It should not be possible to feed 1.6 billion combinations of something into a security system without someone noticing.
I worked at a place a couple years back that had a dodgy.php script on a web server. And wouldn't you know it, there was a ginourmous.htpasswd file sitting in the docroot. And, as luck would have it, some of those passwords were also system passwords (yes, this was against policy, but the terminally obstinate could and would get around the rule).
Since I don't have access to his hardware, I can't say how easy it was for the cracker to push a few billion letter combinations at that file. But after looking into writing some automated security checking stuff, I can tell you that john the ripper makes quick work of a passwords like MessHeave, so I'm not sure he had to examine the entire space. All the "hard to guess" passwords were safe. The two-word combos, words with numbers after them, and some of the 133t-ish ones were pretty much all broken.
It probably shouldn't be possible to brute force a password attack, but in some cases that can happen. So why trust umpteen other mechansisms to prop up an inherently weak password scheme? There are more points of failure that way for sure.
It's good to assume every other part of the system is secure, but I think that is (at best) shirking responsibility. Reminds me of that Russian proverb: Trust in God, but keep rowing to shore. It's better to use good passwords to begin with, I think.
it is interesting that the specification requires a click-through agreement to even read it
Not true. Look at the source of the page. You'll see that the "I accept" button is at actually a simple GET request to here. If you paste that into your location bar and then click the link on the right hand side of the page that comes up, you get the the spec.
I'm not sure of the legality of direct linking to their.doc file without agreeing to some nonsense EULA, but they put it on the web, so they have to expect a link here and there.
The motto isn't "Do no evil". It's "Don't be evil". Semantics aside, I believe there's a difference. Having said that, I don't see how these patents fit the meaning of either phrase.
I think there is significant merit in the fact that this patent focuses on wireless access where previous incarnations were wired. The USPTO seems to agree. Read the Background section on application. This is most definitely about wireless access. Indeed, it seems to me that the entire raison d'etre for this one particular patent is that wireless access is too expensive, and therefore roll-out and adoption has been slow. Looks like they aim to address that with ad-based wireless. They obviously want to protect themselves by securing a patent.
Whether more people with WiFi access and broader wireless roll-out are intrisincally "good" or not, I don't really know. Seems like a nice thing to me, even if it does have the evil stigma of patents surrounding it (disclaimer: I've got 19 applications currently pending). But if Google brought unpatented, ad-based, free WiFi to a couple hundred thousand people in San Diego (for example) and another company patented that service out from under them and aimed to charge a fee, would that be "better" than Google never having had filed a patent at all? Seems to me there's some folks wouldn't mind having that guarantee that their free WiFi wouldn't be going away. I guess it boils down to trust. I trust the ads or whatever will be fairly unobtrusive.
Your statements about demographic databases and spending habits are non sequitur, and I'm unsure how they're on-topic or how they relate the patents discussed in the story.
Well, I was taking each API they offer on its own. The Yahoo mapping/travel planning offering might be the best of the bunch, but the ads one definitely isn't. I suppose if you grouped them all together Yahoo would come out on top.
I guess it depends on what's important from a developer/business point of view. A lot of money can be managed via an ads API. Having one vs. not having one can make a huge difference in ad spending for some organizations (SEMs, especially). But if you're a web developer looking to do something CMS-ish or whatever, then the AJAX stuff they just released is more important to you.
Very true. Their developer APIs are the best of any major offering.
Not really. Have you ever looked at their ads API? It can't even bgein to compare to what Google offers.
It takes about 90 seconds to sign up and start getting access to advertising data via Google's API. It's SOAP, so pretty much every programming language besides BASIC and Forth are supported. Google has loads of documentation online regarding their ad API program. And it's free. You get to do what you want with the data that you get back.
Yahoo has had an advertising API for 5 years now, but what does it do? What does it take to get access to it? We know it uses REST, but what data can you get back from it? How much does it cost? Where is the sample code? Is there a support forum where I can talk to other developers? What are the terms of service? Can I use it to get 3rd party access to others' data? Are there any other restrictions on using it?
The API page linked above doesn't answer any of those questions. Hell, the ads API isn't even listed on the developer resources page you linked to. Why is that?
