Good point, I guess there would be a natural skew in the sample of people you're actually likely to meet. As you say, this totally depends on the venue, such as a monster truck rally, Bose store, or internet message board.
I know it's lame to reply to my own post, but here is an IQ normal distribution. You were proposing a theoretical sample distribution, and it would be interesting to run a random sample against the population to see how it stacks up.
I think a case could be made that IQ may be represented as a normal distribution, where mean = median = mode, which means that the parent is correct that 1/2 of all people are below average. Unfortunate, but that's statistics for you.
My Windows XP box at work has this weird problem where sometimes the function of the caps lock key gets reversed -- I'll be typing away in Vim (running on a remote server), and suddenly all the controls are screwed up. I have to reboot to fix the problem (until it mysteriously appears again).
While this isn't a "crash", it does force a reboot. And that can be pretty damn inconvenient when you're in the middle of five different projects.
That would only convince me to download the album off P2P, instead of putting in all that work myself. In fact, why buy it in the first place?
Note: I've bought hundreds of CDs, and never play any of them anymore. All the music I care about has been ripped and encoded, and sits on my server and portable music player.
With all active scripting disabled I would bet that IE6 is actually more secure than firefox with javascript enabled.
Gee, these apples are nothing like these oranges!
But seriously, I think your scripting paranoia may be justified on IE, but no, I have never seen a serious security problem with Javascript on Mozilla/Firefox. My $DAYJOB is web development work, and I know the limitations of Javascript and the DOM fairly well. And I maintain that "active scripting" is far more dangerous on IE than any other browser, since it exposes the underlying OS.
It's not obvious, but you can do the same thing in Firefox by middle clicking on the tab. (*nix users will need to go into about:config and disable "middlemouse.contentLoadURL" first)
What you described is definitely a good idea to prevent SQL injection, but it doesn't have to be done using stored procedures. You can do the same thing on the web server with a custom function or by using prepared statements (using the PEAR library, etc).
Personally, I despise IE's "zones"; they're too hard to manage, and only necessary because the browser is so insecure. Instead of a simple JavaScript on/off switch, Mozilla/Firefox has options to selectively disable JavaScript functions (like status bar hijacking), and that works well enough for me. Adding a site-by-site manager on top of that would probably be too complicated for most users.
Hmm, you could use ASP2PHP as a starting point, but the ADO stuff will probably have to be rewritten. This is a good reason to centralize your database code in one place, it makes it much easier to make changes.
Running Windows doesn't prevent one from running Apache.. I've never understood these people who choose to use the limited version of IIS instead of spending 5 minutes to set up Apache. It's not that hard, guys.
Not always. Just last Saturday, some cable installers were in my house, we were chatting about computers a little, and one of them was telling me of his woes getting an (older) high-end sound card to work on Windows XP. His solution? To maintain an old Windows 98 machine, in addition to the new Windows XP machine, so that he could continue to use his expensive sound card (apparently, he does producing on the side).
By the way, when I mentioned that I ran Linux on my computer, they informed me that the house they just came from also ran Linux. Maybe the alternative desktop market isn't as marginal as people tend to assume..
You are right, when one is using a decent environment. I think you'll agree that a developer needs the ability to install software. For those of us stuck using Windows at work, it's essential to have system-level permissions, since most software just can't be installed in the user account..
Just as unfair as when they compare the number of flaws in a Windows distribution (not much software besides the base OS) to the number of flaws in a complete Linux distribution (with thousands of applications).
That project does sound truly heinous, but there's a Perl program called the Demoronizer which can help with those MS-Office -> HTML conversions. Even though it wouldn't help with the formatting issues, it's still a good starting point..
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Good point, I guess there would be a natural skew in the sample of people you're actually likely to meet. As you say, this totally depends on the venue, such as a monster truck rally, Bose store, or internet message board.
P.S. great sig!
I know it's lame to reply to my own post, but here is an IQ normal distribution. You were proposing a theoretical sample distribution, and it would be interesting to run a random sample against the population to see how it stacks up.
