I think that would likely be a lot nicer from a user's perspective.:-)
But it would also take more work and have the locking mechanism rely on Javascript. You could still use my method as a backup for when Javascript didn't work for whatever reason.
Can you explain to me how a malicious person's manipulation of the hash value could damage anything? How would they know what to change it to? I suppose they could just hash the form fields and hope, but that's easily defeated by adding in a server side session variable as salt.
Also, while this isn't exactly the best practice, the question made it clear that it was a fairly small internal web app. So worrying about malicious users on that scale is likely not an issue.
You make sure that edits are handled in a form on a web page with a submit button. The user gets to fiddle all the bits they want on the web page, then they hit the submit button. At that point the web app goes and locks the stuff it needs to do to update the database to reflect the user's changes. It then applies those changes, then commits them, thereby releasing all the locks.
If two users might potentially be editing the same records, keep an SHA-256 hash of the original data around as a hidden form field. Then when the update proceeds, check the data to make sure the SHA-256 hash matches the data you fetched when you generated the form page (helpfully put into a hidden form field). If the hash doesn't match, tell the person who did the submit that some fields may have changed and somehow present them with what those changes might be.
I was in an academic computer lab devoted to the sciences once. The disdain for computer scientists was clearly evident. All the while they used numeric algorithms computer scientists discovered and operating systems that were the result of a lot of work by computer scientists, and any number of other artifacts of the 'science' they so disparaged.
I found it really disheartening, and it left me with a really bad taste in my mouth about scientists. Perhaps things have changed now, but at the time, 10-20 years ago or so, disrespect for the people who made the tools that made their investigations even possible was rampant.
The funny thing is, chemists respect the people who make their glassware. I imagine the construction of telescopes is a respected field for astronomers. But computer science seems not to garner any respect among scientists.
Maybe the problem is that it should just never have been named computer 'science'. I don't think it's a science any more than mathematics is.
Then, if that's how they feel, I wish they'd quit. Seriously. If they can't make any money in the current environment, they should fold up and die and leave it to someone who can.
I shouldn't have to give up sovereignty over my own possessions because those studios think it's their right to restrict it so they can feel (falsely) warm and fuzzy about their ability to make money creating that stuff. I shouldn't have to give it up because you want them to make it either.
Secondly, thinking DRM is inherently evil is not the same as thinking that people should have the right to violate copyright at their whim. If you want to talk about conflation, there you go.
I wish to be told of the fact that a game has in-game advertising before I buy it. And after I buy it, it shouldn't be mysteriously patched so that my original choice is rendered moot.
Within those bounds, I am willing to accept in-game advertising. I might even buy a game like that if it ran on Linux.
Well, what do you suppose would happen if nobody paid for anything? People would largely stop making anything. And that would be a sad situation to be sure, but I bet it wouldn't last very long.
You are very attached to one particular way in which people who create stuff have made money in the past. That way doesn't really work so well anymore, so instead of accepting this fact you want lots of technological restrictions that don't actually work and have the effect of making honest people into criminals, especially since you also seem to feel that paying off the government to give those restrictions some kind of legal force is appropriate. That seems very backward looking to me.
Anytime somebody bucks the system and does things in a completely different way they are treated as the anomalies that couldn't possibly work for most people. Again, instead of looking for new ways to succeed and building on the successes of others you want the old ways to continue to work.
DRM is the iron pyrite of solutions to the problem you see. It's glittering promise completely fails to deliver in practice. And in the meantime a whole ton of damage is done, not the least of which is lost opportunity cost while the false dream is pursued.
And our current copyright system does create false scarcity, and that has a real and extreme economic cost. It costs the minor enjoyment of thousands of people who could enjoy the work if they were willing to spend more money on it. It costs in terms of extreme legal expenses in trying to create works that somehow reference or mention existing works. It costs in terms of cultural loss from works that disappear forever because new copies cannot be legally made. It also costs because it encourages hoarding of rights and increasingly large swaths of culture never being released into the public commons.
But, in your mind, all those costs are worth it, and the self-delusion of believing (even a little) in DRM is important because this old way that creators had for being compensated for their time is extremely important somehow.
