Oh, I agree, every product that's ever shipped has shipped with bugs.
But you gotta put this all in perspective, some glib talk about how everyone is equal in the eyes of bugs just doesn't apply here.
First off, the context. We're talking about a database, your warehouse for your most valuable asset. This is not a place where you want to encounter mistakes, and caution is the word. You might hear excuses for some, but those people are idiots. This is/inexcusable/.
If you read the article, the things he says basically boil down to "this product is as stable as a house of cards and if you use it, treat it with all the care and caution you'd give a newborn child." I'd love to pick an excerpt from the article and copy it here, but it's just TOO RICH. Every single thing this "Monty" says would make your average MySQL apologist cringe, and makes normal people and DBAs stomachs turn.
Honestly, I think I'm gunna be sick. I don't care if MySQL is a good product or a bad product as such, I only use it for stupid things that do not matter at home, like my MythTV, never ever on anything that could be called "production." But having read this article and gotten a picture of what is, evidently, the thoughts of the minds supporting the creation and use of MySQL, it makes me ill. These people should just come out and say "there's no explanation we can give, this is crapware and we're really sorry if you got hosed by it. Don't use it at all if you aren't already." Instead this guy bends over backwards to explain how this broken database is actually quite useable, and ready for "general production" - how that's different from just "production" is clear: apparently "general production" refers to systems with zero value (less than my MythTV box, which will NOT be getting an update to this version).
Obviously 5.1 is not a perfect release. Quality is critically important to a database and I hope MySQL/Sun takes note of Montyâ(TM)s concerns,... However in my opinion MySQL 5.1 a very good release, long ready for general production usage.
You call THAT a rebuttal? My goodness... it no wonder MySQL sucks if he can admit on the one hand it's bugridden (not in those words, sure) and then say at the same time, it's ready for general production usage. What the hell does that mean?! It just makes me ANGRY to think people like this are DBAs! Does he mean to suggest your "general production usage" server is OK with lost rows and table corruption... if the chances of it happening are rare enough? Does he mean to suggest "general production usage" is a separate category from "people who use the advertised features of the product?" Seriously.... arrrrgh..... I think I'm having a stroke, I need to go take a valium or something.
I did not know that, and it is much more interesting than the article, but wouldn't 0,0,0 be the "center" of a cartesian system, and 0,0,1 be one unit off-center? What's with/that/ is what I'd like to know. It still means the previously-unknown Earth is at a pretty suspicious-looking place, but I'd sure like to see what's at 0,0,0.
No one seems to be looking at this from the opposite angle.
If I'm writing malware that's going to need to exploit Windows, this gives me an easy chart of which exploit I should pick -- the ones with the lowest patch priority, of course.
I gotta agree, the game is excellent and does force a certain scavenging mentality on you.
That said... you're probably not doin' it quite right; at level 20 I/am/ the biggest, baddest-assed thing in the wasteland, without a doubt. And even if I have a hard time finding plasma pistols to repair mine with, there's a way (no spilers!) to get a merchant to 75 repair skill, which makes repairing stuff that's unique or hard to find/way/ easier to cope with. And once you're set up with enough ammo to always use your favorite gun, all the rest of the ammo in the world is WEIGHTLESS barter fodder. It's all I scavenge for trade anymore.
I work for a living desinging systems that process checks and credit cards. I couldn't agree with you more; the aging bank standards are absoluely ridiculous in terms of security.
What I don't see anyone pointing out (and what poor Knuth apparently doesn't know) is that these shortcomings have been somewhat mitigated in the rules for processors and merchants and banks. It's not a great solution, it's not even a good solution, but it's hardly the END OF THE WORLD that people seem to be claiming.
You are probably all familiar with the fact that you have a maximum fraud liability on your credit card of $50, and in practice, you'll never be charged anything, not a penny, if someone uses your credit card for fraud. Simply call your bank, explain the situation, and they will issue chargebacks for any charged you did not authorize. You will in the chargebacks, and your money will be returned and you will not be one penny the poorer. (The merchant who accepted the credit card, on the other hand, gets royally screwed, but that's another story.)
