First: They spread out. That 3mm slug is 10-20 times that diameter after passing through skull.
Second: They rotate. In the case of an AK-47, the rotation of the bullet causes it to travel throughout your body.
Also, 3mm may not seem big, but when compared to a cell, it's huge. I don't know the actual comparison, but I'd guess that a 3mm bullet would be like a Super Dome to the average cell. (The Super Dome holds >~60,000 people, and that 3mm bullet could hold well over 60,000 cells.)
I'm with the Rev. on this one. Further more, the ads were shot in succession, and another one of Ellen's friends was interviewed. Hamilton Morris here looks pretty baked too. Or maybe he just picked up Ellen's "Allergies". Perhaps he mistakenly drank her benadryl thinking it was her GBH...
So, if they all went out and got toasty before Hamilton's commercial, Ellen must have been going down for the weed nap just about the time of the commercial. She ain't stoned, she's crashing.
Was there an Ellen Feiss on the Grassy Bowl?? The conspiracy of 2003...
~Hammy
The fact you disagree with what I'm saying proves you do not understand it.
I can only imagine that their XML would be on a par with their HTML. That being said, FrontPage is cra*. "Hmmm, can we create a web page composed totally of span tags?? Yes!! Now, each one of these should have its own CLSID composed of no less than 80 digits and numerals. OOOH! Separate them with hyphens."
Seriously, their XML will most likely be along these lines: A "creator" section that has the creator metadata, A "Bodytext" section that contains the bodytext, and some additional metadata that will only be of use to VB6 programmers working with an ODBC database.
The rest of the formatting and rendering information will be stored in poorly documented areas in HEX or binary encoding. Why? The system uses this type of information in Binary or Hex encoding.
Honestly, I have my suspicions that the new "XML based" formats are more a response to the decoding of their previous formats than anything else. MS can dance the Mighty "XML Standard" dance, all while providing a broken XML implementation. The truth is that people are already feeling "locked-in" and the XML stretegem is Microsoft's way of pretending to be more open.
Drool over Halle Berry?? Unless her boobs look better than they did in Swordfish... (God what an awful movie...)
Halle Berry - Can't act. Pretty face, bad hair. Nice body, with her clothes on. Picks some of the worst scripts in history.
You can walk into any local Blockbuster and throw a rock and get better eye-candy than Halle Berry. And unless you hit a Daryl Hannah movie by accident, better acting.
When I want to watch a movie, I go to the theatre at the mall, when I want to scope some tail, I'll go to the theatre downtown.
But hey, I never found Natalie Portman all that hot either. (To skinny and sullen.)
"If that's what they're giving us to masturbate to.... OK...." ~Bill Maher
~Hammy
The Barcella method saved my bacon
on
Due Diligence?
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· Score: 1, Troll
Wow, I just read this after reading that article about sh*tty programming, and Michael Barcella saved my bacon. I have decided not to install any patches because:
I can't understand what the he** this program is doing. It's all just "use stdio.h"... WTF?? You wackos can read this stuff??
It is not written in perl, ruby, python, JavaScript or some other high level language. MB told me that C/C++ is evil. I believe him.
While I was trying to read it, a friend came up and pointed at the screen. Rule #3, no pointers.
Finally, I did not see the official seal of the united states in the upper left corner of my text editor. I never do, but after reading MB's column, I look for it.
However, I can't post this message because I am leaving the inet services off until I can understand all of the source for my TCP-IP stack. After that, I'm gonna tackle the source for Telnet.
A story by Michael Barcella posted by michael... One and the same??
Seriously though, this is one of the worst rants I have read. First of all, his claims about closed - open source are nonsense. He says that noone at Oracle could possibly understand the 1.2 GB codebase, and then says we should all understand every process on our own Linux box. Ummm.... And if my Linux box runs Oracle??
We trust our OS'es to be reasonably secure. Whether it is Windows or Linux or Plan9. Linux can be more secure due to it's open source nature. Conversely, one could state that Since Windows is the dominant OS, IE the one most attacked, it could evolve to be more secure than an OS that is rarely attacked.
I recall that in the last PC Week "Hack our Honeypot" contest, the Linux system was hacked long before the WinNT box, because the software was open source and could be combed for vulnerabilities. Is open source still more secure??
I am not trying to say that Windows is better, Linux is better, I'm just saying that when you make sweeping generalizations about design methodologies relating to product quality you deserve to be lambasted as an Idiot. Open source is not inherently more secure than closed source. Period. Yes you can review the source of open source, but who really does?? And for evey package, every revision?? Most OS'es are simply too complex for one person to get his/her brain around. Same for the Office suites and databases. I'm sure some Yakoff will shoot back that understands all X million lines of Open Office, but I doubt he will be telling the truth. Most folks can't be bothered to read the EULA, (this includes most engineers) but they can read the full source for sendmail??
Also, are we talking about the OS or its applications?? Outlook Virii are the by product of Outlook, not Windows. IIS is responsable for its own security bugs. The only real Windows Components I can think of with security problems outstanding is Shatter attacks on the COM subsystem (Local) and the remote help exploit. (Easily fixed.) Most of the other attacks can be avoided by having the latest patches, turning off the time service and UPnP, and not using IIS. (In linux it's: sendmail, bind, etc...)
OK, to qualify for the Linux Zealots out there: Linux has had more security advisories this year than Windows. (See earlier story) Many Windows "Security Vulnerabilities" require user interaction from outlook, etc.
The author posits that we should only use code that we understand to the letter, but we only program in Perl, Ruby, etc... What a joke. I'm supposed to understand C well enough to understand the entirety of the perl interpreter, but I'm not supposed to program in it. Speaking of which, I should read the entirety of the EMACS source too because that'll be my text editor. So, I should be able to start Coding in 6-8 Months. OOPS! Sorry, Kernel update and I have to read the entire source and all of my device drivers, give me another month or two.
Again, we trust our OS'es to be reasonably secure. Open Source, Closed Source, it's like Democrat or Republican. Some always choose one or the other, but the intelligent choose the best one (at the time) based on common sense and trust.
One must also assume that at the ripe old age of 22 (haha) he has tons of real-world application experience. Perhaps he'll be sending letters to Apple about interface design next.... Actually, considering he has another 43 years of software drudgery ahead of him (If he manages to get a job in the industry) we should be seeing high quality software pouring off of Long Island for the rest of my forseeable life. Hooray!
