This is so true, I worked for a company that did scraping of this sorts. And it's chasing ghosts. You get banned, or even slightest search engine change screws-up everything.
Few things I learned from that job: -There are vast number of big name sites with unreliable search engine *caugh*virgin*caugh*holidays*caugh* -ASP and.net in general are evil, I hate hate hate HATE viewstate. It's black magic. -Live httpheaders is one of best firefox plugins ever!
too many dumb users (ok I am being too harsh here, too many uneducated users) these days. Thin clients = less freedom, which in case of most users means they'll make fewer mess ups.
This means less boring maintenance work for IT people, in large companies especially.
...to gather drunkard statistics. I bet you'll see a lot more alcohol related google ads after failing a few of those tests.
A better thing would be, NOT to tell you you were wrong but to pretend to send the mail and then notify you few hours after (when you are PROBABLY sober) about your failure.
While I agree with your post mostly, I find this statement rather radical:
nother thing I have realized is that the same people who hate their users, probably hate their children as well... if they have any.
Having users is not same as having children. Cause I don't have 300 children, but I tend to work for companies who have that many users. I am sure if I had 300 children I would get much more frustrated by them.
Plus if I deal with my children with love and understaning, I get love and understanding back...usually. And if I work with love and understanding with users, usually get more work. Being too nice to users runs the risk of you becoming a pushover.
So maybe I should take your analogy further and say this. I can't treat users as my children, cause with children at times you need to be firmer and stand your ground, and getting firmer with users you usually gets you fired or get 'the talk' with you boss. I can't send users 'to their room' or 'give them a time out for asking a stupid question'
While the pessimistic view of the world is a prominent requirement for Security professionals, somewhat pessimistic view of the world is needed for all IT professionals, programmers et al. We all have to think of the worst case scenarios.
At times it might be hard to take a lighthearted view of that, cause if you screw up, you can lose your job. However if you take it as a game, role playing game of sorts it's more fun.
Programming a code, and then taking a crack at it, trying to find some odd combination that will break the code can be fun. Taking a role of a hacker once you've set up the network, wrote the code or whatever.
I actually find this 'pessimistic' view sort of a good thing in life, I am much harder to surprise by turn of the events.
I have added quite a few try...catch blocks in my life.
I hope you're not implying he should be in prison for less then 20 years, for murder?
You see, sending a person to prison is not really about that person, but really sending the message to any person who is contemplating murder.
I am not saying this guy's head should be put on a stake in central park. But prison time of 15 years for murder would be just senseless.
It's true that a person can't back to normal life after 25 years of prison time, but what do you purpose we do with murderers? When is a killer ready to go back to streets?
You know, these ideas aren't as brilliant, as is the fact they actually went out and did it. I am sure millions of people thought 'wouldnt it be cool if we used these CCTV cameras for show?' and then got sober next morning, and never did it.
Don't get me wrong, I applaud this band as well as the comedian. So many good ideas, get wasted due to indolence. I am glad someone didn't waste this one.
Many people may have thought 'whats the big deal, I thought of doing that as well, it's no stroke of genius.' I ask 'But did you do it?'
Kudos and applause to these guys, not only for the idea but for the balls and willingness to do it.
So if you got an idea, don't waste it. Do it, or at least tell someone who will do it. Don't let ideas die.
yes. More planing is involved. And even when plans are made not everyone can balance a cigarette on a chin. No matter how well you explain to someone how to balance a box on a chin, they will nit to but EFFORT into breaking the record.
While on the hand once a skillful person makes a good webbot/downloading script can download 200,000 firefoxes without the actual knowledge of how it works and put it in very little effort.
Record is amazing proportional to the actual effort put in by everyone who made it. To make very loos formula
A=n*e
where A is amazingness of record n is number of individuals who participated e is the average effort put it by each participating individual.
In this case the effort is a click, which in my book is virtually zero effort. so no matter how big n is, and this case it can't be infinity A will tend to be zero. Cause lim n*e (where e->0)=0
May some mathematician correct me, I am mainly a philosopher with knowledge of basic principles of maths.
This might be the most senseless Guinness record ever, and that says a lot. It's measure of nothing. It's not even a measure of Firefox's popularity. Because bulk of the download counts will be generated via some downloading scripts. Even they allow one download per IP, there are proxies. Number of downloads won't nearly equal the number of PEOPLE who downloaded Firefox that day.
I mean it can't go down in the books as Firefox was downloaded by 2 million people on that day. Maybe 2 million times, out of which half was generated by 300,000 download scripts. I am not sure about you but to me that doesn't sound all that impressive.
It won't even helps spread firefox that much, as all the pledged downloadees will be firefox users.
Entirely pointless! Possibly the only more pointless thing that this is my rather elaborate rant against it.
very true, which again proves how absurd this law is. This is an law against fantasies, no matter how disgusting and immoral I think those fantasies are.
