I'm employed as a senior developer. I've been working in the field for about 25 years. The problem is that the job of software developer is that of an inventor with a massive assortment of parts to build from and methods to build with. Add to that the fact that clients don't really understand the problem they're asking the developer to solve and that the problem is usually outside of the developer's core knowledge areas. Ask a dozen experienced developers how they would solve a problem and you're likely to get a dozen different answers, and if you tried to implement each of them you'd find reasons that they're all bad in one way or another.
Instead of looking for a dev who isn't bad at what they do, look for one who is passionate about building software and not *very* bad at building it.
(*) Except maybe Donald Knuth. That dude knows his shit. But even he choses some bazaar tools to solve problems making it difficult to work with other devs.
I am a long time member of the ACM, and I've always thought the value for money was excellent. I'm not an academic and I don't go to conferences. The Safari and 24/7 Books Online subscriptions, plus the skillsoft training is where I see most of the value.
Just the weekend before last I was writing a SMS slot machine game using my iPad while sitting around a camp fire at a Scout camp. A few of my Scouts were interested enough to let me walk them through how it worked. It was javascript for node.js.
I really liked my fitbit, but it somehow came off while I was camping and I never bothered replacing it.
Now I just use Endomondo to track activities I'm really interested in tracking from my phone. I'm very interested in the newer more energy efficient technologies being introduced to phones for tracking activity since I've almost always got mine on me anyway.
That is true for modern operating systems. The BIOS (Basic Input Output System) ran as the layer under DOS before Windows NT. I remember writing DOS apps, and invoking both DOS and BIOS interrupts to get things done with the disks, keyboard and monitor. DOS acted as a layer on top of the BIOS, so it was still generally used even when you made a call to DOS. Back in the day the BIOS code would have been a strong contender except for the fact that it was written in assembler and therefore disqualified.
I think you're on the right track though... The microcontrollers which run hard disk drives execute the same code repeatedly, and while many microcontrollers are programmed in assembler, I prefer to do my microcontroller programming in C. I betcha some hard drives have microcontrollers executing code written in C.
I used to have two full sized racks in my basement. I had smoked glass doors on the front side into my home office, and a storage room behind them so that I could get to the backs of them.
I also built a small data-centre with 12 full sized racks, and for it I had a 12RU box wall mounted in addition to the floor models which I used for the main routers and telephony. It was on hinges and swung away from the wall so that I could get at the back. I don't recall the price, but I know it wasn't cheap. Also I had trouble with the cable management between the equipment mounted in it, and the fibre and other feeds coming into it.
Either way I think you're correct that having access to the back is pretty much a requirement for it to be very usable.
BTW, I got rid of all my racks in the end. I gave away my hosting business and consolidated my home stuff into a couple of towers that sit on a desk. I now have a nice wood lathe where the old racks used to sit. I mounted my home routers and switches into the joists with wood screws. Maybe you don't need a rack at all?
This captured signals in Canada and provided them for live streaming. It was eventually shut down by the broadcasters because it was illegal in the US, even though it was legal in Canada. The owners of the business wanted to be able to travel to the US without being arrested if I recall it correctly. I worked on the project at the time. It was loads of fun! I'd like to see this kind of thing thrive one day.
Personally this reminded me of years gone by when Slashdot had more CmdrTaco in it. I didn't think it was petty; you said clearly that you weren't mad at Blizzard, you were just writing a short essay on attachment to online identities. I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work.
You may never know... I clicked the "URL" link under your handle, then clicked on your nav for "Resume" and got a broken link. Good luck with that job upgrade.
I'd hire a decent programmer that would work for $13/hr CDN and even give you a raise, but I don't even know if you live in the greater Toronto area.
Even law makers use Google. I'll eat my slashdot user number if this becomes law as now written. They'll find a way to make it more reasonable.
That said, "more reasonable" might not be enough, and I'm tired to seeing our rights to information eroded. I gain more and more respect for Mr. Stallman each day.
I've never had a spyware problem on my own PC. I use IE for web browsing and I use outlook for email. I do run Norton Antivirus and Norton Internet Security 2004. This is not an endorsement of these products, just a statement of fact.
I don't think my dad has ever had a spyware problem, but he runs Opera for his web and email needs. Most other Windows users I know have had/are having spyware problems. I think this is largely because they like to click buttons labled "Yes" or they don't keep their systems up to date with Windows Update. I don't know for sure.
You know, every time I post to Slashdot in a way that isn't anti-microsoft I feel almost as though I'm trolling for Linux zealots, but I'm honestly just trying to provide some real information from a real Windows user. I've also been running Linux since 1993. There was a few years of that time when I only ran Linux, but on the desktop I honestly like Windows better even with the need for Norton like products.
