"Would it have killed him to simply put a comment block explaining his event dispatch model? Or to tell me what his functions and methods did and best of all why they did it?"
Well, may be just like your case, he was also handed over a requirements document and asked to code it all over "by next Friday".
This does not justify the lack of comments, but due to similar reasons, coders tend to put off the documentation / clear coding part ("Will clean the code all over once I have delivered the first component.."), which usually never gets done unless someone like you gets stuck in the code and decides to add comments for own and others' benefit.
"The contractor, employee-owned Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, handles sensitive government contracts, including many in information security."
Are we sure it's only the personal data that was compromised? One would be more worried about what *else* was uncovered by whoever-did-this.
"Ben Haddad, an SAIC spokesman, said yesterday that the Jan. 25 theft, which the company announced last week, occurred in an administrative building where no sensitive contracting work is performed."
Or is it the case that break-in was *detected* only in one of the buildings? They had to smash windows of the administrative building, to get the keys of the others?
From the patent abstract: "Methods are disclosed for encoding latitude/longitude coordinates within a URL in a relatively compact form. The method includes converting latitude and longitude coordinates from floating-point numbers to non-negative integers."
Where are tinyurl and similar websites to claim that they have been converting URLs to relatively-compact-form, using non-negative integers and letters?
One potential problem point I see in most of the responses of "crowd" is:
"$1 is big and monopolizes. They don't do free software. I hate them." "$2 is building applications to compete with $1. I support $2. I will think about $2's free software later." . . (couple of years later) "$2 has grown bigger and sell/distribute applications. They don't do free software. I get a strange feeling out of it." . . (some more time) "$2 is big and monopolizes. They don't do free software. I hate them."
An relevant note here would be to mention Spamikaze system (intro here).
In a nutshell, it sets up spamtrap e-mail addresses, and any IP that sends mail to that address is automatically added to the blacklist, and further mails from it are rejected at SMTP level. A false positive can be easily removed from the blacklist manually (example, PSBL).
I've started posting comments on slashdot news articles in 16 different areas - Apache, Apple, AskSlashdot, Books....
and I've also started having trouble counting things, and remembering what I just typed. and I've also started having trouble counting things, and remembering what I just typed.
1. IIIT is *not* the Indian equivalent of MIT. The story poster perhaps confused it with IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology). [ the best regarded technical education institutes in India... comparison with MIT is a different debate altogether... ]
2. The name is not "Indian Institute of Information Technology", after a court order, the present name was changed to "International Institute of Information Technology".
It is an institute supported by many IT companies (including IBM and Microsoft), though that hasn't helped much to raise the academic standards much in comparison to IITs in India.
"If you depend on a secret for your security, what do you do when the secret is discovered? If it is easy to change, like a cryptographic key, you do so. If it's hard to change, like a cryptographic system or an operating system, you're stuck. You will be vulnerable until you invest the time and money to design another system."
The author has rightly pinpointed the pivotal dilemma of quite a many software designers. The problem is more about defining boundaries for modules handling security of the system. Do you integrate it strongly with the rest of the system? That creates a problem if a vulnerability is discovered and you have to invest more time and finances into taking care of all those 'integration points'. Do you design like a true pluggable module and let the system interact with it using few interfaces? That makes your whole system more transparent (some closed-source companies may whine here) and there may be possibilities of someone spoofing this external interface altogether. A balance is definitley required, but surprisingly most software designs seem to miss this point completely.
Phew...looks to me like yet another Microsoft-Slashdot contract ("conspiracy") to bring loads of traffic to Hotmail site...
P.S. The options with "Share my other registration information" has this text: "This information, which is stored in your Microsoft®.NET Passport and required for registration at many Web sites, includes:
Birth Date Country/Region State/Territory Gender Acc essibility Time Zone Occupation"
This means that whatever fake information I put in Hotmail would be used for all other sites? No Way!
AFAI percieve it, this technology will not be used for "wearing" apps (really...apart from your sleeves, which other part of cloth are you prepared to look at repeatedly bending your neck or pulling up the cloth?)
Instead, it can be used in various scientific/space experiments (ya...think of the possibilities....this is an excellent weight reduction appliance where we need to transfer quick information, instead of screens)
Slashdot Mirror
"Salt Lake City Airport, Dec 4, 2005" (look at the bottom of the page)
hm, slashdot editors -- for once you've repeated news from future!
A fake screenshot and nobody verified it before posting?
This is precisely why slashdot editors should install Windows!
"Would it have killed him to simply put a comment block explaining his event dispatch model? Or to tell me what his functions and methods did and best of all why they did it?"
Well, may be just like your case, he was also handed over a requirements document and asked to code it all over "by next Friday".
This does not justify the lack of comments, but due to similar reasons, coders tend to put off the documentation / clear coding part ("Will clean the code all over once I have delivered the first component.."), which usually never gets done unless someone like you gets stuck in the code and decides to add comments for own and others' benefit.
The cycle continues.
Notice the irony:
"The contractor, employee-owned Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, handles sensitive government contracts, including many in information security."