Well, the same is not true of written checks; you probably know you need to issue a 'stop payment' and your bank will likely charge you for that. But written checks aren't what people are freaking out about here, and do take quite a bit of effort to forge successfully (a lot less than cash, but still)... we're talking about ACH payment made through the NACHA system. i.e. "Electronic Checks." And there are very strict rules in place from the NACHA, you can order the book online if you feel like wasting a weekend reading the boringest stuff ever.
The important part is this: You can dispute an ACH transaction just like you can a credit card transaction. Anyone who processes "electronic checks" is/required/ to allow up to 60 days for the customer to dispute a fradulent ACH charge. And if you/do/ call in to dispute it, beleive me, it's going to work out the exact same way as the online credit card purchase; you will get your money back and be no poorer (and the merchant will get fucked again!).
So... everybody don't panic. yes, the systems are horrible. No, they aren't changing around here anytime soon; all efforts are stupid or doomed to fail (e.g. VERIFIED BY VISA which is both). But the bottom line is, your money is safe. A simple call to your bank/will/ solve any problems with people making fraudulent electronic charges to your credit card or checking account. I guarantee it. If your bank gives you ANY hint of a problem with a chargeback drop them like a hot potato and go to a better bank. But they won't; I've never run into a situation where you as a consumer is going to have the slightest bit of trouble.
If you're the merchant, on the other hand, you are well and truly fucked. Heh.
Just to be clear, you don't really lose out much by saving them, IIRC you just get most of that Adam you missed out on later in the game when you get to the 'little girl lair' - can't remember what it was called now, where all the ones you saved are hanging about.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but an Earth-like planet couldn't have come about much sooner, since we need so many elements that we can only get from old burned-out stars. There's gotta be a lot of cycles before there's enough material further up the atomic chart to make an interesting planet.
Let me add something, since the OP did mention his personal projects.
It's possible you just suck. Yes, your projects may compile and run, and do what you want, and your experience in school may have left you feeling like the head of your class. It's still possible to be bad at what you do.
That's not saying you are inevitably going to be a shitty programmer your whole life. Really, really being good at what you are doing takes a lot of effort.
Anecdotally, my first real programming job interview was with Jellyvision, who were making the (at the time) totally popular game "You Don't Know Jack." I had a long interview with their hiring people and they loved me. I came back the next day and spent all day interviewing with their programmers and design teams and hanging out at the office, which was pretty nice. They all thought I was great. Then I came back in for a third day; the third day I was to bring in a CD of my own code, explain it all, and participate in a code review of what I'd written. They never talked to me again after that, and I know why -- my code SUCKED. I mean, really, really bad. I found some of it on an old disk a year ago and was/horrified./
I'm better now. I'm not great, but I'm way better.
Personally, I wouldn't hire you either - you have no experience.
"How can I get experience if no one will hire me?"
Well, you have an/excellent/ choice of career paths in computers, because you don't need a benevolent company to hire you in order to get experience. In fact, in my own hiring, it's the experience that happens/outside/ of a "job" that makes the most difference. If you really want to succeed, do something. If you are trying to be a programmer, write that project you've been wanting to do; don't wait. Once you have it written, that goes on your resume. I wrote a/HORRIBLE/ stupid graphing calculator for Windows CE and started selling it, and that is absolutely what got me hired as a coder. Don't have the werewithal to make a whole project? Contribute to existing open-source packages, and reap the same benefits.
Or maybe you're looking to become a network engineer instead of a programmer. Set up your own virtual cluster of machines running under KVM, make it do fun things, show off your ability to create a secure environment, and put it on your resume as experience. Even better, when they ask you about it, you can offer them a copy of the entire setup on a DVD, with all the virtual machines...
Either one of those scenarios would get you hired by me, regardless of the rest of your resume -- not only does it show definitively you can do what you want to do... far more important is the fact that it demonstrates you love doing this stuff; you love it enough to do it on your own. That is key.
You're lucky - you've got a field where the cost of doing it "in your garage" is absolutely minimal.
Call center experience/is/ good experience, in my personal opinion. I had early jobs at call centers. I still value that experience as a developer, because it helps me remember that people are idiots who will mess things up if you give them the slightest opportunity. This is critical to keep in mind when developing anything. But it's no substitute for actual experience in programming. I think you can sell your experience in call centers to someone who will hire you to do other things, but you'd best have some additional selling points, because while that experience has some value, it's not a hiring-value.