Perhaps his life was aimless until 22 when he broke his head and discovered the magic of stupidity.
And all that nonsense about the end of civilization.... Takes our job too seriously don't he. Yes dear, poor software design will be the end of civilization. Lets just ignore the fact that civilization A: existed before software and computers, B: continues even in the midst of all of this bad software.
I could just keep going on this. But I will finish by saying, "How the f*ck did this nonsense get put up on/. anyway? "
I use a Dell 2k box at work, and at home have a variety of Unix and Windows. But/. server logs would show me as a windows user. Here's why:
My Entertainment Computer: Athlon 1GHZ 1GB RAM TV Card Dual Monitor (29" CRT 17" LCD) WinXP Pro
Why: Linux supports my TV card, but it is a major pain to set up. Poor DVR capabilities compared to WinDVR or SnapStream. Dual Monitor support is better in some circumstances with Linux, but mostly the featrues I like (DVDMax, etc...) are provided by the Matrox Video Drivers.
Gaming - This is my gaming rig, although I don't game much. But I NEED Madden NFL and Morrowwind.
Porn - I just hate getting Quicktime or WMA porn on Linux. Also, I like the Slideshow Feature for images in XP pro.
DVD, CD, etc... Ripping - It is a pain to set these up under linux. (Is it possible to rip DVD2DivX in Linux??) Plus viewing - Good full screen, etc...
I use Linux on one box, but Linux Distros have imitated too much of Windows. I use windowmaker with a BeOS theme, and occasionally Gnome, and occasionally KDE, sometimes just Enlightenment. Ewww. KDE mimics the Windows GUI to the point where the even have an out-of-control "K" menu (Think start menu) and Kandalf, the talking....
Gnome just always felt clunky. Works with all windowmanagers, works well with none.
To be honest, I am seriously considering switching my Linux box to Windows. As stable, as easy to use, less compatibility issues, a large library of warez^H^H^H^H^H software, etc... Linux (mostly due to it's handling by the Distro folks) has become a productivity sink for me. I find that I spend too much time trying to remember which program does what, and where it is. The munged up mess that/usr/bin has become. Minor config BS followed by Library issues.
Windows at least seems to have become more stable, more consistant, and free from DLL HELL. Now, instead of figuring out an XF86Config, I figure out how to stop the 18 ways that XP phones home, where the hidden/hidden files are, and watching for new vulnerabilities.
Linux is not the problem. It is the distro creators who are looking to put out 17 CD's of freeware. (Or 1 CD that has "FreeCiv" but not termcap) The vendors need to do better at creating a "Linux experience". Set up a distro from scratch and imagine how a new user might interact with it for a day. Chances are they'd be frustrated as sh*t.
Moderators: Call it Flamebait, but don't call it funny.
~Hammy
Re:Hack a computer, spend life in prison.
on
HomeSec In the News
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· Score: 2
From the people who brought you 10 for 2, more inane laws!
Q: Your neighbor is killing his wife while you hack the CIA exchange server... Who is the greater criminal??
A: The hacker. Plus he was probably stoned.
American law is just one huge joke. Everything is illegal in the US, from Gay Sex to Masturbation, Pot to Pills, and anything else that might just be fun. (It is still illegal to give an elephant beer in Natchez MS.) These laws are mostly used to beat down on minorities and dissenters. The only time these "Laws of Morality" were enforced uniformly was under Nixon. The result?? Thousands of "White Middle Class" voters started asking why is my son in Jail?? That was almost the end of Marajuana prohibition. Now, we don't care, because let's face it, the government isn't keeping any of us from getting drugs....
The new law will be much the same. Wait until they start throwing upper class script kiddies in Jail. Most of the "Haxors" (people active in defacement, etc. Not just your usual info seekers.) that I know are upper class white kids who think they can't get caught, and if they do get caught, the law won't really do anything to them. They are right.
What this will be is a cudgel to use against anyone who messes with the Government. Why?? Too many people read the CIA's e-mail.
The true test of any law is how it is enforced upon those who created it. GW's 3 strikes law?? We all saw how tough he was when his own Daughter ran afoul of the law....
And so it goes. If any law enforcement agency is going to read my e-mail, you can bet I want to read theirs.
The saddest thing is, I grew up in the cold war era. Everthing they said was "evil" about the Russians, neighbors reporting on neighbors (TIPS), government spying on its own citizens, corrupt leaders, a media subsumed by the propaganda machine, it's all right here in the USA now. So when they ask why I hate the Governemnt do I answer, "You taught me to...."
I will finish with a quote from Yakov Smirnov: "I saw an ad, "Sofa sale: We stand behind our product for 6 months." That's why I left Russia, I don't want people behind my sofa."
Any program that is forced upon you is spyware. If McDonald's made you fill out a questionaire as a term for buying a Big Mac, how would you react?
I simply do not believe that any website author has the right to upload any program on my computer as a condition of viewing content. I don't care what the software does.
That being said, it does not appear that red sherrif performs like most spyware and remains active as a service 24/7 on the resident machine. But for those of us who are security concious, and the Firewall admins out there, this is a big deal. I am an admin for a newspaper. This immediately explained the large amounts of traffic going to the IP's mentioned in the group posting.
Like most businesses, we expense our bandwidth. Red Sherrif Traffic only accounted for.03% of traffic today, but we are also yanks, and we don't read the stinkin' beeb. (God forbid other voices were to leak through the American propaganda machine.) Over time, I might see this traffic rise up to the 1% area and would have to really start to take measures. (Infact, the.03% traffic originated from only 14 unique IP's out of ~300 for the newsroom alone.)
Does that answer your question??
~Hammy MY Mission: To build the biggest freak list on/.
try http://dynamism.com. Not a plug! I haven't ordered from them, just browsed. Lik-Sang (http://lik-sang.com) has some other things, but tends to focus on Video Games.
The true shame of it all is that this movie was supposed to gross about 300 million instead of 800 million. But there is still no profits lurking in that extra 500 million??
Maggard's Axiom Revised: Don't trust your creation to MS or Marvel.
While MS may actually manage to put out a quality product, the idea that they support it for free is ludicrous. Your OEM may support it for free, but the could do the same with any OS.