Agree with both posters. This is very blurry area. Borders thought control. We should never feel guilty about thoughts we have, and feeling we have. Cause we cannot control either. What we CAN control is our actions.
There is a world of difference between someone who thinks about committing an illegal or immoral act and someone who actually commits the act.
We should recognize that difference.
Preventive action, where you would imprison people who have dangerous thoughts or intentions is a very tricky and dangerous thing.
Very reminiscent of certain religions where impure thoughts are punished.
I am all for arresting and prosecuting producers and to some extent consumers of child pornography.
However this law will get abused, for political games I assure you.
By this line of reason. Anyone who watches an action flick is a killer.
To me it looks like they finished a rap song. Bill: Income always stayed ahead of hiring, I never had to say to Steve, YOU HA-VE TO ST-OP Steve: We take all our risks techno-logically why take a LICK of financial RISK? Bill: YOU HA-VE TO ST-OP Steve: It's not a failure and not a mistake With 20/20 hindsight the-re are thin-gs we would do DIFFERENTLY! (sang by Bill as well) Bill: YOU HA-VE TO ST-OP! BoTH: YO!
an interesting and a cute idea. Galaxy Wide Web might be a little catchier tho. Tho the whole www thing is dead. http://no-www.org/
or maybe we should expend the meaning of the word 'world'.Just as it was expended during the exploration of this planet. Hence the 'new world', 'old world'.
What is world? And don't pull wikipedia definitions on me. As I have stated the word 'world' has changed its meaning through time, or rather expended it. Maybe we should do it again?
Slashdot Mirror
This is so true, I worked for a company that did scraping of this sorts. And it's chasing ghosts. You get banned, or even slightest search engine change screws-up everything.
Few things I learned from that job: .net in general are evil, I hate hate hate HATE viewstate. It's black magic.
-There are vast number of big name sites with unreliable search engine *caugh*virgin*caugh*holidays*caugh*
-ASP and
-Live httpheaders is one of best firefox plugins ever!
too many dumb users (ok I am being too harsh here, too many uneducated users) these days. Thin clients = less freedom, which in case of most users means they'll make fewer mess ups.
This means less boring maintenance work for IT people, in large companies especially.
Pity most ingenious software solutions are simple.
This just complicates things, most complex software is combination of widely known design patterns, which part of it will be patented?
Judges will have to be real code gurus to judge in these cases.
Not to mention that things like this will could only stifle progress if actively enforced.
more like the quick launch bar...which granted appeared only in XP.
I swear some of these design patents are silly.
heheh http://www.sloshdt.org/
news for nerds that don't know better.
...to gather drunkard statistics. I bet you'll see a lot more alcohol related google ads after failing a few of those tests.
A better thing would be, NOT to tell you you were wrong but to pretend to send the mail and then notify you few hours after (when you are PROBABLY sober) about your failure.
there's no such thing as complete anonymity on the net.
this banning gesture might be well-intentioned but is misinformed an impossible tom implement
While I agree with your post mostly, I find this statement rather radical:
nother thing I have realized is that the same people who hate their users, probably hate their children as well... if they have any.
Having users is not same as having children. Cause I don't have 300 children, but I tend to work for companies who have that many users. I am sure if I had 300 children I would get much more frustrated by them.
Plus if I deal with my children with love and understaning, I get love and understanding back...usually. And if I work with love and understanding with users, usually get more work. Being too nice to users runs the risk of you becoming a pushover.
So maybe I should take your analogy further and say this. I can't treat users as my children, cause with children at times you need to be firmer and stand your ground, and getting firmer with users you usually gets you fired or get 'the talk' with you boss. I can't send users 'to their room' or 'give them a time out for asking a stupid question'
Agreed.
While the pessimistic view of the world is a prominent requirement for Security professionals, somewhat pessimistic view of the world is needed for all IT professionals, programmers et al. We all have to think of the worst case scenarios.
At times it might be hard to take a lighthearted view of that, cause if you screw up, you can lose your job. However if you take it as a game, role playing game of sorts it's more fun.
Programming a code, and then taking a crack at it, trying to find some odd combination that will break the code can be fun. Taking a role of a hacker once you've set up the network, wrote the code or whatever.
I actually find this 'pessimistic' view sort of a good thing in life, I am much harder to surprise by turn of the events.
I have added quite a few try...catch blocks in my life.
oh you make an excellent point, let the Reiser go.
ever heard of the saying
"two wrongs don't make a right"
I hope you're not implying he should be in prison for less then 20 years, for murder?
You see, sending a person to prison is not really about that person, but really sending the message to any person who is contemplating murder.
I am not saying this guy's head should be put on a stake in central park. But prison time of 15 years for murder would be just senseless.
