Looks, like, I, need, to, work, on, my, writing, skillz, then.
Good thing I'm not a paid wordsmith.
And to think this all started because of my bad writing. It was so murky, that folks couldn't even realize that I was simply agreeing with Mr. Schneier's article, and saying that I think that it's a good idea to behave in ALL my affairs, ESPECIALLY the ones that I think are anonymous.
I regret the "grow up" comment. That elicited a negative reaction. I apologize.
I have found, that whenever folks truly believe they will not be called to account for their words/actions, they tend to...devolve. Return to their hunter/gatherer roots.
Sadly, we do this in a medium that has no "forget" switch.
I have seen my own comments, from years ago, that I would have SWORN were anonymous, pulled up and presented to me.
So, nowadays, I just try not to descend to the depths displayed in these comment threads.
Sadly, SlashDot seems to have quickly degenerated into a mindless, ad hominem mosh pit (shows my age, eh?). Just like CNN commentards.
I've been trying to do my part to be a good member here (I sort submissions and metamod every day, and try to use mod points wisely, including promoting comments that I disagree with, but deserve to be elevated, etc.).
I have a feeling that I'll probably sign off here in a bit.
A lot of...rather reactionary...folks immediately jumped to the thought that I am advocating suppression and censorship. The responses have been...illuminating.
All I said, was that I agree with him, and always act as if my Internet interactions (and many IRL interactions) are always in public, and behave here, the way that I would behave on a street or at the office.
It has nothing whatsoever with advocating the surveillance state. It is merely accepting it as a fact of life, like stoplight cameras and TSA perv-scanners. Once a fact of life has been accepted, then we can adjust our lives around it.
It's really a bit heartbreaking to see so many folks that should know better, acting out in such pithy ways; as if they cannot be tracked and identified (I was actually able to do that with one of the ACs in this discussion, and there was no need for anything other than a bit of simple correlation).
"THEY" know who you are, and what you did last summer. "THEY" know that you pull your pickle to vid clips of Granny and Fido. Sorry. I don't think it's right, and I'd rather that not be the case (you think YOUR life is bad, think about Granny -another example of collateral damage from this culture).
The discussions here went south pretty quickly. There's a great deal of crazy around this topic.
Oh yeah, these poor women are destroyed forever because someone took videos of them being naked. Plus, you could bring up "Child Porn" as another example why the Security Industrial Complex should receive massive amounts of money, crypto be outlawed and so on.
Man, you are full of shit. Exactly nobody was hurt except the feelings of these slimy surveillance salesmen and pervert government snoopers. You want to log all my traffic because these dumb cunts run Windows with a camera and microphone ? Sure as hell that makes sense. Much more than that they put black tape over their fucking camera. Or use Linux.
They are supposed to snoop on the 1% criminals on a case-by-case basis instead of doing a fishing expedition on the 99% who are law-abiding. If the crims/terrz use crypto, they can break into their houses and install snooping/keylogging gadgets. And then FUCK OFF AND LEAVE PEOPLE LIKE ME ALONE, YOU SCUMBAG.
Sadly, as is proven, every single day, lots of chronologically-advanced folks are unable to behave in a socially-responsible manner without restrictions.
In my experience, grown-ups have rules; they just have an internal barometer and police themselves. That clearly does not happen with a great many folks on the Internet. Reading some of the sites, articles and comments folks have, believing that they will never be called to task on their words, is really pretty depressing. What is even more alarming, is realizing that a lot of these folks have children and families.
Go ahead and think whatever you like. I happen to have some very direct experience in just this kind of thing. I'm not going to bother explaining it (in any case, if I have to, you wouldn't understand). I am quite aware of EXACTLY how bad people can get, and also how very good people can get. I've seen stuff, and met folks, that would freeze your blood. I'm not talking about combat experience, either. I know just what it is to live in a nation with no rules.
You are 100% correct. There's nothing there I'd disagree with.
However, lots and lots and LOTS of folks feel that "privacy" == "let my ID come out to PLAY!"
Humans don't seem able to behave without boundaries and rules.
In any case, alea jacta est. For a LONG time, internet trolls and really sociopathic folks have been using the same tools that we are screeching about in the hands of governments to do truly despicable things.
