Obvious troll is troll - but two easy solution to this. 1) Just use openid or 2) pay the $50 a year for the cert. This isn't rocket science. If you can't figure this out or not willing to invest $50 into your career; than maybe you shouldn't be a web developer.
Indeed. I don't think I would hire a web developer that couldn't figure out how to get his pet project on the web for a reasonable cost. Dreamhost is like $5 a month. oh noes, such obstacles! Like you said, ads or donations could easily cover that.
This is dumb. Dream host (or many other providers) is less than $5 a month. You're not willing to spend that as an investment for your career? I've invested tens of thousands of dollars in classes, books, training and thousands of hours in study, programming, etc. But "oh noes, $5 is to much"
You only need cert if you handle sensitive data; nothing says you couldn't use openid for login.
Secondly, stand alone apps are free. You can use google code or sourceforge (or one of the other dozen source controls). There are also various blogging and other social networking sites that can be used for low cost/free.
Heck, I could get away with using WordPad almost excursively. Throw in a spell checker and format converter and you meet a lot of people's needs and runs much faster. But you can't bundle and sell that for $200 though:/
Well, if you already have a code base; then theoretically porting it from C# on iPhone to C# on Android would be easier than say Objective C->Fake Java. It opens that market for you without much effort which is "near" free money.
I maintain a few Java apps that run on Win/Linux/Mac. It was pretty easy to port it over to Android. It's nice to be able to target a few extra platforms for cheap.
Linux is only 2% of our user base. We get that for a few extra hours of dev and some QA time from our Java/OpenGL games. We also have some games in C++/DirectX but cost wise it won't make sense to port those over since the users aren't enough to justify spending the dev time to port it (or even wine it).
> Neither. It will be exactly what it already is today, just one of many programming languages.
Yes, but/theoretically/ if I write a game in C#; then/theoretically/ I can run it on:
Windows XBox360 Linux/Mac (mono) iPhone/iPad Android/tablets.
The only big players that are missing are: PS3/Wii "Web Games" (ie. run directly from your browser without an install) - but that can be done with Sliver Light?
Even if it's not the full game; I can share a lot of libraries and code base.
That's a pretty big market. If I write it in "Java" [Android isn' real Java btw]; then at best I get:
Windows Linux/Mac Android/Tablets. Web Games.
What other language can target everything that C# now can? C/C++... maybe... ?
I agree that it's "just one of many programming languages"; but if you want to get a huge market share by targeting multiply platforms from "one" code base, it's a good choice to think about.
> The KA feedback loop -- from developers > students/teachers > developers > and back again -- is as tight as any open source project I've ever seen.
I love Khan, but have to disagree with this. I've submitted dozens of bugs; not only software bugs, but also errors in the math, problems, etc. Some have even included patches or very detailed and tedious benchmarking. None of them even received an auto reply. I did QA for 6 years; so hopefully I can assume they were accurate and useful reports. Even if they weren't, a "stop sending us crap - we don't care" would of been good feedback from developers/Khan. But nothing, not-a.
Also as a student of the site, I've provided feedback on usability and content. Things, like missing topics that are pretty big gaps in the lessons (the main Algebra lessons have huge holes in them). I even went so far to provide very exact details. Again, I didn't hear anything back. No feedback from the feedback I sent. How is that a "tight feedback loops"? At min, I would of either expected "That's a good idea for a lesson, we'll put it on the todo list" or "That really isn't appropriate lesson for the site" or "that topic is already covered in another lesson". Etc. But I've receive NOTHING Back.
A professor is there to teach, not recommend you for jobs.
A college isn't a trade's school. You got there to maximize your education, knowledge and understanding. Not to network or kiss ass to your teachers so they'll get you some crappy internship job.
It's one guy though (Khan that is) but he reaches thousands if not millions.
Your professor may be brilliant, but how many can he hope to reach in the same amount of time? 300 per class, 2 classes per semester and 2 semesters per year? 1.2K? ~2K per year?