I say give it up. Let yourself look for new ways. Let yourself believe in the results when you see people use new ways and actually make a living. Think about how they could be improved without the costs of the current system.
At the moment I cannot get their music free legally. It might be a shocker to you, but for many people this does make a difference.
I love how so many people on the side of the debate you seem to be on assume that everybody on the other side is a pirate. That tells me all I need to know right there. We're all criminals.
I didn't know that you couldn't get NIN's stuff for free legally at the moment. I just assumed that once they let that cat out of the bag they weren't so silly as to try to stuff it back in.
I'm sure you can get it that way illegally, but that's not because I'm out there doing it. I just know how the Internet and digital information actually work in practice.
If the contract says otherwise, then they didn't sell it to you as people commonly understand the concept. That's the basic assumption behind the doctrine of first sale.
As the article points out, they aren't going bankrupt. They are making a living despite the high piracy rates. It would be nice if the rates were lower. I know I bought my copy, and I encouraged my friends to do the same.
You have an interesting point. The thing that is scarce, and the thing that it takes all that money to produce is the first copy.
I'm going to have to think about that for awhile longer. Though I think part of the issue is the organization that pays the programmers has a fundamental problem all of its own. I would like to separate any idea I have from the idea of an organization needing to be fed.
While I'm a huge believer in free markets, I think capitalism (the idea that a lot of capital is needed to produce things and somebody needs to own that capital to care for it and keep it producing) is a poor economic fit for creative work. And that is why I think the 'organization' as an entity separate from the people actually making the work is a different problem that needs to be separated out.
The same is true for almost all musicians. Almost no musicians who go with a standard record label ever make any money at it either. Which percentage is higher?
I agree with you. But I think there are things you can do that make the people who buy your stuff feel special and important. And as long as you do that, I think you'll end up with a lot of people buying your stuff.
I look at what Radiohead and NIN have done in this regard. Johnathan Coultan is also a good example.
People could've gotten and can still get the work of any of those artists for free. Many people choose to pay anyway. And the reason is that those artists do things to make the fans who choose to buy feel appreciated.
Well, the weird thing is, you see, I actually bought copies of World of Goo and Penumbra. And while I don't think copyright infringement is stealing, I didn't even commit copyright infringement.
And my employers have generally been aware of my feeling that they should release all software they published as Open Source. Often they became aware of this before they hired me.
Yes, I've noticed that somehow derivative games seem to be a LOT more expensive to produce. My suspicion is that basically the giant pyramid scheme that is the modern corporation siphons off too much money.
So, how is this related to my statement? As you are well aware, I would not be in favor of such a scheme. This seems like a straw man argument to me. How isn't it?
In fact, I'm in favor of digital cash based on David Chaum's algorithms. These completely avoid the need for a merchant to have information that can be used to drain my accounts. I think the current situation with credit cards is just a huge, gigantic security hole that we currently try to ineffectively plug with a flimsy legal framework.
I like getting paid for my work. And I think that game developers should get paid for their work too. Please point out where in my statements I say that game developers shouldn't get paid for their work.
As for working for companies that make closed source, I don't really enjoy it, but companies that make their money from Open Source are hard to find. They exist. Red Hat is doing very well. But most people seem to have the same fear driven mindset that you do and seem to think that producing Open Source software means they can't get paid.
Several of the companies I worked for produced software that I felt could have been sold as Open Source and done just fine or better than they were doing. One of the customers of one of the companies I worked for actually went to the trouble of debugging all of our poor SQL queries for us. It would've been so much easier for all involved if they had just had the source code themselves. I campaigned for this inside those companies.
Several others have been companies that made perfectly valid internal use of Open Source software, like Amazon.
To me, DRM is about two things. First it's about making sure that people don't actually have control over the things they've ostensibly bought. The Amazon debacle is a prime example of this.
Secondly, it's about trying to create artificial scarcity, which seems to me to be all the wrong strategy.
And, on a different note, I don't think the low prices you're seeing are because of DRM. I think you're seeing them because developing good games shouldn't actually take the gobs of money that it's currently fashionable to throw at the problem. I know of several indie games that seem to be doing OK for themselves completely in the absence of DRM. Word of Goo, and The Penumbra Series.
