with a buy script and practiced on cs_cock). Theory is fine and dandy. I'm sure they have even tested it extensively with, now seasoned, testers. In practice, all things are not equal and it will be a massive problem.
This isn't a game-killing problem, they will just have to change the gameplay. The big worry is that this gorgeous game has a designer who doesn't recognize basic consequences of releasing a game to the public, where you pit players with huge advantages versus new players. GG