It's true that a person can't back to normal life after 25 years of prison time, but what do you purpose we do with murderers? When is a killer ready to go back to streets?
That global warming will kill the planet. It might kill the current life forms, and new ones will emerge. The question is, can we survive that change?
You know, these ideas aren't as brilliant, as is the fact they actually went out and did it. I am sure millions of people thought 'wouldnt it be cool if we used these CCTV cameras for show?' and then got sober next morning, and never did it.
Don't get me wrong, I applaud this band as well as the comedian. So many good ideas, get wasted due to indolence. I am glad someone didn't waste this one.
Many people may have thought 'whats the big deal, I thought of doing that as well, it's no stroke of genius.'
I ask 'But did you do it?'
Kudos and applause to these guys, not only for the idea but for the balls and willingness to do it.
So if you got an idea, don't waste it. Do it, or at least tell someone who will do it. Don't let ideas die.
No I am not promoting some self-help book.
yes.
More planing is involved. And even when plans are made not everyone can balance a cigarette on a chin. No matter how well you explain to someone how to balance a box on a chin, they will nit to but EFFORT into breaking the record.
While on the hand once a skillful person makes a good webbot/downloading script can download 200,000 firefoxes without the actual knowledge of how it works and put it in very little effort.
Record is amazing proportional to the actual effort put in by everyone who made it.
To make very loos formula
A=n*e
where A is amazingness of record
n is number of individuals who participated
e is the average effort put it by each participating individual.
In this case the effort is a click, which in my book is virtually zero effort.
so no matter how big n is, and this case it can't be infinity A will tend to be zero.
Cause
lim n*e (where e->0)=0
May some mathematician correct me, I am mainly a philosopher with knowledge of basic principles of maths.
This might be the most senseless Guinness record ever, and that says a lot. It's measure of nothing. It's not even a measure of Firefox's popularity. Because bulk of the download counts will be generated via some downloading scripts. Even they allow one download per IP, there are proxies. Number of downloads won't nearly equal the number of PEOPLE who downloaded Firefox that day.
I mean it can't go down in the books as Firefox was downloaded by 2 million people on that day. Maybe 2 million times, out of which half was generated by 300,000 download scripts. I am not sure about you but to me that doesn't sound all that impressive.
It won't even helps spread firefox that much, as all the pledged downloadees will be firefox users.
Entirely pointless!
Possibly the only more pointless thing that this is my rather elaborate rant against it.
if you think that wife implies you,
you're in for a great surprise in your life.
especially when it comes to the
wife.sex()
function
very true, which again proves how absurd this law is. This is an law against fantasies, no matter how disgusting and immoral I think those fantasies are.
Agree with both posters. This is very blurry area. Borders thought control. We should never feel guilty about thoughts we have, and feeling we have. Cause we cannot control either. What we CAN control is our actions.
There is a world of difference between someone who thinks about committing an illegal or immoral act and someone who actually commits the act.
We should recognize that difference.
Preventive action, where you would imprison people who have dangerous thoughts or intentions is a very tricky and dangerous thing.
Very reminiscent of certain religions where impure thoughts are punished.
I am all for arresting and prosecuting producers and to some extent consumers of child pornography.
However this law will get abused, for political games I assure you.
By this line of reason. Anyone who watches an action flick is a killer.
I dub this law as Anti-Hentai law.
While (true)
{
me.bitchSlap(wife)
}
before anyone one says anything,
I know this wont compile.
Cause wife is null.
To me it looks like they finished a rap song.
Bill:
Income always stayed ahead of hiring,
I never had to say to Steve,
YOU HA-VE TO ST-OP
Steve:
We take all our risks
techno-logically
why take a LICK
of financial RISK?
Bill:
YOU HA-VE TO ST-OP
Steve:
It's not a failure
and not a mistake
With 20/20 hindsight
the-re are thin-gs
we would do
DIFFERENTLY! (sang by Bill as well)
Bill:
YOU HA-VE TO ST-OP!
BoTH:
YO!
Deffensive stance
this is not a security hole
this is a feature
which helps you recover data after you forgot your password.
an interesting and a cute idea.
Galaxy Wide Web might be a little catchier tho.
Tho the whole www thing is dead. http://no-www.org/
or maybe we should expend the meaning of the word 'world'.Just as it was expended during the exploration of this planet. Hence the 'new world', 'old world'.
What is world? And don't pull wikipedia definitions on me. As I have stated the word 'world' has changed its meaning through time, or rather expended it. Maybe we should do it again?
wow! A legend in his own right, I have thrown him on spikes, sliced him in half and and pushed him off 5 story heights, at least a million times.
Good he switched to Go, cause he was lousy at jumping I can tell you that much.
Best game scene ever.
Game actors, who are mostly voice actors, are vastly underappreciated. I am not sure if they are underpaid tho.
What happened to the guy who was in first Prince of Persia?