It's only when folks who can track them down and punish them get the tools that the caterwauling starts.
Here's an interesting book (How To Disappear). It tells how skip tracers work. They use a lot of old-school techniques, and have been using these same techniques long before the Interwebs.
True anonymity has always been a myth. People who rebel; either legitimately or not, always take a risk. The old Internet fostered a myth of "risk free rebellion."
Like unicorns and high sidhe, risk-free rebellion doesn't exist. If you truly believe in what you are doing, you will find a way to fight. It is a lot more difficult, these days, but, as the Al Queda folks in Yemen (who, unfortunately, truly believe in what they are doing) are showing, good old human ingenuity still tends to come out on top.
<sigh/>/b/ happened. That kind of stuff happened LONG before 4chan. Remember the Good Old Days? Before The September That Never Ended?
Remember alt.tastless? Remember all those really highbrow BBSes? THSTNE was the best thing that ever happened to the Internets, despite the (to this day) wailing of the oldtimers. There is no way that teacher could talk to that farmer without all those AOHell n00bs looking for pr0n on alt.binaries
Go ahead and give up on whatever you want. I take full advantage of the open nature of things, like sidewalks and crosswalks. Just because there is an 8-lane highway in between, doesn't mean that I should walk in it.
I really don't want some of the scumbags that let their ids puke all over the interwebs to be dictating any policy. They just fuel the watchers anyway.
There's always been a tradeoff between security, peace and prosperity. It is always about balance, a word that a lot of folks these days seem to need defined for them. I don't want all of anything, but I need some of everything. We all do.
I have already written off true anonymity (years ago).
When I am in public, at work, or with friends and family, I am constrained to behave myself. There may be different rules in different contexts, but there are always rules. Some written, some not.
The Internet gave an illusion of a "rule free" context, and look what happened.
That vacation is over. Time to behave like a grown-up.
I do most of my testing with IE7 and IE8 (and tend to want to support IE8), but I just set up an IE9 and an IE10 VM. I haven't really started testing with them much. That phase begins this weekend.
The Web standards are being followed a lot more closely by browsers. Of course, Microsoft doesn't believe in rounded corners (Anyway, I think that may be patented).
IE7 sucks just about as bad as IE6, but I keep a VM with IE7 (Vista) around for extreme testing.
Most of the issues I encounter these days come from JavaScript/DOM differences, and this service was worthless for that. I need to have VMs on my Mac with multiple versions of browsers. For this kind of testing, Macs are extremely useful, as I can run a full LAMP server on my Air, and run multiple VMs that connect to it as external sites. I can tweak in realtime.
VirtualHostX is also pretty useful, as I can develop sites on my laptop, then directly transition them to the server with no fiddling with mod_rewrite or DB settings.
Have you actually written any Joomla plugins that incorporate AJAX? Ever?
Would you like to see the open-source repository with mine?
Would you like to PROVE that you can do better? I'm EXTREMELY interested in your answer. If you are able to do so, then I would be happy to forgo my way of doing it in favor of yours.
Thanks for the tip. I have heard very good things about TextPattern and EZ Publish. However, the issue is that the folks who use my code are primarily "big 3" users; with a distressing number of Joomla users.
It has to do with "market penetration" and "community support," as much as good code, ease of extensibility, etc.
Try to play with the Atlassian product line databases. Makes Drupal look like a cakewalk.
However, the whole idea is to avoid direct database access. That's a good security best practice anyway.
In Joomla, I am forced to directly interact with the DB (in the installer). Maybe 3.0 is different, but I have finally been able to farm off the Joomla plugin to someone who is a lot more familiar with (and likes) Joomla.
And it used an MVC object structure that looked like the software architect had no idea of the goal of an mvc structure, but had read in a blog that mvc is good.
I'm pretty sure that it was designed by fairly young JAVA folks. The patterns are extremely similar to many academic exercises in JAVA.
Young folk are willing to work very hard, and hit the Kool-Aid like there's no tomorrow. It can be quite amusing to read some of the Joomla discussion forums.