This is absolutely true - when I was younger and the Commodore-64 was just going out of style in favor of things like console games, or even "IBM-PC" games, I swore a solemn oath that when I grew up and became a real videogame programmer, all my games would support the Commodore 64.
I grew up to write financial software instead... and it all runs on the Commodore-64!
Did Groklaw really have an impact on those court cases? Naaah.
I love Groklaw as much as the next guy, but this article is truly worthless; it just reads as worthless praise for groklaw without even so much as a particular.
I'd like to second this. I actually play several games that are on 5 1/4" floppies - or were at some point in my distant past. Wasteland is probably the best example. You can still get images of many old games at Home of the Underdogs.
It's worth adding, in the context of the discussion, that many of these old games had DRM and require cracking to play properly. Wasteland is no exception. In fact like many of the games of the era it is essentially unplayable without the associated knicknacks that were in the box (in this case, a book with most of the text from the game printed in it; the game would refer you to a particular section to read at the appropriate time -- the book is also available on the site I mentioned).
I miss getting fun loot in videogames. I think my favorite was the stuff in Infocom games; one of my friends still has the Joo-Janta Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses from the HHGTTG game, and I remember one of my favorites was the glow-in-the-dark rock from "Wishbringer." Now if you want swag in your game box you usually have to shell out close to $100 for the "Collector's Edition" in a lunchbox...
This may be true in some circumstances, but generally it is not true. They pay a percentage of the transaction amount for debit and for credit, but the percentage is/way/ lower for debit.
I think I get your point, but your analogy is terrible.
To clue you in:
* ATMs are pretty much universally programmed just like you said; to take a little extra money and put it into the owner's account. This is called a "SURCHARGE AMOUNT" and is a part of the pin-based debit protocols specifications.
* No ATM programmer could put in a hack like you said, because the amounts involved are checked and verified in several other places; importantly, on the bank's own servers.
Protip: He never describes a 'craft' or uses that word.
You need to start listening and stop just hearing whatever you want to hear. You UFO nutters are all alike.
Buzz Aldrin is not some bloke you meet in the pub. He's been to the moon. These astronauts are exceptional individuals, they are the cream of the cream of the crop. His admissions are difficult to discount as incredible. The same goes for the new admissions by this astronaut.
"This Astronaut" has been a total nutcase since day 1. Nothing about being an astronaut means you can't also be a nutter. Remember that chick with the diapers and the revenge case? Yeah, she was also an astronaut.
Buzz is a different case; a smart guy I've/never/ heard say a single stupid or unmeasured word. You take his tact as an indication that there is something more for him to say. You are wrong; his tact is intended to keep idiots like you from jumping all over everything he says. Fat lot of good it did him.
I hope you get a chance to meet him in person. I suggest you ask him to swear on the Bible that he saw alien craft. Or didn't, either way, the outcome will be fun for me.
By the way, you're not as skeptical as the next guy, obviously, when I'm the next guy and you think the astronauts have encountered little green men.
I had something like what you describe happen to me. I was at a job once where an Exchange server crashed, and I'll readily admit I don't know Exchange too well. Fortunately, another guy there did -- but the short story is, while I was fishing around for possible solutions, I opened the Exchange mail database file to see how it was formatted. The first data in the file was an e-mail between the CEO and my boss that I certainly should not have seen, but it was short and seeing it was equivalent to reading it.
In retrospect, it makes sense the first thing in the file would be something important; likely it was kept longer than other old emails and thusly ended up as the first item in there.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, a sarcasm detector. That's a /real/ useful device.
Oh, I agree, every product that's ever shipped has shipped with bugs.
But you gotta put this all in perspective, some glib talk about how everyone is equal in the eyes of bugs just doesn't apply here.
First off, the context. We're talking about a database, your warehouse for your most valuable asset. This is not a place where you want to encounter mistakes, and caution is the word. You might hear excuses for some, but those people are idiots. This is /inexcusable/.