It was pretty mediocre code to begin with. Interesting, but not anywhere near as revolutionary in practice as people seem to think. Add to that the fact that Reiser was it's primary maintainer and core developer and it's probably not worth bothering with. Especially since SSD's are likely to change the design of file systems rather dramatically in the next few years.
And btrfs really does everything reiserfs did that I cared about, does it better and does a whole lot more. I still think the code deserves better than the treatment it gets because of the unrelated actions of its author.
Plus, slashdot has a lot of karma to make up for all of their "just because they found his car with the seat ripped out and a huge spot of her blood in it doesn't mean he killed her, he's just misunderstood" crap they spouted when he was being tried, so a little criticism of him and his works even things out a bit.
I disagree. It's now obvious that he is guilty. It's also clear to me that his many obvious and glaring character flaws are a big part of why he's guilty.
But defending people until they're proven guilty is something I'll never apologize for. And I don't think doing so incurs bad karma of any kind. I didn't do it because of the code he wrote, I did it because the circumstantial evidence that was presented was kind of flimsy.
What got him convicted were the very character flaws that led to him murdering her in the first place.
I've used reiserfs for years, and the only problem I had with it was I got some null characters at the end of some files because meta-data was updated before the file data was written. And that was very early on.
It bothers me because it hurts innocent code. The code didn't do anything wrong. The software he wrote didn't murder anybody. But now the only thing anybody ever talks about when they talk about the code is murder. The code deserves better than that.
That sounds like a joke, and it sort of is, but it also really isn't.
Well, yes, I would jack up the font size too. And the edges of the letters would be nice and smooth without a hint of jaggedness. I wouldn't be willing to pay an astronomical price for it. But I would be willing to pay more than I do for my current monitor. I would be willing to pay 2-4 times as much in fact, which brings it to the $2k range.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that would likely be a lot nicer from a user's perspective. :-)
But it would also take more work and have the locking mechanism rely on Javascript. You could still use my method as a backup for when Javascript didn't work for whatever reason.
Can you explain to me how a malicious person's manipulation of the hash value could damage anything? How would they know what to change it to? I suppose they could just hash the form fields and hope, but that's easily defeated by adding in a server side session variable as salt.
Also, while this isn't exactly the best practice, the question made it clear that it was a fairly small internal web app. So worrying about malicious users on that scale is likely not an issue.
You make sure that edits are handled in a form on a web page with a submit button. The user gets to fiddle all the bits they want on the web page, then they hit the submit button. At that point the web app goes and locks the stuff it needs to do to update the database to reflect the user's changes. It then applies those changes, then commits them, thereby releasing all the locks.
If two users might potentially be editing the same records, keep an SHA-256 hash of the original data around as a hidden form field. Then when the update proceeds, check the data to make sure the SHA-256 hash matches the data you fetched when you generated the form page (helpfully put into a hidden form field). If the hash doesn't match, tell the person who did the submit that some fields may have changed and somehow present them with what those changes might be.
I was in an academic computer lab devoted to the sciences once. The disdain for computer scientists was clearly evident. All the while they used numeric algorithms computer scientists discovered and operating systems that were the result of a lot of work by computer scientists, and any number of other artifacts of the 'science' they so disparaged.
I found it really disheartening, and it left me with a really bad taste in my mouth about scientists. Perhaps things have changed now, but at the time, 10-20 years ago or so, disrespect for the people who made the tools that made their investigations even possible was rampant.
The funny thing is, chemists respect the people who make their glassware. I imagine the construction of telescopes is a respected field for astronomers. But computer science seems not to garner any respect among scientists.
Maybe the problem is that it should just never have been named computer 'science'. I don't think it's a science any more than mathematics is.
Then, if that's how they feel, I wish they'd quit. Seriously. If they can't make any money in the current environment, they should fold up and die and leave it to someone who can.
I shouldn't have to give up sovereignty over my own possessions because those studios think it's their right to restrict it so they can feel (falsely) warm and fuzzy about their ability to make money creating that stuff. I shouldn't have to give it up because you want them to make it either.