Are we sure it's only the personal data that was compromised? One would be more worried about what *else* was uncovered by whoever-did-this.
"Ben Haddad, an SAIC spokesman, said yesterday that the Jan. 25 theft, which the company announced last week, occurred in an administrative building where no sensitive contracting work is performed."
Or is it the case that break-in was *detected* only in one of the buildings? They had to smash windows of the administrative building, to get the keys of the others?
From the patent abstract:
"Methods are disclosed for encoding latitude/longitude coordinates within a URL in a relatively compact form. The method includes converting latitude and longitude coordinates from floating-point numbers to non-negative integers."
Where are tinyurl and similar websites to claim that they have been converting URLs to relatively-compact-form, using non-negative integers and letters?
One potential problem point I see in most of the responses of "crowd" is:
"$1 is big and monopolizes. They don't do free software. I hate them."
"$2 is building applications to compete with $1. I support $2. I will think about $2's free software later."
.
.
(couple of years later)
"$2 has grown bigger and sell/distribute applications. They don't do free software. I get a strange feeling out of it."
.
.
(some more time)
"$2 is big and monopolizes. They don't do free software. I hate them."
An relevant note here would be to mention Spamikaze system (intro here).
In a nutshell, it sets up spamtrap e-mail addresses, and any IP that sends mail to that address is automatically added to the blacklist, and further mails from it are rejected at SMTP level. A false positive can be easily removed from the blacklist manually (example, PSBL).
I've started posting comments on slashdot news articles in 16 different areas - Apache, Apple, AskSlashdot, Books....
and I've also started having trouble counting things, and remembering what I just typed.
and I've also started having trouble counting things, and remembering what I just typed.
Check here if the link in the story disappoints you with no Administrative Contact information.
The 'LiveCD' download link for Syllable doesn't have any files currently.
that they are attempting to protect/support Open Source (no matter how disillusioned they may be about Linux 'disappearing' if MS included WMP...).
.. has been patented by the US Senate. EU Parliament can't do that this way...
Is the phone supposed to shut off (or display a BSOD) when shown the Finger?
Just a couple of (redundant) corrections:
... comparison with MIT is a different debate altogether... ]
1. IIIT is *not* the Indian equivalent of MIT. The story poster perhaps confused it with IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology). [ the best regarded technical education institutes in India
2. The name is not "Indian Institute of Information Technology", after a court order, the present name was changed to "International Institute of Information Technology".
It is an institute supported by many IT companies (including IBM and Microsoft), though that hasn't helped much to raise the academic standards much in comparison to IITs in India.
"If you depend on a secret for your security, what do you do when the secret is discovered? If it is easy to change, like a cryptographic key, you do so. If it's hard to change, like a cryptographic system or an operating system, you're stuck. You will be vulnerable until you invest the time and money to design another system."
The author has rightly pinpointed the pivotal dilemma of quite a many software designers. The problem is more about defining boundaries for modules handling security of the system. Do you integrate it strongly with the rest of the system? That creates a problem if a vulnerability is discovered and you have to invest more time and finances into taking care of all those 'integration points'. Do you design like a true pluggable module and let the system interact with it using few interfaces? That makes your whole system more transparent (some closed-source companies may whine here) and there may be possibilities of someone spoofing this external interface altogether. A balance is definitley required, but surprisingly most software designs seem to miss this point completely.
May seem like a nitpick, but isn't this "review" more of a "Table of Contents with brief description of chapters"?
Slashdot Book Review Guidelines
We never blamed Xbox.
Yes, Microsoft is the one. I never blame Windows or Visual Studio.
Phew...looks to me like yet another Microsoft-Slashdot contract ("conspiracy") to bring loads of traffic to Hotmail site...
.NET Passport and required for registration at many Web sites, includes:
c essibility
P.S. The options with "Share my other registration information" has this text:
"This information, which is stored in your Microsoft®
Birth Date
Country/Region
State/Territory
Gender
Ac
Time Zone
Occupation"
This means that whatever fake information I put in Hotmail would be used for all other sites? No Way!
Thanks for the relief from the GeForce-s......it has been a tiring search. :)
AFAI percieve it, this technology will not be used for "wearing" apps (really...apart from your sleeves, which other part of cloth are you prepared to look at repeatedly bending your neck or pulling up the cloth?)
Instead, it can be used in various scientific/space experiments (ya...think of the possibilities....this is an excellent weight reduction appliance where we need to transfer quick information, instead of screens)
you're actually stealing the programming
Okay! I will record only the ads and watch them 200 times...hope that will compensate them for the loss...
"Plans for the third installment in the PlayStation saga were rapidly stepped up when Sony saw the capabilities of Microsoft's Xbox..."
And then Microsoft steppted up their plans...
And then Nintendo stepped up their plans...
Looking at which Sony again stepped up....
ditto...
ditto...
This makes the job of Archive.org - like sites damn tough.
P.S. Are we losing information at a comparable rate to generation....?
I can suggest two sites you can check out for focussed information on this topic:
securityfocus.com
antionline.com
Don't worry, they're just e-mailing the link to the story...not the story itself !
:-)