If you read the article, the things he says basically boil down to "this product is as stable as a house of cards and if you use it, treat it with all the care and caution you'd give a newborn child." I'd love to pick an excerpt from the article and copy it here, but it's just TOO RICH. Every single thing this "Monty" says would make your average MySQL apologist cringe, and makes normal people and DBAs stomachs turn.
Honestly, I think I'm gunna be sick. I don't care if MySQL is a good product or a bad product as such, I only use it for stupid things that do not matter at home, like my MythTV, never ever on anything that could be called "production." But having read this article and gotten a picture of what is, evidently, the thoughts of the minds supporting the creation and use of MySQL, it makes me ill. These people should just come out and say "there's no explanation we can give, this is crapware and we're really sorry if you got hosed by it. Don't use it at all if you aren't already." Instead this guy bends over backwards to explain how this broken database is actually quite useable, and ready for "general production" - how that's different from just "production" is clear: apparently "general production" refers to systems with zero value (less than my MythTV box, which will NOT be getting an update to this version).
Obviously 5.1 is not a perfect release. Quality is critically important to a database and I hope MySQL/Sun takes note of Montyâ(TM)s concerns, ...
However in my opinion MySQL 5.1 a very good release, long ready for general production usage.
You call THAT a rebuttal? My goodness... it no wonder MySQL sucks if he can admit on the one hand it's bugridden (not in those words, sure) and then say at the same time, it's ready for general production usage. What the hell does that mean?! It just makes me ANGRY to think people like this are DBAs! Does he mean to suggest your "general production usage" server is OK with lost rows and table corruption... if the chances of it happening are rare enough? Does he mean to suggest "general production usage" is a separate category from "people who use the advertised features of the product?" Seriously.... arrrrgh..... I think I'm having a stroke, I need to go take a valium or something.
I did not know that, and it is much more interesting than the article, but wouldn't 0,0,0 be the "center" of a cartesian system, and 0,0,1 be one unit off-center? What's with /that/ is what I'd like to know. It still means the previously-unknown Earth is at a pretty suspicious-looking place, but I'd sure like to see what's at 0,0,0.
No one seems to be looking at this from the opposite angle.
If I'm writing malware that's going to need to exploit Windows, this gives me an easy chart of which exploit I should pick -- the ones with the lowest patch priority, of course.
No one Reads the Fucking Article, I know - but hey... it specifically says she's not. So +1 for the joke, -1 for obviously not reading.
I gotta agree, the game is excellent and does force a certain scavenging mentality on you.
That said... you're probably not doin' it quite right; at level 20 I /am/ the biggest, baddest-assed thing in the wasteland, without a doubt. And even if I have a hard time finding plasma pistols to repair mine with, there's a way (no spilers!) to get a merchant to 75 repair skill, which makes repairing stuff that's unique or hard to find /way/ easier to cope with. And once you're set up with enough ammo to always use your favorite gun, all the rest of the ammo in the world is WEIGHTLESS barter fodder. It's all I scavenge for trade anymore.
I work for a living desinging systems that process checks and credit cards. I couldn't agree with you more; the aging bank standards are absoluely ridiculous in terms of security.
What I don't see anyone pointing out (and what poor Knuth apparently doesn't know) is that these shortcomings have been somewhat mitigated in the rules for processors and merchants and banks. It's not a great solution, it's not even a good solution, but it's hardly the END OF THE WORLD that people seem to be claiming.
You are probably all familiar with the fact that you have a maximum fraud liability on your credit card of $50, and in practice, you'll never be charged anything, not a penny, if someone uses your credit card for fraud. Simply call your bank, explain the situation, and they will issue chargebacks for any charged you did not authorize. You will in the chargebacks, and your money will be returned and you will not be one penny the poorer. (The merchant who accepted the credit card, on the other hand, gets royally screwed, but that's another story.)
Well, the same is not true of written checks; you probably know you need to issue a 'stop payment' and your bank will likely charge you for that. But written checks aren't what people are freaking out about here, and do take quite a bit of effort to forge successfully (a lot less than cash, but still)... we're talking about ACH payment made through the NACHA system. i.e. "Electronic Checks." And there are very strict rules in place from the NACHA, you can order the book online if you feel like wasting a weekend reading the boringest stuff ever.