So if I email xml-ysm@yahoo-inc.com and ask the above questions, how long before I get a response? Will all my questions be answered, or will I get more questions back then answers? Try it. I did last spring. It's an interesting response to say the least.
You're right in that Yahoo has some very nice developer resources. But this is one area where Google substantially outshines Yahoo. Send a short email to the above address and ask to get access to the Yahoo ad API. Seriously. Just send a one-liner. Take a moment to read through the canned response you get back. And then ask yourself "Why don't they just put all that info on a web page somewhere out in the open?" That you even have to email someone to begin with is odd (and annoying). What is Yahoo hiding? Why are they being so cagey?
Compare that email response to the AdWords API page at Google. Now step back and take in the Yahoo ads API page (and, I suppose the one other page regarding their API). Add in the email repsonse. Now take in all the info on Google's API. Notice a difference? Just a small one, maybe?
There's just no comparison whatsoever. Google is open, free and easy with their ads/cost data sharing. Yahoo is, to be kind, not so much any of those things.
Anyway, even if you DID manage to get API access, you better not hang your hat on that since access could get pulled for any number of spurious reasons. Take a look here for an interesting read. Yeesh.
Yahoo itself might have a decent suite of APIs, but such notions haven't as yet affected the folks who came over from Overture.
I grew up before the dot-bomb days, and spent time fighting through that era. Happily, I emerged unscathed. But I still have scars:
I remember thinking http could never replace gopher.
I remember seeing that Lynx could be bought in a box from O'Reilly.
I remember when Yahoo was part of.edu (and useful).
I remember when people thought Java was that thing which got the bouncing ball to happen in your Netscape Mosaic.
I remember people thinking Pointcast was a good thing.
I remember all manner of business plans (many funded!) which blossomed from any number of neologistic buzzwords simply because of their inclusion.
I remember anyone, anywhere, wanting a website -- and paying companies like USWeb $350 an hour for an "HTML Designer" to help them make those gold rush dreams happen. (And I remember said "designer" being an art school dropout with just a shade less than half a clue.)
I remember companies using VC money to host outrageous parties instead of buy necessary hardware. I don't remember too many specific moments during some of those parties.
I remember when anything could be e-hyphenated.
So I also remember when people started using the term "e-tailer". And it was when I initially heard that term from the mouth of a live person that I first imagined myself stabbing another human being in the throat.
No good can come from the use of that term. So please, I ask: Stop using it.
...and it has a maximum resolution of 1920x1080. Assuming a console can do HD, that is. My big flat panel can do 1600x1200 -- while hooked up to a very very fast PC that includes a couple GBs of RAM, 5.1 sound, a nice keyboard/mouse combo (not some funky multi-button controller that vibrates or whatever), and an always-on Net connection. No fees are needed to play online, and the PC lives in my home office where I can play a game without disturbing anyone else in the house. As a bonus, I can use this PC for other tasks as well (though it mostly stays in suspend mode when I'm not playing a game).
I don't see the allure of console gaming. Maybe it's cheaper, but I'm not sure any savings are really worth it.
but don't throw out the reality of discrimination along with the false allegations.
No, he's right. The original poster indeed has some sort of chip on his shoulder. It's that chip which prevents him from seeing that it's the fact that he can't write two coherent sentences in one shot which keeps him struggling. It's not "the man" keeping him down, it's that he writes like a semi-literate imbecile.
He may in fact have been the victim of discrimination at some point, but that is, IMO, completely orthogonal to the issue of him not being the high-paying career man he feels he deserves to be.
Runs some embedded Linux I believe. Also has 4 USB2 ports through which you can attach more disks for more storage. I think it can also print through them, but I don't use that feature (stupid old parallel printer) so I'm not 100% sure on that.
It runs a really weird hacked up version of PPC Linux:
admin@TERASTATION:~$ uname -a
Linux TERASTATION 2.4.20_mvl31-ppc_linkstation #15 Tue May 31 10:18:19 JST 2005 ppc unknown
An sshd went on there about 16 minutes after it was in the house. Mine's the low-end 4x160 model (not 4x120, as you state). Got it on sale at Fry's for $525. I would have bought two if I could have. But no worries there: when you run low on space, buy four 1.5 TB drives (after all, it's 2009, right?), put them in one at a time, and slowly rebuild your array. It's all XFS, so there's no real practical limit on disk/partition size.