M$, just like everybody else, charges for support. You can buy in bulk, or pay as you go.
"The overhead to pay MS for software and support is less than hiring Senior UNIX Admins, and that's basically what it all comes down to."
Horse Hockey. First of all, a Senior Unix Admin is a different beast from a Windows Support Guy. Most Senior Unix Admins are expected to do programming, at the very least shell scripting. I have only met one Windows Admin/Programmer, and he costs just as much as a Senior Unix Admin. Plus, I really have to question how good any of the MS Techs could be if the very thought of managing Unix gives them the heebie-jeebies. I'm a Unix guy, but I also have to maintain Macs, Win2k & NT & 95... Not really a problem.
Here in a split shop, we have 2 people on our Unix side and 7 on our Windows side. Our parent company has 11 guys for mainframes, 4 for Unix, and a Floor for the Windows support. (I think something like 65-85 people.) Unix and the mainframes run the apps, while the windows side does domain authentication, file serves, print serves, and Exchange. (14 admins for Exchange.) Not very equitable.
Now, after retooling for WinNT in the Y2K premath, (1998) we are dedicating $500,000 to moving to active directory. Please upgrade your entire enterprise to Win2k. You tell me a company that uses Unix that spent half a million moving to NFS+... And our SunOS 3.5 Export didn't even need to be upgraded. Also, our support contract includes any and all OS updates we might like. So Solaris Gold Support is like Licensing 6.0 plus an onsite (24 hour response) support contract. Something MS doesn't even offer.
Our company spent money on techs to upgrade to NFS+, and all of our salaries combined since the upgrade don't equal half a million...
Our Unix servers last, new paradigms in the Unix world work with earlier implementations for the most part.
"buying a Windows Server License, IIS, and make a couple support calls to Microsoft to get it all up and running properly. If it ever breaks and the admin can't figure out the ridiculously simple administration tools, he can call Microsoft and have them fix it."
Or have them explain to you that your current product is EOL'ed, please upgrade to Win2k and SQL server 8 and call back. And really, I have only called MS once and had them "fix" anything. And that was a user who had forgotten the password for her parental controls in IE.
Rule of thumb: If MS tech support can fix it, it's already in the online KB. If it is not in the KB, they can't fix it... and it's something you did wrong... or you need to upgrade... wait, you're connecting to Unix, it's on the unix side... wait, you have Backup Exec loaded on the server?? That's why your website is slow...
P.S. I have cut and pasted your comments about companies "throwing money" at windows servers. I know my company loves "throwing money" around. Actually, shouldn't that be "flushing money"??
We purchased a search engine back in 1995 for indexing our intranet. At the time, I was working with Matt's Simple Search, and we needed to add X x 10 features to it.
Needless to say, a TCO supplied by the vendor "proved" that rolling our own was going to be almost double what their product was. We purchased the commercial system.
This was not your basic "I learned Windoze programming" type search engines. We bought a dedicated AIX box, etc, etc, etc.... However, when we moved to putting PDF's online, we found that we could not use the old search engine to do this.
Wev had just had another vendor go out of business, and they didn't want to pay to get their hardware back. So, we set up Xavatoria (formerly known as Matt's Simple Search) on a separate server and added the code for indexing PDF's.
AS HTML eveolved, the old search engine was choking on JavaScript and other new HTML tricks. We wrote perl front ends to strip these tags. And on and on like this. During the last year of that search engine's life I spent 25-40% of every week getting it to work. The program itself had a slight problem of corrupting its keyword database every month or so, yada yada.
We finally ended up switching because FDSE could parse and return a value from a 50MB index in 1/4 the time as the commercial product. They kept asking: "Why is this page so slow and the rest are normal??"
Now, we could have upgraded the SE in each of the cases above. Original cost of the Search engine: 12,000 + hardware and AIX licensing. If we had purchased all upgrades to that point, we would be on our second server after suffering through 4 major revs to the product. Each upgrade was priced higher that the initial cost.
1998: 12,250 1999: 24,125 2000: 18,750 (Discounted because of the need for a new server) 2001: 16,250 2002: Company out of business, product EOL'ed (Support contracts ran from 8,000 py. initially to 43,000 py. in 2000. Mostly this was due to our version being EOL'ed for so long. If we had upgraded the support would have been 22,000 py. in 2000.)
That AIX box is now making a nice file server, and we are using the Fluid Dynamics Search Engine (Formerly known as Matt's Simple search and Xavatoria) to index our sites and our PDF's.
Over the life of that machine it was an almost $400,000 money pit. FDSE runs for free on a server we didn't pay for. Even counting my time (which was less than used to support the older product) I would say it was 1/3 of a FTE (me!)for initial setup. This includes adding custom functionality that the other product didn't offer.
That's still about $30-40,000 TCO. 0.1%. And that is before you count the time I spent maintaining the old one.
"what's to prevent an ameteur band from re-singing the song and recording their version of it? "
Copyright law... ASCAP.... etc... You can play it, but if it becomes a recorded performance... you can be sued and thrown in jail. (assuming you did not have proper permission. Trust me, you don't.)
The author's real point is that CD Drives will continue to be upgraded, and that the newer firmware will defeat these copy-protection schemes. Hogwash.
Most SA2 discs are copyable, if you can find older firmware for your CD-Burner. My Panasonic works fine with firmware rev 1.05 or lower, not with newer firmware. Also, older firmware is not available from the manufacturer.
I think we have been and will continue to see the manufacturers "playing ball" with the entertainment cartels. As the author states, there is very very little that would need to be done to make PC CDRW drives read the TOC like every other disc, but where are the burners that support this??
RIAA brand music is already obsolete. Kids don't listen to Britney for the music, they want to belong to the herd. Go ahead and re-record OOPS!, and then get a cute girl and an expensive plastic surgeon. You'd need to sell those CD's for $20 a pop too.
Thanks, I just lost a half an hour plying that game....
You are on the west edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be seen. The east side is sheer rock, providing no exits. A narrow passage goes west. The path you are on continues to the north and south.
...Already have this?? It's called samhain and I read about while BillG was in diapers.
The problem with viruses like this one are the difficulty of debugging. "Ha, Ha! The world shall feel the wrath of my superworm!! Hunh?? What do you mean divide by 0 error??"
Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, but Stallman's beard does tickle so....
