This is asinine. And it's made worse by the fact that when you do use the app-switcher to switch to an open-in-the-background app, it's actually showing you a screenshot of the app as it was sometime prior to it getting frozen. When I reactivate the calculator app (not from a force-click, but open in the background), it shows a screenshot of calculator and I start tapping the numbers, but then the app actually becomes active and many of my taps were missed. I'd like it better if it showed a loading screen or something that would indicate that the app isn't ready yet. These things really aren't as quick as they say they are.
I love my kindle but ever since the various publishers and amazon settled and they started setting their own prices, the ebook prices are way too expensive. In a lot of cases they are more expensive than the print copies and they have way more restrictions. I can't lend or give them to my brother (some pubs allow lending but only N times and only for 2 weeks at a time, which is absolutely ridiculous). I can't donate the book to a library if I don't plan to read it again. I would be ok with these restrictions if the ebooks were cheaper.
The other thing that sucks on amazon/kindle is trying to find decent books. I have to go visit B&N to find new sci-fi/fantasy novels because the search/discovery on amazon is terrible. For every 1 fantasy novel by a major publisher and a well-regarded author, there are about 500 indie "books" that are just terrible. (Yes, there are some gems in there, but it's really difficult to find them.) It seems like amazon is just concerned with the volume of books on their store, not the quality of them. If I could filter out the "kindle unlimited" books from all of the lists it would make things a lot better.
Just a couple of days ago I canceled my netflix subscription because of the user-hostile behavior of their roku app. Just clicking a show to read a more detailed description or get a list of actors in it would cause it to play automatically. Hit back, then select it again, it autoplays again. It's impossible to browse the catalog and add shows to my queue. Their support channel is useless, they just say they'll pass the suggestion on. There are threads on reddit and the roku forums with many people complaining about the same thing. Netflix also had a blog post about this "new feature" but after they got hundreds and hundreds of complaints they just turned off commenting and deleted all the existing comments. I know it's only $8/month but I'm not interested in giving any more money to these people. And we've been subscribers almost since the beginning.
It's nice that I could cancel online without calling in to support (a lot of online services don't let you cancel online). But it's telling that there was no survey asking why I canceled.
I loved the old Dragon Warrior games on NES. However, when they remade Dragon Quest III they changed all the old english dialog to modern english. Everything also got all cutesy and I sort of remember a new integrated collectible item deal. All that crap they added on just annoyed me and took away from the core experience of the game. I'd love to play more remakes but stay true to the originals!
There seems to be some confusion -- this isn't a product to secure apache, it's a product to secure your web applications running on top of apache. It's designed to detect and prevent attacks on your app, not on the apache server itself.
It will suck on Roku, too, if you have a crappy/inconsistent connection. If it ever drops below a certain threshold, it will just degrade the quality to the next lowest stream it thinks it can support. Roku is worse than xbox/ps3 in that it seems to remember the resolution you usually stream at so even when the connection gets better (other times of the day, for example), it takes it a while to realize it and start getting the higher quality streams.
Use visual mode (shift-v) to highlight lines, then shell out to external programs to filter them, such as perltidy. To do that, with lines highlighted, type !perltidy (assuming you have it on your machine). This lets you filter specific lines instead of the whole file.
If the topic interests you at all, check out Michael Flynn's Firestar series. Near-future science fiction. I contend that it's the best sci-fi series ever written. No, these aren't affiliate links.
This comment is especially infuriating. Most PHP tutorials were written back when there was no other way to connect to a MySQL database other than using mysql_connect. PDO was only recently added to PHP. I guess someone on the internet should invent a magical program that automatically updates every tutorial ever written whenever the geniuses over at zend make a change to PHP. Oh wait, it would end up in a neverending loop.
It depends on what part of Microsoft you are comparing it to. If you are talking about their monopoly, probably not. However, if you are talking about their operating system loaded with a bunch of crap, ultra-slow, difficult to use, full of bugs, prone to viruses, then yes, there can definitely be a Microsoft of Linux. I think there already are a couple, but I'll leave the naming of names to others.
The original article said it would be up through Friday, why the early shutdown? Maybe it stayed up for 38 hours or whatever and then someone got in, so they post-pre-maturely ended the contest the minute before the crack?