Why couldn't your professor post a guest video to Khan or youtube? Lesson titled "Professor XYZ from ABC University on two-tailed vs. one-tailed tests on in relation Political Science considerations"? Do the lesson then you could also have a supplementary "Q&A" video of students asking common questions.
With technology these days he could probably hire a few ungrad film students to record, edit and post it for low or no cost.
Education/knowledge is like art. It doesn't do much good locked away were no one can get at it.
I went to go get a Hair Cut. Yes, a hair cut and they handed me a form on a clip board that wanted:
my name (including last). Phone Number Address Email address
Which is ridiculous to start with; but to top it off they also wanted: Emergency contact (seriously?) Any medical conditions I might suffer from that would impair or need to warn the hair dresser about? (um?) Any family members or friends that might be interested in getting a hair cut. (wtf) and a "short" 2 page survey with questions like "How often do you get your hair cut?"
This wasn't some high end fancy pants place. It was Great Clips or ClipNSave or Cost Cutters, one of the big ones. Hair cuts are normally $20 and I had a 75% off coupon.
I told them "um, I'm not going to fill this out" and the snotty girl behind the counter said "well, I guess your not getting a hair cut here then"
Say money isn't a problem and you have a society of 100 people and 10 of them are scientists.
Great. We'll put them to work as teachers! "Oh wait" the practicing nurses in that society say "we need more medical research!" and society thinks about it and says "yes, medical research is a good use of their time. Let's assign 2 scientists to work on that full time". Great... everything is humming along and then an engineer says "Wait! We need more researchers in our field too or our technology with stagnate! We have also sorts of energy problems that need to be worked out!"
ok, society thinks it over and assigns 1 scientist over to that research. This continues and on and on, but it seems everyone needs research done or scientist in some manner! Some how society has to determine what the best use of their time is (this is usually determined by whom is willing to pay the most! But in this world, remember no money issues).
It's hard to say "just make scientists teachers" because you are taking away from something else. What if Mr. Johnson the 9th grade chemistry teacher was only a year or two away from a break though in medical research that would cure some types of cancers? What if Mr. Smith was on the brink of some amazing energy research that would open the door to deep space exploration (not to mention our own energy problems here at home) - but instead decided to take a better paying and less stressful job teaching 'Intro to Physics" at a highschool instead?
Yes, increasing wages for teachers will increase supply for those jobs - but only to a point - but that money also has other uses. Maybe that money would be better spent on feeding homeless people or researching aids or starting wars (hey, not everyone is going to agree what the best use of any resource is).
> If site sends you your passwords, you should ask them why password hashes are not used.
And get an auto responser to some FAQ that doesn't have anything with what you asked other than it matched 4 out of 5 keywords in your email.
Even if you get a human, the tech support jockey on the end probably A) won't have any clue what your talking about and even if he does B) won't have any power what so ever to change it.
Anti-cheat software doesn't use odds to claim a person is cheating or not. It uses verifiable facts.
Is the player using a modified client? Does he have known cheating programs running? Are the checksums on the packets failing? Is he duping packets? Is his client reporting outside the bounds of known limits (ie. If max player run speed is 13 mph and he is going 40 mph, that is a flag). Are the condition impossible inside the rules (ie. being reported as being in 2 different towns that are miles apart). Are the facts matching up with the servers? (Server has his health at -10; but client is insisting it is at 190 or that he is drinking health potions while he's already dead).
If you have anti-cheat software that is auto kick/banning players cause they get 4 head shots in a row (or whatever); then that is bad anti-cheat software.
> What if he's just a savant (at video games)? Then he'd be exceptional, to the point where it would look, to an observer, like a cheater.
No, not really. Anti-cheat software has never and probably will never work that way.
It checks things that are easily verifiable.
For example; some anti-cheat software will:
- Look for programs running in the background that are known to be used in cheating. That is, if software shows your running "CheatBox.exe -MapHacking" than you might be a cheater
- Also checks checksum of files. Cheats modify files/code to do things not intended. Obviously if the checksum doesn't match what you released and something that is not allowed to change then you might have a cheater on your hands.