The print server is nice. I have a Samsung QL 6050, it's parallel only. I spent $30 for the Belkin parallel to USB adapter cable and it works like a champ.
It's a very nice appliance. Now that I have ssh access, I have NFS exports. It replaced my home-built 80GB RAID1 box, and I'm glad that I have a storage "appliance" now. That old PC ran really warm and was loud. The TeraStation is very quiet and doesn't seem to get all that hot.
I wish it did remote logging out of the box, though. Also, I'd have liked to see disk quotas. But that's no big deal for a home user.
I'm definitely sticking with the TeraStation over home-built.
Python forces you to structure your code in a certain way
Which is one of the reasons I like Python. And one of the reasons I don't. Have you ever tried to email someone (or paste into am IM window) Python code? Be very careful of where you wrap.
Having said that, anyone who writes bad Perl does so on purpose. There's nothing stopping anyone from writing maintainable Perl code. I've been doing it for years. The best practices article is very good at helping self-impose good writing styles, BTW. You're spot on there.
And a side note: the person who modded my original post as a troll obviously never tried to use SOAPpy. I have. I'd love to use python for my SOAP stuff (not only because they strongly encourage it at work, and it would greatly simplify a few issues we have with non-Python code), but I can't since SOAPpy is very, very young, and riddled with bugs and unimplemented features. It's very nearly completely useable for what I need. And since I can't use Java, I get to use Perl. And it works well enough.
It just isn't as slashbot-compliant as it could be.:-)
Just because google seems to make efforts to "seem" not evil doesn't mean that they are.
I'm not saying they make efforts to to seem anything. I'm saying that it's part of the corporate culture, and deeply ingrained. The people at google really, truly want to do no evil. I see that every day.
Disclaimer: That's just my personal opinion, not google's (though I doubt they would disagree).
There are a number of other companies who if they were doing such things, most people would take issue, and have in the past. Double click immediately comes to mind. Maybe people will start to figure it out when the love affair ends.
I know it sounds cliched, but Google tries really, really hard to not be evil. I mean that in a very literal way. Go to the googleplex and you'll actually hear those words. You can practically smell the good spirit there. I'm serious.
Google is a highly altruistic company. Why is that hard to believe? Have the DoubleClicks of the world permanently jaded people into thinking that it's impossible for a company to actively try to be good to people? That's pretty sad...
Well, my bad as well. I was under the impression that start.com was an "official" product. I didn't realize that it was a small research project.
Like you say, they obviously tackled FF, so that's definitely nice (especially when you consider that pages generally look the same when rendered by FF, regardless of OS). I'd beg, borrow, or steal a Mac, though. There are a lot of Safari users out there.
A little reaching out would go a long way towards improving public opinion.
Contrary to popular belief there isn't some buzz around to cut off the balls of non-IE users. Some platforms just don't run IE... and I can't imagine any desire to turn away customers based on their browser
I use Linux for about 80% of my computing (FreeBSD takes another 10). So I'm not on Windows very much (and when I am, I'm not using IE if I can at all help it). Have you ever tried to look at microsoft.com using FF on Linux? Or Opera? There's not a whole heck of a lot there which works.:-)
That's probably the genesis of the "popular belief" which you speak of...
-B
It works well for me in Firefox and IE6/7. I imagine the handful of guys over on the Search team who work on this don't have Macs or Opera licenses to test browser compatibility...
So you're saying that the guys whose primary job is to design, build and (one hopes) test public-facing web properties have access to only a limited number of browsers, to the point that said web properties are nearly completely useless for a well-defined segment of the online world?
That's mind-blowingly absurd.
How hard would it be for them to get a Mac and dual-boot one of the XP boxes they have? MS has access to scrounge up those meager resources, right? I mean, at least build it so that something shows up. Because, you know, it shows Microsoft cares.
Sorry, the sarcasm slipped through there toward the end...