Secondly, thinking DRM is inherently evil is not the same as thinking that people should have the right to violate copyright at their whim. If you want to talk about conflation, there you go.
Lastly, I refer you to this reply of mine.
That's actually not true for me. From what I know of both men, I would've much more believed Hans Reiser capable than Bill Gates.
Interesting. I don't seem to recall anything like that when I installed it on Linux. Maybe they took that out of the Linux version.
I did buy it from one of their websites, so I didn't get some version where some unauthorized person diked it out.
BTW, the game is a big pain to get to run under Linux, unlike World of Goo which was trivial.
I wish to be told of the fact that a game has in-game advertising before I buy it. And after I buy it, it shouldn't be mysteriously patched so that my original choice is rendered moot.
Within those bounds, I am willing to accept in-game advertising. I might even buy a game like that if it ran on Linux.
Well, what do you suppose would happen if nobody paid for anything? People would largely stop making anything. And that would be a sad situation to be sure, but I bet it wouldn't last very long.
You are very attached to one particular way in which people who create stuff have made money in the past. That way doesn't really work so well anymore, so instead of accepting this fact you want lots of technological restrictions that don't actually work and have the effect of making honest people into criminals, especially since you also seem to feel that paying off the government to give those restrictions some kind of legal force is appropriate. That seems very backward looking to me.
Anytime somebody bucks the system and does things in a completely different way they are treated as the anomalies that couldn't possibly work for most people. Again, instead of looking for new ways to succeed and building on the successes of others you want the old ways to continue to work.
DRM is the iron pyrite of solutions to the problem you see. It's glittering promise completely fails to deliver in practice. And in the meantime a whole ton of damage is done, not the least of which is lost opportunity cost while the false dream is pursued.
And our current copyright system does create false scarcity, and that has a real and extreme economic cost. It costs the minor enjoyment of thousands of people who could enjoy the work if they were willing to spend more money on it. It costs in terms of extreme legal expenses in trying to create works that somehow reference or mention existing works. It costs in terms of cultural loss from works that disappear forever because new copies cannot be legally made. It also costs because it encourages hoarding of rights and increasingly large swaths of culture never being released into the public commons.
But, in your mind, all those costs are worth it, and the self-delusion of believing (even a little) in DRM is important because this old way that creators had for being compensated for their time is extremely important somehow.
I say give it up. Let yourself look for new ways. Let yourself believe in the results when you see people use new ways and actually make a living. Think about how they could be improved without the costs of the current system.
At the moment I cannot get their music free legally. It might be a shocker to you, but for many people this does make a difference.
I love how so many people on the side of the debate you seem to be on assume that everybody on the other side is a pirate. That tells me all I need to know right there. We're all criminals.
I didn't know that you couldn't get NIN's stuff for free legally at the moment. I just assumed that once they let that cat out of the bag they weren't so silly as to try to stuff it back in.
I'm sure you can get it that way illegally, but that's not because I'm out there doing it. I just know how the Internet and digital information actually work in practice.
If the contract says otherwise, then they didn't sell it to you as people commonly understand the concept. That's the basic assumption behind the doctrine of first sale.
As the article points out, they aren't going bankrupt. They are making a living despite the high piracy rates. It would be nice if the rates were lower. I know I bought my copy, and I encouraged my friends to do the same.
You have an interesting point. The thing that is scarce, and the thing that it takes all that money to produce is the first copy.
I'm going to have to think about that for awhile longer. Though I think part of the issue is the organization that pays the programmers has a fundamental problem all of its own. I would like to separate any idea I have from the idea of an organization needing to be fed.
While I'm a huge believer in free markets, I think capitalism (the idea that a lot of capital is needed to produce things and somebody needs to own that capital to care for it and keep it producing) is a poor economic fit for creative work. And that is why I think the 'organization' as an entity separate from the people actually making the work is a different problem that needs to be separated out.
The same is true for almost all musicians. Almost no musicians who go with a standard record label ever make any money at it either. Which percentage is higher?
*chuckle* Point taken. I'm working on it.
I agree with you. But I think there are things you can do that make the people who buy your stuff feel special and important. And as long as you do that, I think you'll end up with a lot of people buying your stuff.