I think a case could be made that IQ may be represented as a normal distribution, where mean = median = mode, which means that the parent is correct that 1/2 of all people are below average. Unfortunate, but that's statistics for you.
Thanks, I'll give that a try next time. :)
My Windows XP box at work has this weird problem where sometimes the function of the caps lock key gets reversed -- I'll be typing away in Vim (running on a remote server), and suddenly all the controls are screwed up. I have to reboot to fix the problem (until it mysteriously appears again).
While this isn't a "crash", it does force a reboot. And that can be pretty damn inconvenient when you're in the middle of five different projects.
Sorry, I've never used the "bootfrom" option. Maybe try the Knoppix forum?
Something like Knoppix Cheat Codes, perhaps?
That would only convince me to download the album off P2P, instead of putting in all that work myself. In fact, why buy it in the first place?
Note: I've bought hundreds of CDs, and never play any of them anymore. All the music I care about has been ripped and encoded, and sits on my server and portable music player.
With all active scripting disabled I would bet that IE6 is actually more secure than firefox with javascript enabled.
Gee, these apples are nothing like these oranges!
But seriously, I think your scripting paranoia may be justified on IE, but no, I have never seen a serious security problem with Javascript on Mozilla/Firefox. My $DAYJOB is web development work, and I know the limitations of Javascript and the DOM fairly well. And I maintain that "active scripting" is far more dangerous on IE than any other browser, since it exposes the underlying OS.
Sorry, I'm not familiar with Firefox on the Mac. If the about:config option doesn't do it for you, I don't know what the solution would be.
It's not obvious, but you can do the same thing in Firefox by middle clicking on the tab. (*nix users will need to go into about:config and disable "middlemouse.contentLoadURL" first)
What you described is definitely a good idea to prevent SQL injection, but it doesn't have to be done using stored procedures. You can do the same thing on the web server with a custom function or by using prepared statements (using the PEAR library, etc).
http://secunia.com/advisories/13481/
Personally, I despise IE's "zones"; they're too hard to manage, and only necessary because the browser is so insecure. Instead of a simple JavaScript on/off switch, Mozilla/Firefox has options to selectively disable JavaScript functions (like status bar hijacking), and that works well enough for me. Adding a site-by-site manager on top of that would probably be too complicated for most users.
I'm not sure what schools you're familiar with, but at $400/credit hour, my school is probably not losing money..
Hmm, you could use ASP2PHP as a starting point, but the ADO stuff will probably have to be rewritten. This is a good reason to centralize your database code in one place, it makes it much easier to make changes.
Yeah, but if it's something your putting up to serve more than one or two people, it's probably a good idea to put in the effort. :)
Running Windows doesn't prevent one from running Apache.. I've never understood these people who choose to use the limited version of IIS instead of spending 5 minutes to set up Apache. It's not that hard, guys.
I hear the Farnsworth University of Covington, Kentucky has a nice program..
How about "peril sensitive windshields"? They turn black when you're about to crash..
Not always. Just last Saturday, some cable installers were in my house, we were chatting about computers a little, and one of them was telling me of his woes getting an (older) high-end sound card to work on Windows XP. His solution? To maintain an old Windows 98 machine, in addition to the new Windows XP machine, so that he could continue to use his expensive sound card (apparently, he does producing on the side).
By the way, when I mentioned that I ran Linux on my computer, they informed me that the house they just came from also ran Linux. Maybe the alternative desktop market isn't as marginal as people tend to assume..
You are right, when one is using a decent environment. I think you'll agree that a developer needs the ability to install software. For those of us stuck using Windows at work, it's essential to have system-level permissions, since most software just can't be installed in the user account..
Embrace and extend, though that might be part of "Illegally use monopoly power to extend monopoly into new markets."
Just as unfair as when they compare the number of flaws in a Windows distribution (not much software besides the base OS) to the number of flaws in a complete Linux distribution (with thousands of applications).
That project does sound truly heinous, but there's a Perl program called the Demoronizer which can help with those MS-Office -> HTML conversions. Even though it wouldn't help with the formatting issues, it's still a good starting point..