From the impression I had of Google, there not looking for an Ivy League degree, just raw smarts.
Take a look at their job openings page. There exist many positions which say "BS|MS or equivalent". While a really good educational background is desireable, I can tell you from personal experience that Google primarily values what you can do over where you went to school.
If you're really super bright, but have no degree (or a non-CS degree, or a degree from a crappy school) you can get a job at Google. Further, there is far less bias against non-degreed individuals at Google than at many other places I've seen. Engineers are primarily judged on what they know vs. where they learned it.
This garbage is moderated insightful? The moderators must have never worked in the real world.
I refuse to be interrupted by IM. If you need something, email me, or come over to my desk and talk to me. Both of those activities takes more effort than simple chat, and so weeds out the really frivolous things. (More often than not, by the time they email or talk to me, they've solved their own problem.)
Besides, I hardly ever mind talking to someone face to face, but that little blinking IM window icon makes me seethe. And when I'm seriously heads-down, people can actually see that and so tend to not bother me. (As I do for them when I walk over to their desk.)
BTW, this is accepted policy where I work and I'm far from alone in doing it. Most people here refuse to run an IM client and respond to desk encounters with "Can this be put into an email?" even before the question is asked.
An added benefit of this is that email can be printed, filed, saved, annotated, forwarded to a larger group, replied to later, etc. IM is limited as a lasting form of communication. IM is not as bad as voicemail (which is almost completely useless), but it's still a pretty ineffectual and disruptive form of communication.
After you get laid off for not helping out the team, don't come crying to me.
Being able to do your job in a timely fashion, sans interruption, will rarely result in a layoff. Useless wool-gathering IM sessions are another matter.
It's not pedantry, it's fact. The Hague predates the Geneva, and specifically addresses the subject. The Geneva comes close but doesn't say anything about it. The point is, people have a misconception that hollowpoints are banned because of the Geneva Conventions (which most people also fail to pluralize).
The DOD has nothing to agree with. The military uses hollowpoints, but not widely. There is no ban on them, per se. The REAL reason that hollow or soft point rounds aren't used is that they create feeding problems and jamming issues. FMJ ammo is more reliable. That's it. The Geneva Conventions have nothing to do with it.
Anyway, you aren't going to listen to me (or to reason), so check out wikipedia:
The Hague Convention prohibits the use of expanding or fragmenting bullets in warfare (often incorrectly believed to be prohibited in the Geneva Conventions), but hollow point bullets are one of the most common types of civilian and police ammunition.
Pedantry or not, there's facts and then there's the post I originally replied to. I stand by what I wrote, because I'm right, regardless of sematic wiggling.
(reposting AC parent to improve visibility, as wiseguy jackasses really do need to be publicly humiliated)
Actually, why don't you get a clue? Here is an excerpt from the 1st protocol of the Geneva Conventions:
I'm a wiseguy jackass? You're just an ass.
The excerpt posted above is from 1949, and merely says:
It is prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.
That could be pretty much anything except a wiffle bat. The Hague Convention 1899, if anyone would have bothered reading the link before spouting off, is titled Laws of War :
Declaration on the Use of Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily in the Human Body. Which I thought was pretty clear. Guess not. I forgot this was slashdot, where everyone's an expert.
Anyway, continuing on to not reading the link, the convention above declares, straight out:
The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions.
Which seems pretty clear. So quit being an asshole, Dun.
Did you by chance mean to refer to the Hague Conventions instead? Because one of them is what prohibits the use of expanding or mushrooming ammunition, contrary to what you see in the movies. In addition, the Hague Convention of 1899 also prohibits air bombardment and the use of chemical weapons.
Since we've been bombing people from the air since we've been able to get into the air, I'm not sure that the "treaty prevents us from using hollow points" theory holds any water. And when you consider that the reason militaries use FMJ ammo is that the solid tip prevents feeding errors and jamming, the treaty notion starts to look even weaker. Makes for good TV, though!
A little research now and then, is cherised by the wisest men...
PHP websites are more vulnerable to worms. Just six months ago, many PHP run forums were shut down and destroyed. The exploit was something that worked only with PHP forums.