The worst virus you can get on your computer is still Microsoft. Word will send unwanted information out to everyone you know, IE will allow anyone to execute remote code on your system, and Outlook will run whatever viruses you manage to send to it.
Now, can this guy get you to shell out $200 US for the privelage of running his virus?? I think not. Microsoft is still the champine of the virii.
Welcome to Virus.NET. Select a project from the new projects wizard: Nimda Based Worm Klez Based Worm Office Macro Some dippy ass VB script Windows XP
If what you are sying is true, how will developers test and debug?? My scenario: I work for MSButtMonkey.com, and his Billness loves us. He wants us to do incredibly well. (Why?? who knows, this is all hypothetical anyhoo.) So, I have the full support of Microsoft.
I write my code, compile, and test. Then I code compile and test. Then I code, compile, and test. Then I.... According to the nightmare scenario that seems to be suggested, I need that application signed for every round of testing.
Is signing an application so trivial that it can be done for every testing iteration? Considering that many companies compile constantly and that each minor revision comes thru as fast as the compiler can assemble it, I find this hard to believe. Will there be some "Developer" version of Windows that allows the running of these untrusted binaries?? I'm sure that won't be on FTP sites an hour after its release.
So, as a matter of necessity, Microsoft will need to either allow untrusted binaries run with a warning, (most likely) or automate the signing process and rolling it into their Dev tools. (Which means no one is watching what's trusted or it is done on a buisness by business basis.)
This should have about the same effect as web controls. IE prompts you "Do you want to download and install Shockwave 8??" with the details of the app's signing.
Or, still most likely, if you install a copy of Dreamweaver, and a new version comes out, you'll get a pop-up that states "Do you want to download and install the Dreamweaver 4.03 update??" with a check box below labelled "Always trust content from..."
What's better, if the hardware vendors follow suit, your computer might not boot up off of that boot sector virus.
This will benefit 90% of users. Now if it is further bundled with DRM features that wipe out Joe the Cop's downloaded Napster tracks, most people will see that as a bug, not a feature of the new OS and reject the upgrade. This would harm 90% of MS'es customers.
Most computer users have huge HDD's bursting with MP3's and they cannot even pronounce MP3. Microsoft is not slick enough to sell them a "broken" OS. And any OS that can't play MP3's will be broken.
Potentially this could affect new content relased, but we are already battling SafeDisc, etc. This is nothing new. New content is already protected. This is another protection scheme that should last 3-6 months. SafeDisc2 was supposedly "unbreakable", it is not.
To sum up, Microsoft faces too many technical issues to exert the kind of control I am seeing envisioned. I notice that almost noone converted their MP3's to WMA with Windows XP, heck, they won't use it to store CD's either. Why, because if they tried it even once, they found out that the format was broken when they tried to share it with a friend. They don't want to look through option menus, they'll just go download Real Jukebox or Music Match.
Never underestimate stupidity, but really never underestimate the joint powers of stupidity and laziness.
Val: Do you think MS will like this copy I wrote for their anti-switch campaicn??
Boss: Throw in a jab at Netscape's expense. That always gets his Billness cooing.
Is microsoft really this threatened by the switch campaign?? (that made me decide not to buy a Mac thank god...)
IF MS really wants some converts:
-Fix the user and gdi problems. Get a working virtual memory subsystem. -Stop designing OS'es to phone home. 18 ways your WinXP box connects to Microsoft out of the box. Geez, leave me some bandwidth for porn... -Implement actual local permissions. Secure the admin password, stop local shatter attacks, improve SMB security. -Charge reasonable prices. Upgrade for $49, new install $99. Other OS companies manage this pricing over 1% of the market. MS should be able to do it with 95% of the market. Oh, wait, I never pay for Microsoft software anyway....
Your job as a webmaster: Generate massive quantities of traffic... While figuring out how to be profitable.
Google's job, as a search engine: Generate massive quantities of traffic... While figuring out how to be profitable.
Now, the webmaster could accomplish that by offering tons of great content at a better price, and Google can accomplish this by having the most relevant results. That takes care of the generating traffic.
Now, profitability... Tons of great quantity at a reasonable price will not be supported by 100 users... You need hundreds of thousands for the economies of scale to work in your favor. End result, you do everything in your power to drive traffic at your website. Top of mind awareness, etc... What you postulate is that they should stop sending me Credit Card offers because if I wanted one, I'd call. True, but would I call your company or another one??
SEO actually shows that we are achieving a Search engine monoculture. Back in the day when we had varied competing engines, bombing one site hardly had any impact. (Actually, most results were bombed so you got used to checking several engines.) And these techniques were around about two minutes after the first Search Engine went online.
Google was an evolution beyond the early Excite, Lycos, et. al. If an unusable Google is the result, new ideas will surface that are evolutionary. This shows that there are areas where you could improve on Google search technology and either compete or license it to Google. Then we will have an improvement over Google like Google was over Infoseek, like Infoseek was an improvement over Yahoo.
Webmasters are NEVER going to play nice with the search engines. The job of the search engine designer will be to limit the ways in which his system can be abused. XHTML should be a big help, as most search engines get easily fooled by having their parsers parse verrrrrrry loose HTML. When they start actual content checking and checking for invisible divs and other HTML tricks, the engines will evolve again. I'm suprised with the increase in processor speed it hasn't happened more recently, but the extra horsepower has been dedicated to indexing PDF etc... Next generation maybe.
I can't believe that you are actually talking about paying for windows.... Steal it. Gates and Ballmer *want* you to steal it. Porn looks better on a pirated OS. Learn all about FTP...
Slashdot Mirror
Bullets do damage in one of two ways:
First: They spread out. That 3mm slug is 10-20 times that diameter after passing through skull.
Second: They rotate. In the case of an AK-47, the rotation of the bullet causes it to travel throughout your body.
Also, 3mm may not seem big, but when compared to a cell, it's huge. I don't know the actual comparison, but I'd guess that a 3mm bullet would be like a Super Dome to the average cell. (The Super Dome holds >~60,000 people, and that 3mm bullet could hold well over 60,000 cells.)
~Hammy
I'm with the Rev. on this one. Further more, the ads were shot in succession, and another one of Ellen's friends was interviewed. Hamilton Morris here looks pretty baked too. Or maybe he just picked up Ellen's "Allergies". Perhaps he mistakenly drank her benadryl thinking it was her GBH...