Also, I think that they switch architects fairly frequently, so they tend to rewrite the whole damn system on a regular basis. Keeping a plugin compatible between all the various Joomla versions is a nightmare. The fact that I have to provide four different modules to do what one single file can do in other CMSes means that my installer is a real Rube Goldberg machine.
I tend to use WP for my own sites. It is not as extensible as Drupal, but I can get a really well-crafted site up and going within a day. I would not recommend WP as an engine for, say, the White House. They made a good call with Drupal there. I believe that they actually added security code to Drupal, and returned it to the repository.
Joomla is clearly an engine written by recent grad JAVA lovers that hate PHP. Drupal was clearly written by folks very familiar with PHP, and a great deal of coding experience in the real world.
PHP? <shrug/>. I use it, because it is important that folks actually be able to USE what I write. I'm not even slightly interested in pushing a coding philosophy. I need as many folks as possible to be able to install and run my code. I won't get that in any dynamic, database-driven server language other than PHP.
PHP is a suckass OO language. I tend to use OO as a Model layer or as a namespace. A lot of the rest tends to be procedural. I sometimes ROTFLMAO, when I see some of the conversations around the Joomla camp. It's like architects boasting about using mud daub to build a skyscraper.
However, for the kind of extensibility that Joomla offers, only Drupal can match it, and Drupal has that learning curve, so it tends to be popular amongst folks that want a heavily-customized site, with less knowledge, than Joomla.
Whoops. Posting before coffee.
Switch "Joomla" and "Drupal."
As noted, there is no such thing as a "perfect" CMS. Much as I may grouse, Joomla is extremely popular, and I need to support it. For many folks, Joomla is the "perfect" CMS.
Drupal is the best of the "big 3" CMSes. Hands down.
However, it has a Matterhorn learning curve, and I choose not to use it in most of my work; opting for WordPress.
The thing about Drupal is that it has an extremely solid extension mechanism. Lots of good hooks, and thoughtful design.
I write plugins for all 3 CMSes. I am extremely familiar with what it takes to extend each. Drupal and WP can be extended with a single file that allows me to provide a powerful administrative interface, content filter and module system.
Joomla, on the other hand, requires -I am not exaggerating- ten times as much work as either Drupal or WP, and, subsequently, ten times as many "problem nodes," for juicy, fat bugs.
For example, if I want to handle AJAX responses, Drupal and WP each offer a simple hook to intercept program execution at a point between CMS setup (authentication, module initialization, etc.) and HTTP output (I need to output prior to any headers being sent out). Since I can use the same module file, I can preserve object context. Also, they each have a very simple CSV options/preferences system that abstracts the database behind a basic functional interface.
In Joomla, I am forced to write an entire system plugin, and use a pretty hairy database "semaphore" system to communicate context. I also need to write a content plugin in order to allow a shortcode ability. In both Drupal and WP, the content filter is simply another functional interface in the same context.
However, for the kind of extensibility that Joomla offers, only Drupal can match it, and Drupal has that learning curve, so it tends to be popular amongst folks that want a heavily-customized site, with less knowledge, than Joomla.
After learning this, everything else will seem like a cakewalk.
Seriously, though, I LOVE coding, which is why I continue to do it, long after my company has told me they don't want my code anymore (Because managers don't code, dontcha know).
However, the kind of things that go on in my head while I code might not be at all attractive to a lot of folks. I'm weird, and accept that fact. It makes me a good coder, but has its price. A lot of folks aren't weird, like me.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks, like, I, need, to, work, on, my, writing, skillz, then.
Good thing I'm not a paid wordsmith.
And to think this all started because of my bad writing. It was so murky, that folks couldn't even realize that I was simply agreeing with Mr. Schneier's article, and saying that I think that it's a good idea to behave in ALL my affairs, ESPECIALLY the ones that I think are anonymous.
I regret the "grow up" comment. That elicited a negative reaction. I apologize.
I have found, that whenever folks truly believe they will not be called to account for their words/actions, they tend to...devolve. Return to their hunter/gatherer roots.
Sadly, we do this in a medium that has no "forget" switch.
I have seen my own comments, from years ago, that I would have SWORN were anonymous, pulled up and presented to me.
So, nowadays, I just try not to descend to the depths displayed in these comment threads.