Personally, I don't trust Firefox anymore. No matter how many times I disable "check for updates" it keeps checking for updates. No matter how many times I tell it to stop checking automatically for updates or upgrades for my extensions, it refuses to stop. Yes, I have used the preferences. I have tried manually setting them with about:config. Nothing will make it stop checking. This has been happening since the 1.5 beta and is persistent in 1.5 final.
It also appears to be impossible to install it without the "report to your master" feature (which is supposed to report crashes). It can be disabled (supposedly) later, but in the install you used to be able to uncheck it, now it's grayed out and gets installed by default every time.
Then there's the whole automatically prefetching links that you MAY click on in order to "speed up" the browsing. There's no way to tell if it's even doing this unless you are watching your network connection carefully, but it's ridiculous and it's hard to make it stop.
No application should be using the network connection without my explicit permission on each and every action. Typing a URL or clicking a link is permission, I'm TELLING it to go fetch that data. But doing crap in the background without asking me is just dishonest.
I'm not sure this is the case. Perhaps the construction industry is smarter because they don't try to redesign the 2x4s, insulation materials, toilet functions, piping, etc., on every freaking house. Rather, they leave those things up to the specialists and just purchase the results. It would be nice if people would construct software in such a way that it was infinitely pluggable. However, then a bunch of competing companies will have to get together and decide once and for all whether there's 12 or 16 inches between the wall studs, so the insulation makers know how wide to make their roles.
It already pisses me off that they won't let me skip the FBI warning or the movie studio splash screen. Can't fastfoward, can't skip, can't press "DVD Menu" - drives me nuts. This crap has gone far enough, they should have mandatory "Do whatever you want with it" clause instead. I guess they will try to say that skipping watching the studio splash screen is from now on illegal and protected by the DMCA.
If this is an example of good PHP coding someone please shoot me. They use their own internal "require_once" instead of simply using ini_set to set the include directories correctly. They name all their included files *.inc and *.class which can be a severe security issue if these files are available from the web root (which by default they are).
From the code I saw, everything is extremely over-engineered (read: too freaking complicated). It looks like they have some input sanitization functions but they aren't used consistently.
The coding style throughout isn't consistent (but who cares?).
On the plus side, they have used PHPDOC or some similar syntax to document their classes and functions (makes for good API docs). They have used external libraries for some things like templating and database abstraction (can't say much for their choices but at least they didn't rewrite those from scratch).
The error handling also looks particularly nightmarish:
if ($ret->isError()) { return array($ret->wrap(__FILE__, __LINE__), null); }
Not only should they have to prove that you distributed it, but they should also have to prove that you distributed it to someone who doesn't have the legal right to have it. This would further force them to go after the people downloading illegal material instead of the people who have it on their computer. If I downloaded SUPER MARIO, but I already own a copy (or 8) of it, then nobody committed a crime, right?
They should strip out the features people DON'T want, not the ones they do. Remove MSN messenger. Remove IE. Remove Windows media Player. Give me an Operating System, not a load of applications which are difficult if not impossible to remove when I realize they are there (and I never wanted them in the first place). Remove theme support, remove all the clunky "wizards" and other "features" that were supposed to make my life easier but instead frustrate the hell out of me.
Don't put an arbitrary limit on the number of programs that can be run at once. Get rid of the stuff I don't want to pay for to begin with. I never would have switched to Linux had I had access to a $50.00 version of Windows that didn't have all that crap built in.
I totally disagree. Stored Procedures have a lot of benefits.
Speed
Code Reuse - if everyone uses stored procedures, it's less likely that your developers will just write another (duplicate?) query when they don't want to go mucking around in all your php/asp classes/functions.
Bandwidth between the database server and your web server will be reduced - instead of passing huge queries across the link, you send a simple stored procedure call.
Plus, PL/SQL is really easy to use and learn and is relatively portable across at least PostgreSQL and Oracle.
They also provide a good facility for logging or tracking that can be (should be!) completely transparent to the web application.
Slashdot Mirror
This is asinine. And it's made worse by the fact that when you do use the app-switcher to switch to an open-in-the-background app, it's actually showing you a screenshot of the app as it was sometime prior to it getting frozen. When I reactivate the calculator app (not from a force-click, but open in the background), it shows a screenshot of calculator and I start tapping the numbers, but then the app actually becomes active and many of my taps were missed. I'd like it better if it showed a loading screen or something that would indicate that the app isn't ready yet. These things really aren't as quick as they say they are.