I look at what Radiohead and NIN have done in this regard. Johnathan Coultan is also a good example.
People could've gotten and can still get the work of any of those artists for free. Many people choose to pay anyway. And the reason is that those artists do things to make the fans who choose to buy feel appreciated.
Well, the weird thing is, you see, I actually bought copies of World of Goo and Penumbra. And while I don't think copyright infringement is stealing, I didn't even commit copyright infringement.
And my employers have generally been aware of my feeling that they should release all software they published as Open Source. Often they became aware of this before they hired me.
Yes, I've noticed that somehow derivative games seem to be a LOT more expensive to produce. My suspicion is that basically the giant pyramid scheme that is the modern corporation siphons off too much money.
So, how is this related to my statement? As you are well aware, I would not be in favor of such a scheme. This seems like a straw man argument to me. How isn't it?
In fact, I'm in favor of digital cash based on David Chaum's algorithms. These completely avoid the need for a merchant to have information that can be used to drain my accounts. I think the current situation with credit cards is just a huge, gigantic security hole that we currently try to ineffectively plug with a flimsy legal framework.
I like getting paid for my work. And I think that game developers should get paid for their work too. Please point out where in my statements I say that game developers shouldn't get paid for their work.
As for working for companies that make closed source, I don't really enjoy it, but companies that make their money from Open Source are hard to find. They exist. Red Hat is doing very well. But most people seem to have the same fear driven mindset that you do and seem to think that producing Open Source software means they can't get paid.
Several of the companies I worked for produced software that I felt could have been sold as Open Source and done just fine or better than they were doing. One of the customers of one of the companies I worked for actually went to the trouble of debugging all of our poor SQL queries for us. It would've been so much easier for all involved if they had just had the source code themselves. I campaigned for this inside those companies.
Several others have been companies that made perfectly valid internal use of Open Source software, like Amazon.
To me, DRM is about two things. First it's about making sure that people don't actually have control over the things they've ostensibly bought. The Amazon debacle is a prime example of this.
Secondly, it's about trying to create artificial scarcity, which seems to me to be all the wrong strategy.
And, on a different note, I don't think the low prices you're seeing are because of DRM. I think you're seeing them because developing good games shouldn't actually take the gobs of money that it's currently fashionable to throw at the problem. I know of several indie games that seem to be doing OK for themselves completely in the absence of DRM. Word of Goo, and The Penumbra Series.
It was pretty mediocre code to begin with. Interesting, but not anywhere near as revolutionary in practice as people seem to think. Add to that the fact that Reiser was it's primary maintainer and core developer and it's probably not worth bothering with. Especially since SSD's are likely to change the design of file systems rather dramatically in the next few years.
And btrfs really does everything reiserfs did that I cared about, does it better and does a whole lot more. I still think the code deserves better than the treatment it gets because of the unrelated actions of its author.
Plus, slashdot has a lot of karma to make up for all of their "just because they found his car with the seat ripped out and a huge spot of her blood in it doesn't mean he killed her, he's just misunderstood" crap they spouted when he was being tried, so a little criticism of him and his works even things out a bit.
I disagree. It's now obvious that he is guilty. It's also clear to me that his many obvious and glaring character flaws are a big part of why he's guilty.
But defending people until they're proven guilty is something I'll never apologize for. And I don't think doing so incurs bad karma of any kind. I didn't do it because of the code he wrote, I did it because the circumstantial evidence that was presented was kind of flimsy.
What got him convicted were the very character flaws that led to him murdering her in the first place.
I've used reiserfs for years, and the only problem I had with it was I got some null characters at the end of some files because meta-data was updated before the file data was written. And that was very early on.
It bothers me because it hurts innocent code. The code didn't do anything wrong. The software he wrote didn't murder anybody. But now the only thing anybody ever talks about when they talk about the code is murder. The code deserves better than that.
That sounds like a joke, and it sort of is, but it also really isn't.
Well, yes, I would jack up the font size too. And the edges of the letters would be nice and smooth without a hint of jaggedness. I wouldn't be willing to pay an astronomical price for it. But I would be willing to pay more than I do for my current monitor. I would be willing to pay 2-4 times as much in fact, which brings it to the $2k range.