The important part is this: You can dispute an ACH transaction just like you can a credit card transaction. Anyone who processes "electronic checks" is /required/ to allow up to 60 days for the customer to dispute a fradulent ACH charge. And if you /do/ call in to dispute it, beleive me, it's going to work out the exact same way as the online credit card purchase; you will get your money back and be no poorer (and the merchant will get fucked again!).
So... everybody don't panic. yes, the systems are horrible. No, they aren't changing around here anytime soon; all efforts are stupid or doomed to fail (e.g. VERIFIED BY VISA which is both). But the bottom line is, your money is safe. A simple call to your bank /will/ solve any problems with people making fraudulent electronic charges to your credit card or checking account. I guarantee it. If your bank gives you ANY hint of a problem with a chargeback drop them like a hot potato and go to a better bank. But they won't; I've never run into a situation where you as a consumer is going to have the slightest bit of trouble.
If you're the merchant, on the other hand, you are well and truly fucked. Heh.
Hahaha, your post cracked me up.
Just to be clear, you don't really lose out much by saving them, IIRC you just get most of that Adam you missed out on later in the game when you get to the 'little girl lair' - can't remember what it was called now, where all the ones you saved are hanging about.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but an Earth-like planet couldn't have come about much sooner, since we need so many elements that we can only get from old burned-out stars. There's gotta be a lot of cycles before there's enough material further up the atomic chart to make an interesting planet.
Let me add something, since the OP did mention his personal projects.
It's possible you just suck. Yes, your projects may compile and run, and do what you want, and your experience in school may have left you feeling like the head of your class. It's still possible to be bad at what you do.
That's not saying you are inevitably going to be a shitty programmer your whole life. Really, really being good at what you are doing takes a lot of effort.
Anecdotally, my first real programming job interview was with Jellyvision, who were making the (at the time) totally popular game "You Don't Know Jack." I had a long interview with their hiring people and they loved me. I came back the next day and spent all day interviewing with their programmers and design teams and hanging out at the office, which was pretty nice. They all thought I was great. Then I came back in for a third day; the third day I was to bring in a CD of my own code, explain it all, and participate in a code review of what I'd written. They never talked to me again after that, and I know why -- my code SUCKED. I mean, really, really bad. I found some of it on an old disk a year ago and was /horrified./
I'm better now. I'm not great, but I'm way better.
Personally, I wouldn't hire you either - you have no experience.
"How can I get experience if no one will hire me?"
Well, you have an /excellent/ choice of career paths in computers, because you don't need a benevolent company to hire you in order to get experience. In fact, in my own hiring, it's the experience that happens /outside/ of a "job" that makes the most difference. If you really want to succeed, do something. If you are trying to be a programmer, write that project you've been wanting to do; don't wait. Once you have it written, that goes on your resume. I wrote a /HORRIBLE/ stupid graphing calculator for Windows CE and started selling it, and that is absolutely what got me hired as a coder. Don't have the werewithal to make a whole project? Contribute to existing open-source packages, and reap the same benefits.
Or maybe you're looking to become a network engineer instead of a programmer. Set up your own virtual cluster of machines running under KVM, make it do fun things, show off your ability to create a secure environment, and put it on your resume as experience. Even better, when they ask you about it, you can offer them a copy of the entire setup on a DVD, with all the virtual machines...
Either one of those scenarios would get you hired by me, regardless of the rest of your resume -- not only does it show definitively you can do what you want to do... far more important is the fact that it demonstrates you love doing this stuff; you love it enough to do it on your own. That is key.
You're lucky - you've got a field where the cost of doing it "in your garage" is absolutely minimal.
Call center experience /is/ good experience, in my personal opinion. I had early jobs at call centers. I still value that experience as a developer, because it helps me remember that people are idiots who will mess things up if you give them the slightest opportunity. This is critical to keep in mind when developing anything. But it's no substitute for actual experience in programming. I think you can sell your experience in call centers to someone who will hire you to do other things, but you'd best have some additional selling points, because while that experience has some value, it's not a hiring-value.
I don't know the proper place to respond to your .sigline, so I'll just do it here and hope someone notices. STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM LANDMARK.
http://skepdic.com/landmark.html
These people will not leave me alone since I made the mistake of accidentally acting interested in their bullshit.