So, if they all went out and got toasty before Hamilton's commercial, Ellen must have been going down for the weed nap just about the time of the commercial. She ain't stoned, she's crashing.
Was there an Ellen Feiss on the Grassy Bowl?? The conspiracy of 2003...
~Hammy
The fact you disagree with what I'm saying proves you do not understand it.
I can only imagine that their XML would be on a par with their HTML. That being said, FrontPage is cra*. "Hmmm, can we create a web page composed totally of span tags?? Yes!! Now, each one of these should have its own CLSID composed of no less than 80 digits and numerals. OOOH! Separate them with hyphens."
Seriously, their XML will most likely be along these lines:
A "creator" section that has the creator metadata,
A "Bodytext" section that contains the bodytext,
and some additional metadata that will only be of use to VB6 programmers working with an ODBC database.
The rest of the formatting and rendering information will be stored in poorly documented areas in HEX or binary encoding. Why? The system uses this type of information in Binary or Hex encoding.
Honestly, I have my suspicions that the new "XML based" formats are more a response to the decoding of their previous formats than anything else. MS can dance the Mighty "XML Standard" dance, all while providing a broken XML implementation. The truth is that people are already feeling "locked-in" and the XML stretegem is Microsoft's way of pretending to be more open.
~Hammy
Because they are using XML does not mean it is not proprietary. Why do you think they call it XDocs?? Because it is not straight-up XML.
Drool over Halle Berry?? Unless her boobs look better than they did in Swordfish... (God what an awful movie...)
Halle Berry - Can't act. Pretty face, bad hair. Nice body, with her clothes on. Picks some of the worst scripts in history.
You can walk into any local Blockbuster and throw a rock and get better eye-candy than Halle Berry. And unless you hit a Daryl Hannah movie by accident, better acting.
When I want to watch a movie, I go to the theatre at the mall, when I want to scope some tail, I'll go to the theatre downtown.
But hey, I never found Natalie Portman all that hot either. (To skinny and sullen.)
"If that's what they're giving us to masturbate to.... OK...." ~Bill Maher
~Hammy
Wow, I just read this after reading that article about sh*tty programming, and Michael Barcella saved my bacon. I have decided not to install any patches because:
I can't understand what the he** this program is doing. It's all just "use stdio.h"... WTF?? You wackos can read this stuff??
It is not written in perl, ruby, python, JavaScript or some other high level language. MB told me that C/C++ is evil. I believe him.
While I was trying to read it, a friend came up and pointed at the screen. Rule #3, no pointers.
Finally, I did not see the official seal of the united states in the upper left corner of my text editor. I never do, but after reading MB's column, I look for it.
However, I can't post this message because I am leaving the inet services off until I can understand all of the source for my TCP-IP stack. After that, I'm gonna tackle the source for Telnet.
WooT!
~Hammy
A story by Michael Barcella posted by michael... One and the same??
/. anyway? "
Seriously though, this is one of the worst rants I have read. First of all, his claims about closed - open source are nonsense. He says that noone at Oracle could possibly understand the 1.2 GB codebase, and then says we should all understand every process on our own Linux box. Ummm.... And if my Linux box runs Oracle??
We trust our OS'es to be reasonably secure. Whether it is Windows or Linux or Plan9. Linux can be more secure due to it's open source nature. Conversely, one could state that Since Windows is the dominant OS, IE the one most attacked, it could evolve to be more secure than an OS that is rarely attacked.
I recall that in the last PC Week "Hack our Honeypot" contest, the Linux system was hacked long before the WinNT box, because the software was open source and could be combed for vulnerabilities. Is open source still more secure??
I am not trying to say that Windows is better, Linux is better, I'm just saying that when you make sweeping generalizations about design methodologies relating to product quality you deserve to be lambasted as an Idiot. Open source is not inherently more secure than closed source. Period. Yes you can review the source of open source, but who really does?? And for evey package, every revision?? Most OS'es are simply too complex for one person to get his/her brain around. Same for the Office suites and databases. I'm sure some Yakoff will shoot back that understands all X million lines of Open Office, but I doubt he will be telling the truth. Most folks can't be bothered to read the EULA, (this includes most engineers) but they can read the full source for sendmail??
Also, are we talking about the OS or its applications?? Outlook Virii are the by product of Outlook, not Windows. IIS is responsable for its own security bugs. The only real Windows Components I can think of with security problems outstanding is Shatter attacks on the COM subsystem (Local) and the remote help exploit. (Easily fixed.) Most of the other attacks can be avoided by having the latest patches, turning off the time service and UPnP, and not using IIS. (In linux it's: sendmail, bind, etc...)
OK, to qualify for the Linux Zealots out there: Linux has had more security advisories this year than Windows. (See earlier story) Many Windows "Security Vulnerabilities" require user interaction from outlook, etc.
The author posits that we should only use code that we understand to the letter, but we only program in Perl, Ruby, etc... What a joke. I'm supposed to understand C well enough to understand the entirety of the perl interpreter, but I'm not supposed to program in it. Speaking of which, I should read the entirety of the EMACS source too because that'll be my text editor. So, I should be able to start Coding in 6-8 Months. OOPS! Sorry, Kernel update and I have to read the entire source and all of my device drivers, give me another month or two.
Again, we trust our OS'es to be reasonably secure. Open Source, Closed Source, it's like Democrat or Republican. Some always choose one or the other, but the intelligent choose the best one (at the time) based on common sense and trust.
One must also assume that at the ripe old age of 22 (haha) he has tons of real-world application experience. Perhaps he'll be sending letters to Apple about interface design next.... Actually, considering he has another 43 years of software drudgery ahead of him (If he manages to get a job in the industry) we should be seeing high quality software pouring off of Long Island for the rest of my forseeable life. Hooray!
Perhaps his life was aimless until 22 when he broke his head and discovered the magic of stupidity.
And all that nonsense about the end of civilization.... Takes our job too seriously don't he. Yes dear, poor software design will be the end of civilization. Lets just ignore the fact that civilization A: existed before software and computers, B: continues even in the midst of all of this bad software.
I could just keep going on this. But I will finish by saying, "How the f*ck did this nonsense get put up on
I use a Dell 2k box at work, and at home have a variety of Unix and Windows. But /. server logs would show me as a windows user. Here's why:
/usr/bin has become. Minor config BS followed by Library issues.