- False conditions for achievements. There are known xbox cheats that will get online only achievements while offline. Hrm, I don't know how a savant is so good that he can play with online friends when his internet is down?
- Achievement push. If you get 200 different achievements in the exact same millisecond; that is suspecting no? Also most of these will be false conditions too (see above). How can you be "Flying High", "Running Fast" and "Diving Low" at the same moment in time?
- Logic checks. For example in one of our games you can only get 20 strength max though legit means. In fact, even if there is a bug in one of our items to give you 21 then the client will auto correct it back to 20. Obviously if someone logs into the server and we have a modified packet (checksum doesn't match) saying that their str is 40; well, we probably have a cheater.
- Look for cheats. We had a problem that allowed users to execute certain server commands though the console that would give them unfair advantages. Obviously we fixed it, but we also put logging in to record any cheaters still trying to abuse it.
- Looking for cheats 2. We log a bunch of stuff. We also have an automated server process that parses/processes current and old logs. For example, recently we put in a trigger that'll flag anyone who gains more than X amount of XP in Y time. It'll flag it and an admin will look into it. Gaining 100 xp in 4 seconds. Quote possible. Gaining 200 xp in 2 seconds? Maybe, but very suspect; could be really good. Gaining 400 xp in 1 second? Well, let's look into it. Ok, this player some how got 2 different quests at the same time from different NPCs that are in different towns even though he didn't meet the quest requirements. HRM.
- Action checking. If the max theoretical speed a character can run is 17 mph in your game and you have someone running 40; then you might have a cheater. No matter how good that kid is, he can't be running faster than 17 mph unless he has 1) Found a bug 2) Exploiting a bug 3) Using a cheat 4) Problems in recording speed.
It depends on their anti-cheat software. If their software shows that "HackBot2020.exe -CheatALot -EnableMassiveHacking -CheatsEnabled -CheatSomeMore -PrefectTeaBagging" running and matches checksum of known cheater software; than that is probably proof enough for most folks.
> 'If you have to make significant, identical changes to a bunch of Linux servers, is it easier to log into them one-by-one and run through a GUI or text-menu tool, or write a quick shell script that hits each box and either makes the changes or simply pulls down a few new config files and restarts some services? And it's not just about conservation of effort -- it's also about accuracy. If you write a script, you're certain that the changes made will be identical on each box. If you're doing them all by hand, you aren't.'"
If you are using a bad GUI tool. Nothing says you can't have one GUI that connects to all servers and has a mutlti list select. Select the ones you want, run the command. It'll be the same command across all servers. That doesn't mean shell script is better, it means you suck at writing GUI interfaces. Anything you can do in shell scripting you can do in a system language.
Instead of a ssh script that logs into each server, you can create a GUI program that logs into each server the exact same way.
I'm the other way. Every time I load up Witcher, Oblivion or Dragon Age I say to myself "this would be so much better if it had multiplayer". Specially co-op.
What year are you living in?
Most companies these days will properly dispose of their electronics. Gone are the days of throw CRTs in the trash.
The other day I fixed my grandma's computer and even see said "how do I get rid of this broken modem? They say you are suppose to put electronics in the trash any more"
But I agree, you can get old electronics for free, including access points. Just not though dumpsters.
Totally agree here. Most any pre-packaged system comes with at least 80 gig hdd. Does grandma really need 80 gigs to check her email and check the weather?
It's just so they can put it in their sale material. 500 Gigs of disk space! Over 3 GHZ of Processor!
Slashdot Mirror
My point still stands. $13 a month is to much to invest into your career? Seems like a weak excuse.
Obvious troll is troll - but two easy solution to this. 1) Just use openid or 2) pay the $50 a year for the cert. This isn't rocket science. If you can't figure this out or not willing to invest $50 into your career; than maybe you shouldn't be a web developer.
Indeed. I don't think I would hire a web developer that couldn't figure out how to get his pet project on the web for a reasonable cost. Dreamhost is like $5 a month. oh noes, such obstacles! Like you said, ads or donations could easily cover that.