So it was a shortcoming endemic to the langauge, and not sloppy coding, right? I mean to say, PHP itself was at fault, due its very nature? A similar thing can't possibly happen in a "real" programming language like Java?
Java is the better language to learn. It is more like a true programming language than PHP. The reward for the time spent learning a language is greater with Java than with PHP.
That's begging the question. And wooly-headed thinking at its best. I'd argue that the barrier to entry is a lot lower with PHP than Java (or C, C++,.Net, et al.). So someone new to the language is bound to see results faster. But your point is nonsensical to begin with...
I always thought of PHP as more of a scripting langugae, and not a true language. No large PHP applications exists out there. But there are tons of enterprise Java applications.
A scripting language is a "true language". BASIC is a true programming langauge. MSDOS batch is a true programming langauge. Further, have you ever heard the saying "use the right tool for the job"? There are a lot of types of websites filling a lot of roles. Many (most?) of them don't need the overhead and complexity of an enterprise-class system. Use what works, without specious limitations brought on by technical snobbery.
So the free (and relatively new) offering isn't as good as the pay services. So what? Most researchers have probably been using the pay services already (unless they only started doing their work 6 months ago, and even then their department likely has access to the subscription stuff), so now they can use the free Google service to supplement that. How can more information be bad?
That business about "otherwise very intelligent people have succumbed to stupidity by using Google Scholar to the exclusion of the other, much better services" sounds like the author has a personal or financial stake in WoS or Scopus. Or just a chip on his shoulder, axe to grind, whatever. Either way, the reviewer comes off sounding like an pompous asshole.
If you use Google Scholar and get what you need, then at least you didn't pay anything for the privilege. If they were charging money and it sucked, yeah, I could see someone whining about it. But for free?
Slashdot Mirror
I worked at a place a couple years back that had a dodgy .php script on a web server. And wouldn't you know it, there was a ginourmous .htpasswd file sitting in the docroot. And, as luck would have it, some of those passwords were also system passwords (yes, this was against policy, but the terminally obstinate could and would get around the rule).
Since I don't have access to his hardware, I can't say how easy it was for the cracker to push a few billion letter combinations at that file. But after looking into writing some automated security checking stuff, I can tell you that john the ripper makes quick work of a passwords like MessHeave, so I'm not sure he had to examine the entire space. All the "hard to guess" passwords were safe. The two-word combos, words with numbers after them, and some of the 133t-ish ones were pretty much all broken.
It probably shouldn't be possible to brute force a password attack, but in some cases that can happen. So why trust umpteen other mechansisms to prop up an inherently weak password scheme? There are more points of failure that way for sure.
It's good to assume every other part of the system is secure, but I think that is (at best) shirking responsibility. Reminds me of that Russian proverb: Trust in God, but keep rowing to shore. It's better to use good passwords to begin with, I think.
-B
Not true. Look at the source of the page. You'll see that the "I accept" button is at actually a simple GET request to here. If you paste that into your location bar and then click the link on the right hand side of the page that comes up, you get the the spec.
I'm not sure of the legality of direct linking to their .doc file without agreeing to some nonsense EULA, but they put it on the web, so they have to expect a link here and there.
-B
I think there is significant merit in the fact that this patent focuses on wireless access where previous incarnations were wired. The USPTO seems to agree. Read the Background section on application. This is most definitely about wireless access. Indeed, it seems to me that the entire raison d'etre for this one particular patent is that wireless access is too expensive, and therefore roll-out and adoption has been slow. Looks like they aim to address that with ad-based wireless. They obviously want to protect themselves by securing a patent.
Whether more people with WiFi access and broader wireless roll-out are intrisincally "good" or not, I don't really know. Seems like a nice thing to me, even if it does have the evil stigma of patents surrounding it (disclaimer: I've got 19 applications currently pending). But if Google brought unpatented, ad-based, free WiFi to a couple hundred thousand people in San Diego (for example) and another company patented that service out from under them and aimed to charge a fee, would that be "better" than Google never having had filed a patent at all? Seems to me there's some folks wouldn't mind having that guarantee that their free WiFi wouldn't be going away. I guess it boils down to trust. I trust the ads or whatever will be fairly unobtrusive.
