Stack overflow has gone amazingly downhill form the early days. I used to see interesting questions answered with very good answers combined with enlightened discussions. Today I just see dumb questions answered by people who don't know what they're talking about or who didn't even bother reading the question before starting to answer.
This happens because stack overflow has turned into a big of mix between a social network and a gaming site. You can answer questions only if you've spent enough time grinding points, though it doesn't matter much where you've earned those points. Are you an expert? Sorry, you can't even comment to say that the answer is wrong unless you've put in the time to earn enough points to be allowed to comment. Or you're forbidden to answer because the question is too old; but if you try to open up the question again you're told that it's a duplicate of something that has been already answered.
And let's face it. If the question is about security, you do NOT want to get your answer from stack overflow, slashdot, reddit, facebook or any other source of crowd sourced prognostications. If you have to ask the question, you should not be touching the security code and should leave it to the experts on staff; if you don't have such experts, then try to get some; if you can't get one, then change jobs.
I think some of the problem is that there is an army of people out there intent on spreading the word that you don't need to learn how to drive on snow and ice, and who will scoff at anyone who does this regularly. They treat driving on snow and ice as akin to climbing Mount Everest. Their solution to anything difficult is to first find the right library or framework that already does it for you. It sort of implicitly assumes that mere mortals don't write these frameworks, in the same way that mere mortals don't climb Mount Everest.
But instead of just saying "that's beyond my abilities" they are teaching others that it's beyond their abilities as well.
You need more than C. I have a lot of C programmers, and most are terrible at software. That's because they're self-taught EE or science types, they understand the low level details but are extremely lousy at higher level abstractions. Ie, they find it difficult to see the big picture of a large software project, they can't make code that other people can maintain or even decipher, and so forth. Their coding skills seem sto be a mixutre of knowing the syntax and combining with a few key rules of thumb.
That said, those that start with a very high level language usuallly have the same problem just with a different view at it. They still only have a few key rules of thumb, this time applied to the few frameworks or libraries that they understand; their code is so chock full of abstraction layers that no one else understands any of it or is capable of make small modifications safely. They think they understand the big picture only because they've labelled it as "BigPictureInstanceFactory".
Somewhere in there are some key skills that are very rare. If you miss those skills you will be lousy at programming in any language or paradigm.
There are brute force attempts, and smart brute force attempts. Defending against a brute force attack from your kid sister is easy compared to defedning against a brute force attack from the school bully. The quality of security you have depends upon the value of what you're protecting.
If you don't care about what happens if someone breaks your system, then MD5 is fine and it doesn't hurt much of you ask stack overflow for advice. If your company can be put out of business if your back office data can be cracked or spoofed, then MD5 is foolish to use and any developer relying on hint from stack overflow should be assigned to other less important tasks. If you government can collapse and the country invaded if your data is laid bare then hopefully you're so far beyond stack overflow that you're inventing these security frameworks yourself.
There are two ways to view programming, both of which are very important to understand. There is an abstract model view of programming, and that's what Java could be good at. Except that something like Scheme is ever better at this. This is supposed to be a high level view of what what algorithms actually are as a concept, rather than the implementation details at a machine level.
But you also need the low level view, how things actually get done. If your only model of a program is a bunch of magical black box operators that all take 0 time and space, you can't think well about the problem. Big-Oh notation is meaningless if you don't know what you're measuring. Missing this knowledge is a major hindrance, and yet so many don't realize they have this flaw.
You certainly won't be any good at even basic security without having both an abstract and a concrete model.
It shed a lot of third party content because content owners didn't renew the licenses. It is adding new content to make up for this. If they had been able to continue licensing on the original terms I think they may have just stuck to the basic model of being a content provider.
Ie, Netflix used to have the Criterion Collection, lots of vintage movies. When the licensing agreement expired, they were pulled from Netflix and given to Hulu. Just like video games, Hollywood likes the broken system of having exclusivity deals. Netflix has also had access to back-catalogs from a lot of other content owners that also vanished when the original licenses expired. Netflix did not voluntarily give these away, it did not dump them in exchange for making its own content. It would certainly have wished to have both if it had the choice as losing the deals is a major loss for Netflix (as can be witnessed by everyone and their mother bitching about movies that are no longer on Netflix).