This is dumb. Dream host (or many other providers) is less than $5 a month. You're not willing to spend that as an investment for your career? I've invested tens of thousands of dollars in classes, books, training and thousands of hours in study, programming, etc. But "oh noes, $5 is to much"
You only need cert if you handle sensitive data; nothing says you couldn't use openid for login.
Secondly, stand alone apps are free. You can use google code or sourceforge (or one of the other dozen source controls). There are also various blogging and other social networking sites that can be used for low cost/free.
99% of the feature the "common man" uses.
Heck, I could get away with using WordPad almost excursively. :/
Throw in a spell checker and format converter and you meet a lot of people's needs and runs much faster.
But you can't bundle and sell that for $200 though
Well, if you already have a code base; then theoretically porting it from C# on iPhone to C# on Android would be easier than say Objective C->Fake Java. It opens that market for you without much effort which is "near" free money.
I maintain a few Java apps that run on Win/Linux/Mac. It was pretty easy to port it over to Android. It's nice to be able to target a few extra platforms for cheap.
Linux is only 2% of our user base. We get that for a few extra hours of dev and some QA time from our Java/OpenGL games. We also have some games in C++/DirectX but cost wise it won't make sense to port those over since the users aren't enough to justify spending the dev time to port it (or even wine it).
oh, not that anyone cares; but C# also works on Windows 7 phones (but it's much smaller than the android & iphone markets).
> Neither. It will be exactly what it already is today, just one of many programming languages.
Yes, but /theoretically/ if I write a game in C#; then /theoretically/ I can run it on:
Windows
XBox360
Linux/Mac (mono)
iPhone/iPad
Android/tablets.
The only big players that are missing are:
PS3/Wii
"Web Games" (ie. run directly from your browser without an install) - but that can be done with Sliver Light?
Even if it's not the full game; I can share a lot of libraries and code base.
That's a pretty big market. If I write it in "Java" [Android isn' real Java btw]; then at best I get:
Windows
Linux/Mac
Android/Tablets.
Web Games.
What other language can target everything that C# now can? C/C++ ... maybe... ?
I agree that it's "just one of many programming languages"; but if you want to get a huge market share by targeting multiply platforms from "one" code base, it's a good choice to think about.
> The KA feedback loop -- from developers > students/teachers > developers > and back again -- is as tight as any open source project I've ever seen.
I love Khan, but have to disagree with this. I've submitted dozens of bugs; not only software bugs, but also errors in the math, problems, etc. Some have even included patches or very detailed and tedious benchmarking. None of them even received an auto reply. I did QA for 6 years; so hopefully I can assume they were accurate and useful reports. Even if they weren't, a "stop sending us crap - we don't care" would of been good feedback from developers/Khan. But nothing, not-a.
Also as a student of the site, I've provided feedback on usability and content. Things, like missing topics that are pretty big gaps in the lessons (the main Algebra lessons have huge holes in them). I even went so far to provide very exact details. Again, I didn't hear anything back. No feedback from the feedback I sent. How is that a "tight feedback loops"? At min, I would of either expected "That's a good idea for a lesson, we'll put it on the todo list" or "That really isn't appropriate lesson for the site" or "that topic is already covered in another lesson". Etc. But I've receive NOTHING Back.
A professor is there to teach, not recommend you for jobs.
A college isn't a trade's school. You got there to maximize your education, knowledge and understanding. Not to network or kiss ass to your teachers so they'll get you some crappy internship job.
It's one guy though (Khan that is) but he reaches thousands if not millions.
Your professor may be brilliant, but how many can he hope to reach in the same amount of time? 300 per class, 2 classes per semester and 2 semesters per year? 1.2K? ~2K per year?
Why couldn't your professor post a guest video to Khan or youtube? Lesson titled "Professor XYZ from ABC University on two-tailed vs. one-tailed tests on in relation Political Science considerations"? Do the lesson then you could also have a supplementary "Q&A" video of students asking common questions.