Your statements about demographic databases and spending habits are non sequitur, and I'm unsure how they're on-topic or how they relate the patents discussed in the story.
-B
May I suggest the use of the Preview button?
-B
-B
I guess it depends on what's important from a developer/business point of view. A lot of money can be managed via an ads API. Having one vs. not having one can make a huge difference in ad spending for some organizations (SEMs, especially). But if you're a web developer looking to do something CMS-ish or whatever, then the AJAX stuff they just released is more important to you.
-B
Not really. Have you ever looked at their ads API? It can't even bgein to compare to what Google offers.
It takes about 90 seconds to sign up and start getting access to advertising data via Google's API. It's SOAP, so pretty much every programming language besides BASIC and Forth are supported. Google has loads of documentation online regarding their ad API program. And it's free. You get to do what you want with the data that you get back.
Yahoo has had an advertising API for 5 years now, but what does it do? What does it take to get access to it? We know it uses REST, but what data can you get back from it? How much does it cost? Where is the sample code? Is there a support forum where I can talk to other developers? What are the terms of service? Can I use it to get 3rd party access to others' data? Are there any other restrictions on using it?
The API page linked above doesn't answer any of those questions. Hell, the ads API isn't even listed on the developer resources page you linked to. Why is that?
So if I email xml-ysm@yahoo-inc.com and ask the above questions, how long before I get a response? Will all my questions be answered, or will I get more questions back then answers? Try it. I did last spring. It's an interesting response to say the least.
You're right in that Yahoo has some very nice developer resources. But this is one area where Google substantially outshines Yahoo. Send a short email to the above address and ask to get access to the Yahoo ad API. Seriously. Just send a one-liner. Take a moment to read through the canned response you get back. And then ask yourself "Why don't they just put all that info on a web page somewhere out in the open?" That you even have to email someone to begin with is odd (and annoying). What is Yahoo hiding? Why are they being so cagey?
Compare that email response to the AdWords API page at Google. Now step back and take in the Yahoo ads API page (and, I suppose the one other page regarding their API). Add in the email repsonse. Now take in all the info on Google's API. Notice a difference? Just a small one, maybe?
There's just no comparison whatsoever. Google is open, free and easy with their ads/cost data sharing. Yahoo is, to be kind, not so much any of those things.
Anyway, even if you DID manage to get API access, you better not hang your hat on that since access could get pulled for any number of spurious reasons. Take a look here for an interesting read. Yeesh.
Yahoo itself might have a decent suite of APIs, but such notions haven't as yet affected the folks who came over from Overture.
-B
No good can come from the use of that term. So please, I ask: Stop using it.
-B
I don't see the allure of console gaming. Maybe it's cheaper, but I'm not sure any savings are really worth it.
-B
-B
No, he's right. The original poster indeed has some sort of chip on his shoulder. It's that chip which prevents him from seeing that it's the fact that he can't write two coherent sentences in one shot which keeps him struggling. It's not "the man" keeping him down, it's that he writes like a semi-literate imbecile.
He may in fact have been the victim of discrimination at some point, but that is, IMO, completely orthogonal to the issue of him not being the high-paying career man he feels he deserves to be.
Anyway, that just my opinion.
-B
It runs a really weird hacked up version of PPC Linux:
admin@TERASTATION:~$ uname -a Linux TERASTATION 2.4.20_mvl31-ppc_linkstation #15 Tue May 31 10:18:19 JST 2005 ppc unknown
An sshd went on there about 16 minutes after it was in the house. Mine's the low-end 4x160 model (not 4x120, as you state). Got it on sale at Fry's for $525. I would have bought two if I could have. But no worries there: when you run low on space, buy four 1.5 TB drives (after all, it's 2009, right?), put them in one at a time, and slowly rebuild your array. It's all XFS, so there's no real practical limit on disk/partition size.
The print server is nice. I have a Samsung QL 6050, it's parallel only. I spent $30 for the Belkin parallel to USB adapter cable and it works like a champ.