Between five years ago and today, the content owners have realized that their back catalog content is actually worth something. And as Hollywood always does, when the licenses of something popular is up for negotiation, they play hardball. Netflix isn't as big as cable companies and can't fight back against this as effectively. Some content owners also want to create their own streaming services to get a piece of this new income source.
If you really think Netflix is just screwing you because they're bad hombres, you really should learn more about the history here.
I don't care so much that the shows are current or not. I can't keep up anyway, and I prefer binging a series all at once instead of the intended one week between episodes.
I may try Hulu, but so far I have 10 years of stuff I want to watch on Netflix before I run out...
Only things I feel like I'm missing are Doctor Who (yanked from all services for awhile), maybe Seinfeld that I never watched, and Rick and Morty (possibly on Hulu??).
Originally after cutting the cord I was going to get both Hulu for television series and Netflix for movies; but Netflix has plenty of TV series and I see more of those than movies. I'm also finding stuff on Netflix that are better than I expected.
I never did classified work, but when I worked at a defense contractor that did this in the 80s, they were highly paranoid. Even for non-classified work they did not let me take storage devices into or out of the company without authorization. Secure documents were only allowed in secure buildings, and I was not allowed into those buildings until they turned on the flashing lights to tell everyone to hide their papers and turn off their monitors. We had a tunnel to move documents between buildings so that they never touched fresh air. And this was for relatively lower security classifications, far below the level that the NSA would have.
The issue here is that it's difficult to search every employee every day when they go home to be sure they don't have any storage devices. At some point you rely on employees with security clearances to follow procedures rigorously. The fact that we're seeing more of these breaches probably points towards failures in the processes. The fact that these people often are contractors instead of employees may be telling also. Lack of training, cost cutting, reduced oversight, reliance on temps, probably is reducing security.
The story isn't saying that the anti malware program is a front for cyber warfare. It is saying that the program was hacked. No evidence that they were willingly hacked or assisted in undermining their own product. And it was an older version of Kaspersky. Hacking an antivirus is a big target, it gets you past the front door and into the bedroom.
If you're on a computer, you have to use goofy stuff to play any video. It's just more convenient for some services if a browser has those formats supported, whether it's flash, silverlight, html5, etc. Currently I thought Netflix moved away from Silverlight and can be supported natively in most major browsers, tablets, and phones. ALL the streaming services are using proprietary or patent encumbered formats. Sure, it's not a bad thing to demand open source compatible streaming only, but you may have a long wait.
But you'll do better on TV anyway. Any reasonably new streaming device or smart tv has Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube support already. And if you can watch on TV why would you want to degrade that to watch on a computer or phone?
I think most people these days have an ISP that can handle streaming, and they have that ISP and cable at the same time. Maybe those who had bundled services may not see as big a savings. But if they had a bundled service, and going to ISP only does not free up an extra $12 dollars, then they would be better off dumping that leech of a cable company.
It's the only thing Amazon has going for them, the loyal-to-the-core Prime members who think it's "free". They don't offer nearly as much as Netflix, and those few high visible shows that people like to watch there often have a premium price above and beyond the monthly subscription. If they required a separate paid subscription even for Prime members then they'd have only a tiny sliver of the pie.
Cable was chargine $80-$120. This price increase is only $1. Do you really think Netflix is going to bump up to $120? If they do, they'll be dumped in droves for whoever is cheaper. Unlike cable companies, there is actual competition again.
Is this what Netflix wants, or what the content owners demand? Probably a mixture of the two. But if a company wants to show Hollywood content, it is generally given pressure to support hollywood positions on IP.
My brother does the DVD-only. Wasn't so fond of the streaming, and can sub for one month onlly for some stuff (Stranger Things), and as for movies you get a bigger selection on DVD.
Content owners don't have much ability to deny DVDs to certain companies; if they can sell to a rental service (Red Box, etc) then they have to sell to Netflix also.
Slashdot Mirror
Stack overflow has gone amazingly downhill form the early days. I used to see interesting questions answered with very good answers combined with enlightened discussions. Today I just see dumb questions answered by people who don't know what they're talking about or who didn't even bother reading the question before starting to answer.