With technology these days he could probably hire a few ungrad film students to record, edit and post it for low or no cost.
Education/knowledge is like art. It doesn't do much good locked away were no one can get at it.
I went to go get a Hair Cut. Yes, a hair cut and they handed me a form on a clip board that wanted:
my name (including last).
Phone Number
Address
Email address
Which is ridiculous to start with; but to top it off they also wanted:
Emergency contact (seriously?)
Any medical conditions I might suffer from that would impair or need to warn the hair dresser about? (um?)
Any family members or friends that might be interested in getting a hair cut. (wtf)
and a "short" 2 page survey with questions like "How often do you get your hair cut?"
This wasn't some high end fancy pants place. It was Great Clips or ClipNSave or Cost Cutters, one of the big ones. Hair cuts are normally $20 and I had a 75% off coupon.
I told them "um, I'm not going to fill this out" and the snotty girl behind the counter said "well, I guess your not getting a hair cut here then"
I agreed. Fuck everything about that.
That ignores some real economics of it.
Say money isn't a problem and you have a society of 100 people and 10 of them are scientists.
Great. We'll put them to work as teachers! "Oh wait" the practicing nurses in that society say "we need more medical research!" and society thinks about it and says "yes, medical research is a good use of their time. Let's assign 2 scientists to work on that full time". Great... everything is humming along and then an engineer says "Wait! We need more researchers in our field too or our technology with stagnate! We have also sorts of energy problems that need to be worked out!"
ok, society thinks it over and assigns 1 scientist over to that research. This continues and on and on, but it seems everyone needs research done or scientist in some manner! Some how society has to determine what the best use of their time is (this is usually determined by whom is willing to pay the most! But in this world, remember no money issues).
It's hard to say "just make scientists teachers" because you are taking away from something else. What if Mr. Johnson the 9th grade chemistry teacher was only a year or two away from a break though in medical research that would cure some types of cancers? What if Mr. Smith was on the brink of some amazing energy research that would open the door to deep space exploration (not to mention our own energy problems here at home) - but instead decided to take a better paying and less stressful job teaching 'Intro to Physics" at a highschool instead?
Yes, increasing wages for teachers will increase supply for those jobs - but only to a point - but that money also has other uses. Maybe that money would be better spent on feeding homeless people or researching aids or starting wars (hey, not everyone is going to agree what the best use of any resource is).
> If site sends you your passwords, you should ask them why password hashes are not used.
And get an auto responser to some FAQ that doesn't have anything with what you asked other than it matched 4 out of 5 keywords in your email.
Even if you get a human, the tech support jockey on the end probably A) won't have any clue what your talking about and even if he does B) won't have any power what so ever to change it.
Anti-cheat software doesn't use odds to claim a person is cheating or not. It uses verifiable facts.
Is the player using a modified client? Does he have known cheating programs running? Are the checksums on the packets failing? Is he duping packets? Is his client reporting outside the bounds of known limits (ie. If max player run speed is 13 mph and he is going 40 mph, that is a flag). Are the condition impossible inside the rules (ie. being reported as being in 2 different towns that are miles apart). Are the facts matching up with the servers? (Server has his health at -10; but client is insisting it is at 190 or that he is drinking health potions while he's already dead).
If you have anti-cheat software that is auto kick/banning players cause they get 4 head shots in a row (or whatever); then that is bad anti-cheat software.
> What if he's just a savant (at video games)? Then he'd be exceptional, to the point where it would look, to an observer, like a cheater.
No, not really. Anti-cheat software has never and probably will never work that way.
It checks things that are easily verifiable.
For example; some anti-cheat software will:
- Look for programs running in the background that are known to be used in cheating. That is, if software shows your running "CheatBox.exe -MapHacking" than you might be a cheater
- Also checks checksum of files. Cheats modify files/code to do things not intended. Obviously if the checksum doesn't match what you released and something that is not allowed to change then you might have a cheater on your hands.