It's a very nice appliance. Now that I have ssh access, I have NFS exports. It replaced my home-built 80GB RAID1 box, and I'm glad that I have a storage "appliance" now. That old PC ran really warm and was loud. The TeraStation is very quiet and doesn't seem to get all that hot.
I wish it did remote logging out of the box, though. Also, I'd have liked to see disk quotas. But that's no big deal for a home user.
I'm definitely sticking with the TeraStation over home-built.
-B
Which is one of the reasons I like Python. And one of the reasons I don't. Have you ever tried to email someone (or paste into am IM window) Python code? Be very careful of where you wrap.
Having said that, anyone who writes bad Perl does so on purpose. There's nothing stopping anyone from writing maintainable Perl code. I've been doing it for years. The best practices article is very good at helping self-impose good writing styles, BTW. You're spot on there.
And a side note: the person who modded my original post as a troll obviously never tried to use SOAPpy. I have. I'd love to use python for my SOAP stuff (not only because they strongly encourage it at work, and it would greatly simplify a few issues we have with non-Python code), but I can't since SOAPpy is very, very young, and riddled with bugs and unimplemented features. It's very nearly completely useable for what I need. And since I can't use Java, I get to use Perl. And it works well enough.
It just isn't as slashbot-compliant as it could be. :-)
-B
Unless you need to do anything with SOAP, in which case Python is the by far the worst tool for the job...
-B
I'm not saying they make efforts to to seem anything. I'm saying that it's part of the corporate culture, and deeply ingrained. The people at google really, truly want to do no evil. I see that every day.
Disclaimer: That's just my personal opinion, not google's (though I doubt they would disagree).
-B
I know it sounds cliched, but Google tries really, really hard to not be evil. I mean that in a very literal way. Go to the googleplex and you'll actually hear those words. You can practically smell the good spirit there. I'm serious.
Google is a highly altruistic company. Why is that hard to believe? Have the DoubleClicks of the world permanently jaded people into thinking that it's impossible for a company to actively try to be good to people? That's pretty sad...
-B
Like you say, they obviously tackled FF, so that's definitely nice (especially when you consider that pages generally look the same when rendered by FF, regardless of OS). I'd beg, borrow, or steal a Mac, though. There are a lot of Safari users out there.
A little reaching out would go a long way towards improving public opinion.
Contrary to popular belief there isn't some buzz around to cut off the balls of non-IE users. Some platforms just don't run IE ... and I can't imagine any desire to turn away customers based on their browser
I use Linux for about 80% of my computing (FreeBSD takes another 10). So I'm not on Windows very much (and when I am, I'm not using IE if I can at all help it). Have you ever tried to look at microsoft.com using FF on Linux? Or Opera? There's not a whole heck of a lot there which works. :-)
That's probably the genesis of the "popular belief" which you speak of... -B
So you're saying that the guys whose primary job is to design, build and (one hopes) test public-facing web properties have access to only a limited number of browsers, to the point that said web properties are nearly completely useless for a well-defined segment of the online world?
That's mind-blowingly absurd.
How hard would it be for them to get a Mac and dual-boot one of the XP boxes they have? MS has access to scrounge up those meager resources, right? I mean, at least build it so that something shows up. Because, you know, it shows Microsoft cares.
Sorry, the sarcasm slipped through there toward the end...
-B
Take a look at their job openings page. There exist many positions which say "BS|MS or equivalent". While a really good educational background is desireable, I can tell you from personal experience that Google primarily values what you can do over where you went to school.
If you're really super bright, but have no degree (or a non-CS degree, or a degree from a crappy school) you can get a job at Google. Further, there is far less bias against non-degreed individuals at Google than at many other places I've seen. Engineers are primarily judged on what they know vs. where they learned it.
-B
I refuse to be interrupted by IM. If you need something, email me, or come over to my desk and talk to me. Both of those activities takes more effort than simple chat, and so weeds out the really frivolous things. (More often than not, by the time they email or talk to me, they've solved their own problem.)
Besides, I hardly ever mind talking to someone face to face, but that little blinking IM window icon makes me seethe. And when I'm seriously heads-down, people can actually see that and so tend to not bother me. (As I do for them when I walk over to their desk.)