I love my kindle but ever since the various publishers and amazon settled and they started setting their own prices, the ebook prices are way too expensive. In a lot of cases they are more expensive than the print copies and they have way more restrictions. I can't lend or give them to my brother (some pubs allow lending but only N times and only for 2 weeks at a time, which is absolutely ridiculous). I can't donate the book to a library if I don't plan to read it again. I would be ok with these restrictions if the ebooks were cheaper.
The other thing that sucks on amazon/kindle is trying to find decent books. I have to go visit B&N to find new sci-fi/fantasy novels because the search/discovery on amazon is terrible. For every 1 fantasy novel by a major publisher and a well-regarded author, there are about 500 indie "books" that are just terrible. (Yes, there are some gems in there, but it's really difficult to find them.) It seems like amazon is just concerned with the volume of books on their store, not the quality of them. If I could filter out the "kindle unlimited" books from all of the lists it would make things a lot better.
Just a couple of days ago I canceled my netflix subscription because of the user-hostile behavior of their roku app. Just clicking a show to read a more detailed description or get a list of actors in it would cause it to play automatically. Hit back, then select it again, it autoplays again. It's impossible to browse the catalog and add shows to my queue. Their support channel is useless, they just say they'll pass the suggestion on. There are threads on reddit and the roku forums with many people complaining about the same thing. Netflix also had a blog post about this "new feature" but after they got hundreds and hundreds of complaints they just turned off commenting and deleted all the existing comments. I know it's only $8/month but I'm not interested in giving any more money to these people. And we've been subscribers almost since the beginning.
It's nice that I could cancel online without calling in to support (a lot of online services don't let you cancel online). But it's telling that there was no survey asking why I canceled.
Just wanted to say thanks, improvements are very welcome.
I loved the old Dragon Warrior games on NES. However, when they remade Dragon Quest III they changed all the old english dialog to modern english. Everything also got all cutesy and I sort of remember a new integrated collectible item deal. All that crap they added on just annoyed me and took away from the core experience of the game. I'd love to play more remakes but stay true to the originals!
Neither story nor the original article text include a link to the game on Steam. http://store.steampowered.com/...
(if you scroll past a bunch of ad blocks you can find it next to "source" on the original article)
There seems to be some confusion -- this isn't a product to secure apache, it's a product to secure your web applications running on top of apache. It's designed to detect and prevent attacks on your app, not on the apache server itself.
It will suck on Roku, too, if you have a crappy/inconsistent connection. If it ever drops below a certain threshold, it will just degrade the quality to the next lowest stream it thinks it can support. Roku is worse than xbox/ps3 in that it seems to remember the resolution you usually stream at so even when the connection gets better (other times of the day, for example), it takes it a while to realize it and start getting the higher quality streams.
Use visual mode (shift-v) to highlight lines, then shell out to external programs to filter them, such as perltidy. To do that, with lines highlighted, type !perltidy (assuming you have it on your machine). This lets you filter specific lines instead of the whole file.
If the topic interests you at all, check out Michael Flynn's Firestar series. Near-future science fiction. I contend that it's the best sci-fi series ever written. No, these aren't affiliate links.
http://www.amazon.com/Firestar-Michael-Flynn/dp/0812530063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218256538&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Rogue-Star-Firestar-Michael-Flynn/dp/0812542991/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Lodestar-Firestar-Michael-Flynn/dp/0812542967/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Stars-Firestar-Michael-Flynn/dp/0812561848/ref=pd_sim_b_1
This comment is especially infuriating. Most PHP tutorials were written back when there was no other way to connect to a MySQL database other than using mysql_connect. PDO was only recently added to PHP. I guess someone on the internet should invent a magical program that automatically updates every tutorial ever written whenever the geniuses over at zend make a change to PHP. Oh wait, it would end up in a neverending loop.
It depends on what part of Microsoft you are comparing it to. If you are talking about their monopoly, probably not. However, if you are talking about their operating system loaded with a bunch of crap, ultra-slow, difficult to use, full of bugs, prone to viruses, then yes, there can definitely be a Microsoft of Linux. I think there already are a couple, but I'll leave the naming of names to others.