Sadly, SlashDot seems to have quickly degenerated into a mindless, ad hominem mosh pit (shows my age, eh?). Just like CNN commentards.
I've been trying to do my part to be a good member here (I sort submissions and metamod every day, and try to use mod points wisely, including promoting comments that I disagree with, but deserve to be elevated, etc.).
I have a feeling that I'll probably sign off here in a bit.
Yup.
I agree with Bruce.
A lot of...rather reactionary...folks immediately jumped to the thought that I am advocating suppression and censorship. The responses have been...illuminating.
All I said, was that I agree with him, and always act as if my Internet interactions (and many IRL interactions) are always in public, and behave here, the way that I would behave on a street or at the office.
It has nothing whatsoever with advocating the surveillance state. It is merely accepting it as a fact of life, like stoplight cameras and TSA perv-scanners. Once a fact of life has been accepted, then we can adjust our lives around it.
It's really a bit heartbreaking to see so many folks that should know better, acting out in such pithy ways; as if they cannot be tracked and identified (I was actually able to do that with one of the ACs in this discussion, and there was no need for anything other than a bit of simple correlation).
"THEY" know who you are, and what you did last summer. "THEY" know that you pull your pickle to vid clips of Granny and Fido. Sorry. I don't think it's right, and I'd rather that not be the case (you think YOUR life is bad, think about Granny -another example of collateral damage from this culture).
The discussions here went south pretty quickly. There's a great deal of crazy around this topic.
After poking around a bit, I realized that I'm actually responding to crazy.
I have a personal rule not to do that. It's like hitting a sick kitten that's too weak to make it to the catbox. Not nice.
Sorry about that. I think I'll just ignore ACs. That will help a bit.
Oh yeah, these poor women are destroyed forever because someone took videos of them being naked. Plus, you could bring up "Child Porn" as another example why the Security Industrial Complex should receive massive amounts of money, crypto be outlawed and so on.
Man, you are full of shit. Exactly nobody was hurt except the feelings of these slimy surveillance salesmen and pervert government snoopers. You want to log all my traffic because these dumb cunts run Windows with a camera and microphone ? Sure as hell that makes sense. Much more than that they put black tape over their fucking camera. Or use Linux.
They are supposed to snoop on the 1% criminals on a case-by-case basis instead of doing a fishing expedition on the 99% who are law-abiding. If the crims/terrz use crypto, they can break into their houses and install snooping/keylogging gadgets. And then FUCK OFF AND LEAVE PEOPLE LIKE ME ALONE, YOU SCUMBAG.
case->rest();
Thanks, chum (in the "fishing" sense).
I KEES YOU, my AC "friend"!
One would think that, yes?
Sadly, as is proven, every single day, lots of chronologically-advanced folks are unable to behave in a socially-responsible manner without restrictions.
In my experience, grown-ups have rules; they just have an internal barometer and police themselves. That clearly does not happen with a great many folks on the Internet. Reading some of the sites, articles and comments folks have, believing that they will never be called to task on their words, is really pretty depressing. What is even more alarming, is realizing that a lot of these folks have children and families.
Go ahead and think whatever you like. I happen to have some very direct experience in just this kind of thing. I'm not going to bother explaining it (in any case, if I have to, you wouldn't understand). I am quite aware of EXACTLY how bad people can get, and also how very good people can get. I've seen stuff, and met folks, that would freeze your blood. I'm not talking about combat experience, either. I know just what it is to live in a nation with no rules.
<img src="blech.png" alt="child sticking tounge out" />
I guess, using inductive reasoning, that means that there ain't no such thing as "grown ups."
You are 100% correct. There's nothing there I'd disagree with.
However, lots and lots and LOTS of folks feel that "privacy" == "let my ID come out to PLAY!"
Humans don't seem able to behave without boundaries and rules.
In any case, alea jacta est. For a LONG time, internet trolls and really sociopathic folks have been using the same tools that we are screeching about in the hands of governments to do truly despicable things.
Exhibit A
It's only when folks who can track them down and punish them get the tools that the caterwauling starts.
Here's an interesting book (How To Disappear). It tells how skip tracers work. They use a lot of old-school techniques, and have been using these same techniques long before the Interwebs.