This happens because stack overflow has turned into a big of mix between a social network and a gaming site. You can answer questions only if you've spent enough time grinding points, though it doesn't matter much where you've earned those points. Are you an expert? Sorry, you can't even comment to say that the answer is wrong unless you've put in the time to earn enough points to be allowed to comment. Or you're forbidden to answer because the question is too old; but if you try to open up the question again you're told that it's a duplicate of something that has been already answered.
And let's face it. If the question is about security, you do NOT want to get your answer from stack overflow, slashdot, reddit, facebook or any other source of crowd sourced prognostications. If you have to ask the question, you should not be touching the security code and should leave it to the experts on staff; if you don't have such experts, then try to get some; if you can't get one, then change jobs.
I think some of the problem is that there is an army of people out there intent on spreading the word that you don't need to learn how to drive on snow and ice, and who will scoff at anyone who does this regularly. They treat driving on snow and ice as akin to climbing Mount Everest. Their solution to anything difficult is to first find the right library or framework that already does it for you. It sort of implicitly assumes that mere mortals don't write these frameworks, in the same way that mere mortals don't climb Mount Everest.
But instead of just saying "that's beyond my abilities" they are teaching others that it's beyond their abilities as well.
You need more than C. I have a lot of C programmers, and most are terrible at software. That's because they're self-taught EE or science types, they understand the low level details but are extremely lousy at higher level abstractions. Ie, they find it difficult to see the big picture of a large software project, they can't make code that other people can maintain or even decipher, and so forth. Their coding skills seem sto be a mixutre of knowing the syntax and combining with a few key rules of thumb.
That said, those that start with a very high level language usuallly have the same problem just with a different view at it. They still only have a few key rules of thumb, this time applied to the few frameworks or libraries that they understand; their code is so chock full of abstraction layers that no one else understands any of it or is capable of make small modifications safely. They think they understand the big picture only because they've labelled it as "BigPictureInstanceFactory".
Somewhere in there are some key skills that are very rare. If you miss those skills you will be lousy at programming in any language or paradigm.
There are brute force attempts, and smart brute force attempts. Defending against a brute force attack from your kid sister is easy compared to defedning against a brute force attack from the school bully. The quality of security you have depends upon the value of what you're protecting.
If you don't care about what happens if someone breaks your system, then MD5 is fine and it doesn't hurt much of you ask stack overflow for advice. If your company can be put out of business if your back office data can be cracked or spoofed, then MD5 is foolish to use and any developer relying on hint from stack overflow should be assigned to other less important tasks. If you government can collapse and the country invaded if your data is laid bare then hopefully you're so far beyond stack overflow that you're inventing these security frameworks yourself.
There are two ways to view programming, both of which are very important to understand. There is an abstract model view of programming, and that's what Java could be good at. Except that something like Scheme is ever better at this. This is supposed to be a high level view of what what algorithms actually are as a concept, rather than the implementation details at a machine level.
But you also need the low level view, how things actually get done. If your only model of a program is a bunch of magical black box operators that all take 0 time and space, you can't think well about the problem. Big-Oh notation is meaningless if you don't know what you're measuring. Missing this knowledge is a major hindrance, and yet so many don't realize they have this flaw.
You certainly won't be any good at even basic security without having both an abstract and a concrete model.
You need to hook up your phone to the auto speakers for a 5 minute drive?
Does eliminating the headphone jack actually appeal to the masses? Or is it that the masses approve because they are told to approve?
This would destroy pollitics as we know it!
Probably these people are thinking "Why would you turn it off?"
I'm the opposite, I turn off mobile data and keep wifi on.
Amazon is a paid service, it's not at all free.
It shed a lot of third party content because content owners didn't renew the licenses. It is adding new content to make up for this. If they had been able to continue licensing on the original terms I think they may have just stuck to the basic model of being a content provider.
Ie, Netflix used to have the Criterion Collection, lots of vintage movies. When the licensing agreement expired, they were pulled from Netflix and given to Hulu. Just like video games, Hollywood likes the broken system of having exclusivity deals. Netflix has also had access to back-catalogs from a lot of other content owners that also vanished when the original licenses expired. Netflix did not voluntarily give these away, it did not dump them in exchange for making its own content. It would certainly have wished to have both if it had the choice as losing the deals is a major loss for Netflix (as can be witnessed by everyone and their mother bitching about movies that are no longer on Netflix).