- False conditions for achievements. There are known xbox cheats that will get online only achievements while offline. Hrm, I don't know how a savant is so good that he can play with online friends when his internet is down?
- Achievement push. If you get 200 different achievements in the exact same millisecond; that is suspecting no? Also most of these will be false conditions too (see above). How can you be "Flying High", "Running Fast" and "Diving Low" at the same moment in time?
- Logic checks. For example in one of our games you can only get 20 strength max though legit means. In fact, even if there is a bug in one of our items to give you 21 then the client will auto correct it back to 20. Obviously if someone logs into the server and we have a modified packet (checksum doesn't match) saying that their str is 40; well, we probably have a cheater.
- Look for cheats. We had a problem that allowed users to execute certain server commands though the console that would give them unfair advantages. Obviously we fixed it, but we also put logging in to record any cheaters still trying to abuse it.
- Looking for cheats 2. We log a bunch of stuff. We also have an automated server process that parses/processes current and old logs. For example, recently we put in a trigger that'll flag anyone who gains more than X amount of XP in Y time. It'll flag it and an admin will look into it. Gaining 100 xp in 4 seconds. Quote possible. Gaining 200 xp in 2 seconds? Maybe, but very suspect; could be really good. Gaining 400 xp in 1 second? Well, let's look into it. Ok, this player some how got 2 different quests at the same time from different NPCs that are in different towns even though he didn't meet the quest requirements. HRM.
- Action checking. If the max theoretical speed a character can run is 17 mph in your game and you have someone running 40; then you might have a cheater. No matter how good that kid is, he can't be running faster than 17 mph unless he has 1) Found a bug 2) Exploiting a bug 3) Using a cheat 4) Problems in recording speed.
It depends on their anti-cheat software. If their software shows that "HackBot2020.exe -CheatALot -EnableMassiveHacking -CheatsEnabled -CheatSomeMore -PrefectTeaBagging" running and matches checksum of known cheater software; than that is probably proof enough for most folks.
Today on Slashdot; Microsoft releases all details of all cheaters on XBOX Live. Is Microsoft evil as Satan or just Hilter?
Citiain?
> 70 credits paid full-time, actually above the tuition level, plus health insurance, you can pocket the difference.
I live in the USA and never heard of this. Google doesn't turn up much expect Georgia lottery and even that is having problems:
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/07/hope-fades-on-georgias-free-college-tuition-program/
> 'If you have to make significant, identical changes to a bunch of Linux servers, is it easier to log into them one-by-one and run through a GUI or text-menu tool, or write a quick shell script that hits each box and either makes the changes or simply pulls down a few new config files and restarts some services? And it's not just about conservation of effort -- it's also about accuracy. If you write a script, you're certain that the changes made will be identical on each box. If you're doing them all by hand, you aren't.'" If you are using a bad GUI tool. Nothing says you can't have one GUI that connects to all servers and has a mutlti list select. Select the ones you want, run the command. It'll be the same command across all servers. That doesn't mean shell script is better, it means you suck at writing GUI interfaces. Anything you can do in shell scripting you can do in a system language.
Instead of a ssh script that logs into each server, you can create a GUI program that logs into each server the exact same way.
I'm the other way. Every time I load up Witcher, Oblivion or Dragon Age I say to myself "this would be so much better if it had multiplayer". Specially co-op.
> Yes; but that doesn't mean he knows anything about computers.
Yea, I mean... who would expect the CEO of a large computer company to know anything about computers. PFft.
What year are you living in? Most companies these days will properly dispose of their electronics. Gone are the days of throw CRTs in the trash. The other day I fixed my grandma's computer and even see said "how do I get rid of this broken modem? They say you are suppose to put electronics in the trash any more" But I agree, you can get old electronics for free, including access points. Just not though dumpsters.
Totally agree here. Most any pre-packaged system comes with at least 80 gig hdd. Does grandma really need 80 gigs to check her email and check the weather?
It's just so they can put it in their sale material. 500 Gigs of disk space! Over 3 GHZ of Processor!