I tried to download the code examples but the site is asking me for a special code that is printed inside the book. Bleh.
The original article said it would be up through Friday, why the early shutdown? Maybe it stayed up for 38 hours or whatever and then someone got in, so they post-pre-maturely ended the contest the minute before the crack?
Personally, I don't trust Firefox anymore. No matter how many times I disable "check for updates" it keeps checking for updates. No matter how many times I tell it to stop checking automatically for updates or upgrades for my extensions, it refuses to stop. Yes, I have used the preferences. I have tried manually setting them with about:config. Nothing will make it stop checking. This has been happening since the 1.5 beta and is persistent in 1.5 final.
It also appears to be impossible to install it without the "report to your master" feature (which is supposed to report crashes). It can be disabled (supposedly) later, but in the install you used to be able to uncheck it, now it's grayed out and gets installed by default every time.
Then there's the whole automatically prefetching links that you MAY click on in order to "speed up" the browsing. There's no way to tell if it's even doing this unless you are watching your network connection carefully, but it's ridiculous and it's hard to make it stop.
No application should be using the network connection without my explicit permission on each and every action. Typing a URL or clicking a link is permission, I'm TELLING it to go fetch that data. But doing crap in the background without asking me is just dishonest.
I'm not sure this is the case. Perhaps the construction industry is smarter because they don't try to redesign the 2x4s, insulation materials, toilet functions, piping, etc., on every freaking house. Rather, they leave those things up to the specialists and just purchase the results. It would be nice if people would construct software in such a way that it was infinitely pluggable. However, then a bunch of competing companies will have to get together and decide once and for all whether there's 12 or 16 inches between the wall studs, so the insulation makers know how wide to make their roles.
It already pisses me off that they won't let me skip the FBI warning or the movie studio splash screen. Can't fastfoward, can't skip, can't press "DVD Menu" - drives me nuts. This crap has gone far enough, they should have mandatory "Do whatever you want with it" clause instead. I guess they will try to say that skipping watching the studio splash screen is from now on illegal and protected by the DMCA.
From the code I saw, everything is extremely over-engineered (read: too freaking complicated). It looks like they have some input sanitization functions but they aren't used consistently.
The coding style throughout isn't consistent (but who cares?).
On the plus side, they have used PHPDOC or some similar syntax to document their classes and functions (makes for good API docs). They have used external libraries for some things like templating and database abstraction (can't say much for their choices but at least they didn't rewrite those from scratch).
The error handling also looks particularly nightmarish:(repeated 12 times in one 100 line file!!!!)
Not only should they have to prove that you distributed it, but they should also have to prove that you distributed it to someone who doesn't have the legal right to have it. This would further force them to go after the people downloading illegal material instead of the people who have it on their computer. If I downloaded SUPER MARIO, but I already own a copy (or 8) of it, then nobody committed a crime, right?
Haha if it sells out, everyone complains that they didn't ship enough, if it doesn't sell out, everyone complains that it's a flop. Lose, lose.
They should strip out the features people DON'T want, not the ones they do. Remove MSN messenger. Remove IE. Remove Windows media Player. Give me an Operating System, not a load of applications which are difficult if not impossible to remove when I realize they are there (and I never wanted them in the first place). Remove theme support, remove all the clunky "wizards" and other "features" that were supposed to make my life easier but instead frustrate the hell out of me.
Don't put an arbitrary limit on the number of programs that can be run at once. Get rid of the stuff I don't want to pay for to begin with. I never would have switched to Linux had I had access to a $50.00 version of Windows that didn't have all that crap built in.
Thanks!
I totally disagree. Stored Procedures have a lot of benefits.
Speed
Code Reuse - if everyone uses stored procedures, it's less likely that your developers will just write another (duplicate?) query when they don't want to go mucking around in all your php/asp classes/functions.
Bandwidth between the database server and your web server will be reduced - instead of passing huge queries across the link, you send a simple stored procedure call.
Plus, PL/SQL is really easy to use and learn and is relatively portable across at least PostgreSQL and Oracle.
They also provide a good facility for logging or tracking that can be (should be!) completely transparent to the web application.
A linksys wireless router I bought recently stopped working after a day so I returned it and bought a d-link. Glad, now, even though it was a pain ;)