True anonymity has always been a myth. People who rebel; either legitimately or not, always take a risk. The old Internet fostered a myth of "risk free rebellion."
Like unicorns and high sidhe, risk-free rebellion doesn't exist. If you truly believe in what you are doing, you will find a way to fight. It is a lot more difficult, these days, but, as the Al Queda folks in Yemen (who, unfortunately, truly believe in what they are doing) are showing, good old human ingenuity still tends to come out on top.
<sigh /> /b/ happened. That kind of stuff happened LONG before 4chan. Remember the Good Old Days? Before The September That Never Ended?
Remember alt.tastless? Remember all those really highbrow BBSes? THSTNE was the best thing that ever happened to the Internets, despite the (to this day) wailing of the oldtimers. There is no way that teacher could talk to that farmer without all those AOHell n00bs looking for pr0n on alt.binaries
Go ahead and give up on whatever you want. I take full advantage of the open nature of things, like sidewalks and crosswalks. Just because there is an 8-lane highway in between, doesn't mean that I should walk in it.
I really don't want some of the scumbags that let their ids puke all over the interwebs to be dictating any policy. They just fuel the watchers anyway.
There's always been a tradeoff between security, peace and prosperity. It is always about balance, a word that a lot of folks these days seem to need defined for them. I don't want all of anything, but I need some of everything. We all do.
I have already written off true anonymity (years ago).
When I am in public, at work, or with friends and family, I am constrained to behave myself. There may be different rules in different contexts, but there are always rules. Some written, some not.
The Internet gave an illusion of a "rule free" context, and look what happened.
That vacation is over. Time to behave like a grown-up.
IE9 supports rounded corners just fine...
Cool.
I do most of my testing with IE7 and IE8 (and tend to want to support IE8), but I just set up an IE9 and an IE10 VM. I haven't really started testing with them much. That phase begins this weekend.
The Web standards are being followed a lot more closely by browsers. Of course, Microsoft doesn't believe in rounded corners (Anyway, I think that may be patented).
IE7 sucks just about as bad as IE6, but I keep a VM with IE7 (Vista) around for extreme testing.
Most of the issues I encounter these days come from JavaScript/DOM differences, and this service was worthless for that. I need to have VMs on my Mac with multiple versions of browsers. For this kind of testing, Macs are extremely useful, as I can run a full LAMP server on my Air, and run multiple VMs that connect to it as external sites. I can tweak in realtime.
VirtualHostX is also pretty useful, as I can develop sites on my laptop, then directly transition them to the server with no fiddling with mod_rewrite or DB settings.
I use what is productive for me, and I won't dictate to others what is productive to them.
The cross-platform file formats/standards/etc. are such that it makes a heck of a lot less difference, these days.
I do a lot of that kind of stuff.
I don't want to link to the site for my current initiative, as I don't like the "SlashDot Effect" on bandwidth-limited servers.
It's actually kind of difficult to chat offline in this joint. However, I have some experience in this area.
R. U. NUTTS?
Have you actually written any Joomla plugins that incorporate AJAX? Ever?
Would you like to see the open-source repository with mine?
Would you like to PROVE that you can do better? I'm EXTREMELY interested in your answer. If you are able to do so, then I would be happy to forgo my way of doing it in favor of yours.
Thanks for the tip. I have heard very good things about TextPattern and EZ Publish. However, the issue is that the folks who use my code are primarily "big 3" users; with a distressing number of Joomla users.
It has to do with "market penetration" and "community support," as much as good code, ease of extensibility, etc.
Try to play with the Atlassian product line databases. Makes Drupal look like a cakewalk.
However, the whole idea is to avoid direct database access. That's a good security best practice anyway.
In Joomla, I am forced to directly interact with the DB (in the installer). Maybe 3.0 is different, but I have finally been able to farm off the Joomla plugin to someone who is a lot more familiar with (and likes) Joomla.
And it used an MVC object structure that looked like the software architect had no idea of the goal of an mvc structure, but had read in a blog that mvc is good.
I'm pretty sure that it was designed by fairly young JAVA folks. The patterns are extremely similar to many academic exercises in JAVA.