BTW, this is accepted policy where I work and I'm far from alone in doing it. Most people here refuse to run an IM client and respond to desk encounters with "Can this be put into an email?" even before the question is asked.
An added benefit of this is that email can be printed, filed, saved, annotated, forwarded to a larger group, replied to later, etc. IM is limited as a lasting form of communication. IM is not as bad as voicemail (which is almost completely useless), but it's still a pretty ineffectual and disruptive form of communication.
After you get laid off for not helping out the team, don't come crying to me.
Being able to do your job in a timely fashion, sans interruption, will rarely result in a layoff. Useless wool-gathering IM sessions are another matter.
-B
The DOD has nothing to agree with. The military uses hollowpoints, but not widely. There is no ban on them, per se. The REAL reason that hollow or soft point rounds aren't used is that they create feeding problems and jamming issues. FMJ ammo is more reliable. That's it. The Geneva Conventions have nothing to do with it.
Anyway, you aren't going to listen to me (or to reason), so check out wikipedia:
The Hague Convention prohibits the use of expanding or fragmenting bullets in warfare (often incorrectly believed to be prohibited in the Geneva Conventions), but hollow point bullets are one of the most common types of civilian and police ammunition.
Pedantry or not, there's facts and then there's the post I originally replied to. I stand by what I wrote, because I'm right, regardless of sematic wiggling.
-B
I'm a wiseguy jackass? You're just an ass.
The excerpt posted above is from 1949, and merely says:
That could be pretty much anything except a wiffle bat. The Hague Convention 1899, if anyone would have bothered reading the link before spouting off, is titled Laws of War : Declaration on the Use of Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily in the Human Body. Which I thought was pretty clear. Guess not. I forgot this was slashdot, where everyone's an expert.
Anyway, continuing on to not reading the link, the convention above declares, straight out:
Which seems pretty clear. So quit being an asshole, Dun.
-B
Which one are you talking about? There are four Geneva Conventions.
Did you by chance mean to refer to the Hague Conventions instead? Because one of them is what prohibits the use of expanding or mushrooming ammunition, contrary to what you see in the movies. In addition, the Hague Convention of 1899 also prohibits air bombardment and the use of chemical weapons.
Since we've been bombing people from the air since we've been able to get into the air, I'm not sure that the "treaty prevents us from using hollow points" theory holds any water. And when you consider that the reason militaries use FMJ ammo is that the solid tip prevents feeding errors and jamming, the treaty notion starts to look even weaker. Makes for good TV, though!
A little research now and then, is cherised by the wisest men...
-B
PHP websites are more vulnerable to worms. Just six months ago, many PHP run forums were shut down and destroyed. The exploit was something that worked only with PHP forums.
So it was a shortcoming endemic to the langauge, and not sloppy coding, right? I mean to say, PHP itself was at fault, due its very nature? A similar thing can't possibly happen in a "real" programming language like Java?
Java is the better language to learn. It is more like a true programming language than PHP. The reward for the time spent learning a language is greater with Java than with PHP.
That's begging the question. And wooly-headed thinking at its best. I'd argue that the barrier to entry is a lot lower with PHP than Java (or C, C++, .Net, et al.). So someone new to the language is bound to see results faster. But your point is nonsensical to begin with...
I always thought of PHP as more of a scripting langugae, and not a true language. No large PHP applications exists out there. But there are tons of enterprise Java applications.
A scripting language is a "true language". BASIC is a true programming langauge. MSDOS batch is a true programming langauge. Further, have you ever heard the saying "use the right tool for the job"? There are a lot of types of websites filling a lot of roles. Many (most?) of them don't need the overhead and complexity of an enterprise-class system. Use what works, without specious limitations brought on by technical snobbery.
-B
That business about "otherwise very intelligent people have succumbed to stupidity by using Google Scholar to the exclusion of the other, much better services" sounds like the author has a personal or financial stake in WoS or Scopus. Or just a chip on his shoulder, axe to grind, whatever. Either way, the reviewer comes off sounding like an pompous asshole.
If you use Google Scholar and get what you need, then at least you didn't pay anything for the privilege. If they were charging money and it sucked, yeah, I could see someone whining about it. But for free?
-B