My Entertainment Computer:
Athlon 1GHZ
1GB RAM
TV Card
Dual Monitor (29" CRT 17" LCD)
WinXP Pro
Why:
Linux supports my TV card, but it is a major pain to set up. Poor DVR capabilities compared to WinDVR or SnapStream. Dual Monitor support is better in some circumstances with Linux, but mostly the featrues I like (DVDMax, etc...) are provided by the Matrox Video Drivers.
Gaming - This is my gaming rig, although I don't game much. But I NEED Madden NFL and Morrowwind.
Porn - I just hate getting Quicktime or WMA porn on Linux. Also, I like the Slideshow Feature for images in XP pro.
DVD, CD, etc... Ripping - It is a pain to set these up under linux. (Is it possible to rip DVD2DivX in Linux??) Plus viewing - Good full screen, etc...
I use Linux on one box, but Linux Distros have imitated too much of Windows. I use windowmaker with a BeOS theme, and occasionally Gnome, and occasionally KDE, sometimes just Enlightenment. Ewww. KDE mimics the Windows GUI to the point where the even have an out-of-control "K" menu (Think start menu) and Kandalf, the talking....
Gnome just always felt clunky. Works with all windowmanagers, works well with none.
To be honest, I am seriously considering switching my Linux box to Windows. As stable, as easy to use, less compatibility issues, a large library of warez^H^H^H^H^H software, etc... Linux (mostly due to it's handling by the Distro folks) has become a productivity sink for me. I find that I spend too much time trying to remember which program does what, and where it is. The munged up mess that
Windows at least seems to have become more stable, more consistant, and free from DLL HELL. Now, instead of figuring out an XF86Config, I figure out how to stop the 18 ways that XP phones home, where the hidden/hidden files are, and watching for new vulnerabilities.
Linux is not the problem. It is the distro creators who are looking to put out 17 CD's of freeware. (Or 1 CD that has "FreeCiv" but not termcap) The vendors need to do better at creating a "Linux experience". Set up a distro from scratch and imagine how a new user might interact with it for a day. Chances are they'd be frustrated as sh*t.
Moderators: Call it Flamebait, but don't call it funny.
~Hammy
From the people who brought you 10 for 2, more inane laws!
Q: Your neighbor is killing his wife while you hack the CIA exchange server... Who is the greater criminal??
A: The hacker. Plus he was probably stoned.
American law is just one huge joke. Everything is illegal in the US, from Gay Sex to Masturbation, Pot to Pills, and anything else that might just be fun. (It is still illegal to give an elephant beer in Natchez MS.) These laws are mostly used to beat down on minorities and dissenters. The only time these "Laws of Morality" were enforced uniformly was under Nixon. The result?? Thousands of "White Middle Class" voters started asking why is my son in Jail?? That was almost the end of Marajuana prohibition. Now, we don't care, because let's face it, the government isn't keeping any of us from getting drugs....
The new law will be much the same. Wait until they start throwing upper class script kiddies in Jail. Most of the "Haxors" (people active in defacement, etc. Not just your usual info seekers.) that I know are upper class white kids who think they can't get caught, and if they do get caught, the law won't really do anything to them. They are right.
What this will be is a cudgel to use against anyone who messes with the Government. Why?? Too many people read the CIA's e-mail.
The true test of any law is how it is enforced upon those who created it. GW's 3 strikes law?? We all saw how tough he was when his own Daughter ran afoul of the law....
And so it goes. If any law enforcement agency is going to read my e-mail, you can bet I want to read theirs.
The saddest thing is, I grew up in the cold war era. Everthing they said was "evil" about the Russians, neighbors reporting on neighbors (TIPS), government spying on its own citizens, corrupt leaders, a media subsumed by the propaganda machine, it's all right here in the USA now. So when they ask why I hate the Governemnt do I answer, "You taught me to...."
I will finish with a quote from Yakov Smirnov:
"I saw an ad, "Sofa sale: We stand behind our product for 6 months." That's why I left Russia, I don't want people behind my sofa."
~Hammy
Any program that is forced upon you is spyware. If McDonald's made you fill out a questionaire as a term for buying a Big Mac, how would you react?
.03% of traffic today, but we are also yanks, and we don't read the stinkin' beeb. (God forbid other voices were to leak through the American propaganda machine.) Over time, I might see this traffic rise up to the 1% area and would have to really start to take measures. (Infact, the .03% traffic originated from only 14 unique IP's out of ~300 for the newsroom alone.)
/.
I simply do not believe that any website author has the right to upload any program on my computer as a condition of viewing content. I don't care what the software does.
That being said, it does not appear that red sherrif performs like most spyware and remains active as a service 24/7 on the resident machine. But for those of us who are security concious, and the Firewall admins out there, this is a big deal. I am an admin for a newspaper. This immediately explained the large amounts of traffic going to the IP's mentioned in the group posting.
Like most businesses, we expense our bandwidth. Red Sherrif Traffic only accounted for
Does that answer your question??
~Hammy
MY Mission: To build the biggest freak list on
try http://dynamism.com. Not a plug! I haven't ordered from them, just browsed. Lik-Sang (http://lik-sang.com) has some other things, but tends to focus on Video Games.
It is a 7600. The floppy drive is lower than the CD. With the 7200, the floppy was considered your main removable storage option.
(The Mac in my office is a 700... No, I am not a dealer in antiquities.)
~Hammy
The true shame of it all is that this movie was supposed to gross about 300 million instead of 800 million. But there is still no profits lurking in that extra 500 million??
Maggard's Axiom Revised: Don't trust your creation to MS or Marvel.
"I/O Port Serial/USB (via docking station port, IR port)"
Hunh?? Does this mean that the serial and USV ports are available only when docked or that the IR is only available while docked??
I just want to hook up my USB Keychain Microdrive.
~Hammy
While MS may actually manage to put out a quality product, the idea that they support it for free is ludicrous. Your OEM may support it for free, but the could do the same with any OS.
M$, just like everybody else, charges for support. You can buy in bulk, or pay as you go.
"The overhead to pay MS for software and support is less than hiring Senior UNIX Admins, and that's basically what it all comes down to."