Young folk are willing to work very hard, and hit the Kool-Aid like there's no tomorrow. It can be quite amusing to read some of the Joomla discussion forums.
Also, I think that they switch architects fairly frequently, so they tend to rewrite the whole damn system on a regular basis. Keeping a plugin compatible between all the various Joomla versions is a nightmare. The fact that I have to provide four different modules to do what one single file can do in other CMSes means that my installer is a real Rube Goldberg machine.
I posted up there, somewhere about this.
I tend to use WP for my own sites. It is not as extensible as Drupal, but I can get a really well-crafted site up and going within a day. I would not recommend WP as an engine for, say, the White House. They made a good call with Drupal there. I believe that they actually added security code to Drupal, and returned it to the repository.
Joomla is clearly an engine written by recent grad JAVA lovers that hate PHP. Drupal was clearly written by folks very familiar with PHP, and a great deal of coding experience in the real world.
PHP? <shrug />. I use it, because it is important that folks actually be able to USE what I write. I'm not even slightly interested in pushing a coding philosophy. I need as many folks as possible to be able to install and run my code. I won't get that in any dynamic, database-driven server language other than PHP.
PHP is a suckass OO language. I tend to use OO as a Model layer or as a namespace. A lot of the rest tends to be procedural. I sometimes ROTFLMAO, when I see some of the conversations around the Joomla camp. It's like architects boasting about using mud daub to build a skyscraper.
However, for the kind of extensibility that Joomla offers, only Drupal can match it, and Drupal has that learning curve, so it tends to be popular amongst folks that want a heavily-customized site, with less knowledge, than Joomla.
Whoops. Posting before coffee.
Switch "Joomla" and "Drupal."
As noted, there is no such thing as a "perfect" CMS. Much as I may grouse, Joomla is extremely popular, and I need to support it. For many folks, Joomla is the "perfect" CMS.
Drupal is the best of the "big 3" CMSes. Hands down.
However, it has a Matterhorn learning curve, and I choose not to use it in most of my work; opting for WordPress.
The thing about Drupal is that it has an extremely solid extension mechanism. Lots of good hooks, and thoughtful design.
I write plugins for all 3 CMSes. I am extremely familiar with what it takes to extend each. Drupal and WP can be extended with a single file that allows me to provide a powerful administrative interface, content filter and module system.
Joomla, on the other hand, requires -I am not exaggerating- ten times as much work as either Drupal or WP, and, subsequently, ten times as many "problem nodes," for juicy, fat bugs.
For example, if I want to handle AJAX responses, Drupal and WP each offer a simple hook to intercept program execution at a point between CMS setup (authentication, module initialization, etc.) and HTTP output (I need to output prior to any headers being sent out). Since I can use the same module file, I can preserve object context. Also, they each have a very simple CSV options/preferences system that abstracts the database behind a basic functional interface.
In Joomla, I am forced to write an entire system plugin, and use a pretty hairy database "semaphore" system to communicate context. I also need to write a content plugin in order to allow a shortcode ability. In both Drupal and WP, the content filter is simply another functional interface in the same context.
However, for the kind of extensibility that Joomla offers, only Drupal can match it, and Drupal has that learning curve, so it tends to be popular amongst folks that want a heavily-customized site, with less knowledge, than Joomla.
Short and sweet
After learning this, everything else will seem like a cakewalk.
Seriously, though, I LOVE coding, which is why I continue to do it, long after my company has told me they don't want my code anymore (Because managers don't code, dontcha know).
However, the kind of things that go on in my head while I code might not be at all attractive to a lot of folks. I'm weird, and accept that fact. It makes me a good coder, but has its price. A lot of folks aren't weird, like me.
OK, having given this some thought, I agree. It was condescending and presumptuous.
You are correct. No excuse. I was in a crappy mood, and expressed it in an indelicate manner.
Now, pay attention and take notes, because, in order to complete this module, you'll have to do an exercise.
To the original author: I sincerely apologize. I took something out on you in a public venue that was inappropriate.
I live by a code: Public transgressions get public apologies -in the same venue and audience as the transgression.
Please note that I am posting this under my /. account, as I did the original post.
EXERCISE:
Your turn.