This is absolutely true - when I was younger and the Commodore-64 was just going out of style in favor of things like console games, or even "IBM-PC" games, I swore a solemn oath that when I grew up and became a real videogame programmer, all my games would support the Commodore 64.
I grew up to write financial software instead... and it all runs on the Commodore-64!
Ok, no, that last part is a lie.
From the article:
Did Groklaw really have an impact on those court cases? Naaah.
I love Groklaw as much as the next guy, but this article is truly worthless; it just reads as worthless praise for groklaw without even so much as a particular.
I'd like to second this. I actually play several games that are on 5 1/4" floppies - or were at some point in my distant past. Wasteland is probably the best example. You can still get images of many old games at Home of the Underdogs.
It's worth adding, in the context of the discussion, that many of these old games had DRM and require cracking to play properly. Wasteland is no exception. In fact like many of the games of the era it is essentially unplayable without the associated knicknacks that were in the box (in this case, a book with most of the text from the game printed in it; the game would refer you to a particular section to read at the appropriate time -- the book is also available on the site I mentioned).
I miss getting fun loot in videogames. I think my favorite was the stuff in Infocom games; one of my friends still has the Joo-Janta Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses from the HHGTTG game, and I remember one of my favorites was the glow-in-the-dark rock from "Wishbringer." Now if you want swag in your game box you usually have to shell out close to $100 for the "Collector's Edition" in a lunchbox...
I mean, how many times do you have to hear the exact same story from how many different people before you admit it's the truth?
You've obviously never been to a UFO-believers convention. Or talked to a religious person.
This may be true in some circumstances, but generally it is not true. They pay a percentage of the transaction amount for debit and for credit, but the percentage is /way/ lower for debit.
I think I get your point, but your analogy is terrible.
To clue you in:
* ATMs are pretty much universally programmed just like you said; to take a little extra money and put it into the owner's account. This is called a "SURCHARGE AMOUNT" and is a part of the pin-based debit protocols specifications.
* No ATM programmer could put in a hack like you said, because the amounts involved are checked and verified in several other places; importantly, on the bank's own servers.
Protip: He never describes a 'craft' or uses that word.
You need to start listening and stop just hearing whatever you want to hear. You UFO nutters are all alike.
Buzz Aldrin is not some bloke you meet in the pub. He's been to the moon. These astronauts are exceptional individuals, they are the cream of the cream of the crop. His admissions are difficult to discount as incredible. The same goes for the new admissions by this astronaut.
"This Astronaut" has been a total nutcase since day 1. Nothing about being an astronaut means you can't also be a nutter. Remember that chick with the diapers and the revenge case? Yeah, she was also an astronaut.
Buzz is a different case; a smart guy I've /never/ heard say a single stupid or unmeasured word. You take his tact as an indication that there is something more for him to say. You are wrong; his tact is intended to keep idiots like you from jumping all over everything he says. Fat lot of good it did him.
I hope you get a chance to meet him in person. I suggest you ask him to swear on the Bible that he saw alien craft. Or didn't, either way, the outcome will be fun for me.
By the way, you're not as skeptical as the next guy, obviously, when I'm the next guy and you think the astronauts have encountered little green men.
Funny, /he/ never describes them that way.
Buzz Aldrin never made any such claims.
You know what, nevermind that. I suggest you go ask Buzz himself. I know how it'll end; he'll clock you one just like the Moon Hoax idiot.
I pay $9.95 a month for a VPS, and that gets me /two/ IP addresses /with/ proper reverse DNS.
FEAR MY CORPORATE POWER!
That must've been a hacker who got onto my computer who was searching for "bunny", "kitties", "puppies" and "babies".
Don't be embarassed. I use google to find dinner also.
I had something like what you describe happen to me. I was at a job once where an Exchange server crashed, and I'll readily admit I don't know Exchange too well. Fortunately, another guy there did -- but the short story is, while I was fishing around for possible solutions, I opened the Exchange mail database file to see how it was formatted. The first data in the file was an e-mail between the CEO and my boss that I certainly should not have seen, but it was short and seeing it was equivalent to reading it.
In retrospect, it makes sense the first thing in the file would be something important; likely it was kept longer than other old emails and thusly ended up as the first item in there.