Horse Hockey. First of all, a Senior Unix Admin is a different beast from a Windows Support Guy. Most Senior Unix Admins are expected to do programming, at the very least shell scripting. I have only met one Windows Admin/Programmer, and he costs just as much as a Senior Unix Admin. Plus, I really have to question how good any of the MS Techs could be if the very thought of managing Unix gives them the heebie-jeebies. I'm a Unix guy, but I also have to maintain Macs, Win2k & NT & 95... Not really a problem.
Here in a split shop, we have 2 people on our Unix side and 7 on our Windows side. Our parent company has 11 guys for mainframes, 4 for Unix, and a Floor for the Windows support. (I think something like 65-85 people.) Unix and the mainframes run the apps, while the windows side does domain authentication, file serves, print serves, and Exchange. (14 admins for Exchange.) Not very equitable.
Now, after retooling for WinNT in the Y2K premath, (1998) we are dedicating $500,000 to moving to active directory. Please upgrade your entire enterprise to Win2k. You tell me a company that uses Unix that spent half a million moving to NFS+... And our SunOS 3.5 Export didn't even need to be upgraded. Also, our support contract includes any and all OS updates we might like. So Solaris Gold Support is like Licensing 6.0 plus an onsite (24 hour response) support contract. Something MS doesn't even offer.
Our company spent money on techs to upgrade to NFS+, and all of our salaries combined since the upgrade don't equal half a million...
Our Unix servers last, new paradigms in the Unix world work with earlier implementations for the most part.
"buying a Windows Server License, IIS, and make a couple support calls to Microsoft to get it all up and running properly. If it ever breaks and the admin can't figure out the ridiculously simple administration tools, he can call Microsoft and have them fix it."
Or have them explain to you that your current product is EOL'ed, please upgrade to Win2k and SQL server 8 and call back. And really, I have only called MS once and had them "fix" anything. And that was a user who had forgotten the password for her parental controls in IE.
Rule of thumb: If MS tech support can fix it, it's already in the online KB. If it is not in the KB, they can't fix it... and it's something you did wrong... or you need to upgrade... wait, you're connecting to Unix, it's on the unix side... wait, you have Backup Exec loaded on the server?? That's why your website is slow...
P.S. I have cut and pasted your comments about companies "throwing money" at windows servers. I know my company loves "throwing money" around. Actually, shouldn't that be "flushing money"??
~Hammy
I'm offering a case study.
All vendors shall remain nameless.
We purchased a search engine back in 1995 for indexing our intranet. At the time, I was working with Matt's Simple Search, and we needed to add X x 10 features to it.
Needless to say, a TCO supplied by the vendor "proved" that rolling our own was going to be almost double what their product was. We purchased the commercial system.
This was not your basic "I learned Windoze programming" type search engines. We bought a dedicated AIX box, etc, etc, etc.... However, when we moved to putting PDF's online, we found that we could not use the old search engine to do this.
Wev had just had another vendor go out of business, and they didn't want to pay to get their hardware back. So, we set up Xavatoria (formerly known as Matt's Simple Search) on a separate server and added the code for indexing PDF's.
AS HTML eveolved, the old search engine was choking on JavaScript and other new HTML tricks. We wrote perl front ends to strip these tags. And on and on like this. During the last year of that search engine's life I spent 25-40% of every week getting it to work. The program itself had a slight problem of corrupting its keyword database every month or so, yada yada.
We finally ended up switching because FDSE could parse and return a value from a 50MB index in 1/4 the time as the commercial product. They kept asking: "Why is this page so slow and the rest are normal??"
Now, we could have upgraded the SE in each of the cases above. Original cost of the Search engine: 12,000 + hardware and AIX licensing. If we had purchased all upgrades to that point, we would be on our second server after suffering through 4 major revs to the product. Each upgrade was priced higher that the initial cost.
1998: 12,250
1999: 24,125
2000: 18,750 (Discounted because of the need for a new server)
2001: 16,250
2002: Company out of business, product EOL'ed
(Support contracts ran from 8,000 py. initially to 43,000 py. in 2000. Mostly this was due to our version being EOL'ed for so long. If we had upgraded the support would have been 22,000 py. in 2000.)
That AIX box is now making a nice file server, and we are using the Fluid Dynamics Search Engine (Formerly known as Matt's Simple search and Xavatoria) to index our sites and our PDF's.
Over the life of that machine it was an almost $400,000 money pit. FDSE runs for free on a server we didn't pay for. Even counting my time (which was less than used to support the older product) I would say it was 1/3 of a FTE (me!)for initial setup. This includes adding custom functionality that the other product didn't offer.
That's still about $30-40,000 TCO. 0.1%. And that is before you count the time I spent maintaining the old one.
~Hammy
"what's to prevent an ameteur band from re-singing the song and recording their version of it? "
Copyright law... ASCAP.... etc... You can play it, but if it becomes a recorded performance... you can be sued and thrown in jail. (assuming you did not have proper permission. Trust me, you don't.)
The author's real point is that CD Drives will continue to be upgraded, and that the newer firmware will defeat these copy-protection schemes. Hogwash.
Most SA2 discs are copyable, if you can find older firmware for your CD-Burner. My Panasonic works fine with firmware rev 1.05 or lower, not with newer firmware. Also, older firmware is not available from the manufacturer.
I think we have been and will continue to see the manufacturers "playing ball" with the entertainment cartels. As the author states, there is very very little that would need to be done to make PC CDRW drives read the TOC like every other disc, but where are the burners that support this??
RIAA brand music is already obsolete. Kids don't listen to Britney for the music, they want to belong to the herd. Go ahead and re-record OOPS!, and then get a cute girl and an expensive plastic surgeon. You'd need to sell those CD's for $20 a pop too.
~Hammy
Thanks, I just lost a half an hour plying that game....
You are on the west edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be
seen. The east side is sheer rock, providing no exits. A narrow
passage goes west. The path you are on continues to the north and south.
...Already have this?? It's called samhain and I read about while BillG was in diapers.
The problem with viruses like this one are the difficulty of debugging. "Ha, Ha! The world shall feel the wrath of my superworm!! Hunh?? What do you mean divide by 0 error??"
Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, but Stallman's beard does tickle so....
The worst virus you can get on your computer is still Microsoft. Word will send unwanted information out to everyone you know, IE will allow anyone to execute remote code on your system, and Outlook will run whatever viruses you manage to send to it.