Between five years ago and today, the content owners have realized that their back catalog content is actually worth something. And as Hollywood always does, when the licenses of something popular is up for negotiation, they play hardball. Netflix isn't as big as cable companies and can't fight back against this as effectively. Some content owners also want to create their own streaming services to get a piece of this new income source.
If you really think Netflix is just screwing you because they're bad hombres, you really should learn more about the history here.
I don't care so much that the shows are current or not. I can't keep up anyway, and I prefer binging a series all at once instead of the intended one week between episodes.
I may try Hulu, but so far I have 10 years of stuff I want to watch on Netflix before I run out...
Only things I feel like I'm missing are Doctor Who (yanked from all services for awhile), maybe Seinfeld that I never watched, and Rick and Morty (possibly on Hulu??).
Originally after cutting the cord I was going to get both Hulu for television series and Netflix for movies; but Netflix has plenty of TV series and I see more of those than movies. I'm also finding stuff on Netflix that are better than I expected.
I never did classified work, but when I worked at a defense contractor that did this in the 80s, they were highly paranoid. Even for non-classified work they did not let me take storage devices into or out of the company without authorization. Secure documents were only allowed in secure buildings, and I was not allowed into those buildings until they turned on the flashing lights to tell everyone to hide their papers and turn off their monitors. We had a tunnel to move documents between buildings so that they never touched fresh air. And this was for relatively lower security classifications, far below the level that the NSA would have.
The issue here is that it's difficult to search every employee every day when they go home to be sure they don't have any storage devices. At some point you rely on employees with security clearances to follow procedures rigorously. The fact that we're seeing more of these breaches probably points towards failures in the processes. The fact that these people often are contractors instead of employees may be telling also. Lack of training, cost cutting, reduced oversight, reliance on temps, probably is reducing security.
The story isn't saying that the anti malware program is a front for cyber warfare. It is saying that the program was hacked. No evidence that they were willingly hacked or assisted in undermining their own product. And it was an older version of Kaspersky. Hacking an antivirus is a big target, it gets you past the front door and into the bedroom.
If you're on a computer, you have to use goofy stuff to play any video. It's just more convenient for some services if a browser has those formats supported, whether it's flash, silverlight, html5, etc. Currently I thought Netflix moved away from Silverlight and can be supported natively in most major browsers, tablets, and phones. ALL the streaming services are using proprietary or patent encumbered formats. Sure, it's not a bad thing to demand open source compatible streaming only, but you may have a long wait.
But you'll do better on TV anyway. Any reasonably new streaming device or smart tv has Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube support already. And if you can watch on TV why would you want to degrade that to watch on a computer or phone?
I think most people these days have an ISP that can handle streaming, and they have that ISP and cable at the same time. Maybe those who had bundled services may not see as big a savings. But if they had a bundled service, and going to ISP only does not free up an extra $12 dollars, then they would be better off dumping that leech of a cable company.
They didn't "let" the deals expire, they had no choice. It takes two parties to make a deal and Starz did not want to make a deal.
On Netflix? I must not be watching these shows. Stranger Things, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, could probably be on broadcast.
It's the only thing Amazon has going for them, the loyal-to-the-core Prime members who think it's "free". They don't offer nearly as much as Netflix, and those few high visible shows that people like to watch there often have a premium price above and beyond the monthly subscription. If they required a separate paid subscription even for Prime members then they'd have only a tiny sliver of the pie.
Cable was chargine $80-$120. This price increase is only $1. Do you really think Netflix is going to bump up to $120? If they do, they'll be dumped in droves for whoever is cheaper. Unlike cable companies, there is actual competition again.
Is this what Netflix wants, or what the content owners demand? Probably a mixture of the two. But if a company wants to show Hollywood content, it is generally given pressure to support hollywood positions on IP.
But a single DVD often costs more than two or three months of Netfix, especially with the grandfathered Netflix price.
Um, because it's illegal?
My brother does the DVD-only. Wasn't so fond of the streaming, and can sub for one month onlly for some stuff (Stranger Things), and as for movies you get a bigger selection on DVD.
Content owners don't have much ability to deny DVDs to certain companies; if they can sell to a rental service (Red Box, etc) then they have to sell to Netflix also.