Now, can this guy get you to shell out $200 US for the privelage of running his virus?? I think not. Microsoft is still the champine of the virii.
Welcome to Virus.NET. Select a project from the new projects wizard:
Nimda Based Worm
Klez Based Worm
Office Macro
Some dippy ass VB script
Windows XP
Ho Hum.
~Hammy
If what you are sying is true, how will developers test and debug?? My scenario: I work for MSButtMonkey.com, and his Billness loves us. He wants us to do incredibly well. (Why?? who knows, this is all hypothetical anyhoo.) So, I have the full support of Microsoft.
.... According to the nightmare scenario that seems to be suggested, I need that application signed for every round of testing.
I write my code, compile, and test. Then I code compile and test. Then I code, compile, and test. Then I
Is signing an application so trivial that it can be done for every testing iteration? Considering that many companies compile constantly and that each minor revision comes thru as fast as the compiler can assemble it, I find this hard to believe. Will there be some "Developer" version of Windows that allows the running of these untrusted binaries?? I'm sure that won't be on FTP sites an hour after its release.
So, as a matter of necessity, Microsoft will need to either allow untrusted binaries run with a warning, (most likely) or automate the signing process and rolling it into their Dev tools. (Which means no one is watching what's trusted or it is done on a buisness by business basis.)
This should have about the same effect as web controls. IE prompts you "Do you want to download and install Shockwave 8??" with the details of the app's signing.
Or, still most likely, if you install a copy of Dreamweaver, and a new version comes out, you'll get a pop-up that states "Do you want to download and install the Dreamweaver 4.03 update??" with a check box below labelled "Always trust content from..."
What's better, if the hardware vendors follow suit, your computer might not boot up off of that boot sector virus.
This will benefit 90% of users. Now if it is further bundled with DRM features that wipe out Joe the Cop's downloaded Napster tracks, most people will see that as a bug, not a feature of the new OS and reject the upgrade. This would harm 90% of MS'es customers.
Most computer users have huge HDD's bursting with MP3's and they cannot even pronounce MP3. Microsoft is not slick enough to sell them a "broken" OS. And any OS that can't play MP3's will be broken.
Potentially this could affect new content relased, but we are already battling SafeDisc, etc. This is nothing new. New content is already protected. This is another protection scheme that should last 3-6 months. SafeDisc2 was supposedly "unbreakable", it is not.
To sum up, Microsoft faces too many technical issues to exert the kind of control I am seeing envisioned. I notice that almost noone converted their MP3's to WMA with Windows XP, heck, they won't use it to store CD's either. Why, because if they tried it even once, they found out that the format was broken when they tried to share it with a friend. They don't want to look through option menus, they'll just go download Real Jukebox or Music Match.
Never underestimate stupidity, but really never underestimate the joint powers of stupidity and laziness.
Ho Hum.
Hammy
Val: Do you think MS will like this copy I wrote for their anti-switch campaicn??
Boss: Throw in a jab at Netscape's expense. That always gets his Billness cooing.
Is microsoft really this threatened by the switch campaign?? (that made me decide not to buy a Mac thank god...)
IF MS really wants some converts:
-Fix the user and gdi problems. Get a working virtual memory subsystem.
-Stop designing OS'es to phone home. 18 ways your WinXP box connects to Microsoft out of the box. Geez, leave me some bandwidth for porn...
-Implement actual local permissions. Secure the admin password, stop local shatter attacks, improve SMB security.
-Charge reasonable prices. Upgrade for $49, new install $99. Other OS companies manage this pricing over 1% of the market. MS should be able to do it with 95% of the market. Oh, wait, I never pay for Microsoft software anyway....
Val: How do I create a PDF on my PC??
Boss: Just use the Mac over in the corner.
~Hammy
The web is not optimizing Google.
Your job as a webmaster: Generate massive quantities of traffic... While figuring out how to be profitable.
Google's job, as a search engine: Generate massive quantities of traffic... While figuring out how to be profitable.
Now, the webmaster could accomplish that by offering tons of great content at a better price, and Google can accomplish this by having the most relevant results. That takes care of the generating traffic.
Now, profitability... Tons of great quantity at a reasonable price will not be supported by 100 users... You need hundreds of thousands for the economies of scale to work in your favor. End result, you do everything in your power to drive traffic at your website. Top of mind awareness, etc... What you postulate is that they should stop sending me Credit Card offers because if I wanted one, I'd call. True, but would I call your company or another one??
SEO actually shows that we are achieving a Search engine monoculture. Back in the day when we had varied competing engines, bombing one site hardly had any impact. (Actually, most results were bombed so you got used to checking several engines.) And these techniques were around about two minutes after the first Search Engine went online.
Google was an evolution beyond the early Excite, Lycos, et. al. If an unusable Google is the result, new ideas will surface that are evolutionary. This shows that there are areas where you could improve on Google search technology and either compete or license it to Google. Then we will have an improvement over Google like Google was over Infoseek, like Infoseek was an improvement over Yahoo.
Webmasters are NEVER going to play nice with the search engines. The job of the search engine designer will be to limit the ways in which his system can be abused. XHTML should be a big help, as most search engines get easily fooled by having their parsers parse verrrrrrry loose HTML. When they start actual content checking and checking for invisible divs and other HTML tricks, the engines will evolve again. I'm suprised with the increase in processor speed it hasn't happened more recently, but the extra horsepower has been dedicated to indexing PDF etc... Next generation maybe.
Hammy
Interesting...
I have been a user of the old IBM Olivettis for years, but my last one broke down last year. (Do I really need the Q and W??)
I have noticed a considerable amount of hand fatigue using the POS that came with my computer. Especially in my right hand.
However, I also know as a guitarist that clamping the neck too tightly is a large cause of RSI's. (Also holding it too low)
Nothing to add, just interesting...
Jason
Isn't this a bit like "Keyboard Error: Press F1 to continue..." or even, "My e-mail is down. Really, send me an e-mail about the problem."
Perhaps we need a salshfault.org to contain this new brand of comedy.
Hammy
I can't believe that you are actually talking about paying for windows.... Steal it. Gates and Ballmer *want* you to steal it. Porn looks better on a pirated OS. Learn all about FTP...
Hammy