I wish I could tell you how I replicated this! At first I was just thinking about the code. My first thought was authentication against a database vs against values in the web.config, but that was proven wrong. In the end, the only thing I could come up with was that my server is hardened with IISLockdown, which does pre-process URL's before they hit the webapp layer. That said, I've found some sites even on my local IIS under XP which isn't hardened with IISLockdown aren't vulnerable, so I don't know what the secrets of this trick are.
You may be right, or they may just be hedging since the fix was probably released in haste and probably wasn't fully tested.
I do know that before applying the fix I was able to bypass the authentication with the %5c trick, and now I cannot. I will keep my eye on the issue!
BTW, I realized an obvious pattern to which sites were not vulnerable. I'm hosting them all on my own box with IISLockdown installed. The vulnerable site is hosted elsewhere and I don't know if they've installed IISLockdown or not.
I tested the 5 sites I've used this feature on over the last couple of years. Out of those 5 sites, only one proved to be vulnerable. I didn't take the time to find any pattern. None was obvious.
The test took about 10 minutes. Then I applied the work-around from MS, and uploaded that to the server. That took about a minute. Then I tested the site in question, ensured that the hole was closed and the site still functioned correctly. The site isn't too complicated, so that took less than 5 minutes.
So the total impact to me so far was less than the time spent reading the replies to this post on slashdot!
That said, I agree that an open source solution where a patch could be released right away would have been much better.
Traffic shaping is generally done by the port the communication uses (80 for web, 25 for sending email, etc). I had a quick look at the technical docs for this, but didn't see any mention of port selection. This leads me to think that it uses one port just like most other Internet services. The encryption has nothing to do with this. Still, I like the idea.
I had a similar idea that kept me up one night until I got up and started writing specs for it. I can now sleep comforatably knowing someone else has put a lot more thought into it than I have!
If I wrote a program that allowed users to put a CD into their CD-ROM drive and allow other users to rip a copy of that CD over the Internet, would that be legal? It looks to me like it might be.
I'm very very tempted to write such a program. We pay the levy anyway, might as well take full advantage of it. I just don't want to loose my house, business, etc when I get sued.
I bought a couple inexpensive racks like mucicians use that only had the fronts with no support for the back. These are great because I could bolt them into the concrete floor, and they're perfectly parallel, and they screws and spacing are the same as for computer gear. For my UPS, switches, and other small gear I just bolt in the front and I'm good to go. For servers with rails, I have some 2x4's at the back where I can use drywall screws to attach them. I do need to drill my own holes in the rails to make them fit, but it is cheap.
I made my office next to my storage room so the servers are in the storage room with nice heavy smoked glass doors in front of the racks. I ran mouse, keyboard, VGA Printer and a pile of cat5 cables through the wall when I built it so that I could run a KVM to control the servers from the office. Now I only have to worry about that stuff changing to USB or something before I have to run more cables. The storage room has a window in it, so when it is hot I just open the window and put a fan in the window... Cooling problem solved. I have about 8 servers, 2 switches, 2 routers, 1 large UPS and the KVM running in there with room to spare.
While in general I agree with you 100%, my favorite desktop of all time was a Solaris/SPARC box. Well, ok, it was also a AMD/Windows box. It had the PC on a card add-on, so I could run Windows on that with its own VGA monitor, plus I had two monitors on the Solaris side. Working between UNIX and Windows was easy, the mouse just moved across all three monitors, and cut and paste between them was transparent. Sweeeet. Unfortunately, when I quit that job I didn't get to keep the machine.
That said, a review of Solaris as a server OS would be useful. A review of Solaris as a desktop OS seems kind of silly to me.
Re:moving towards bloatware or are these important
on
C# 2.0 Spec Released
·
· Score: 1
Um, vb.net pretty much destroys backwards compatibility with other vb code. I don't think MS is afread of breaking compatibility in the interests of code compatibility. There are many other examples. Just look at database API's. Breaking compatibility is a good thing that both Linux and Microsoft share.
Ah, now that is +5 Informative material! The article does make it look as though they've specifically excluded cable and satellite. If that is not the case, then I'm equally against this <grin>, but more pissed off since it would affect my PVR habits. Oh well, I'll probably just stop watching anything I can't time shift. I watch too much TV anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, the article is poorly titled. The government is calling it the Ontario Basic Income Pilot: https://www.ontario.ca/page/on...
Agreed. Anyone with less than a 4 digit ID is too old to post anything of value.
I'm employed as a senior developer. I've been working in the field for about 25 years. The problem is that the job of software developer is that of an inventor with a massive assortment of parts to build from and methods to build with. Add to that the fact that clients don't really understand the problem they're asking the developer to solve and that the problem is usually outside of the developer's core knowledge areas. Ask a dozen experienced developers how they would solve a problem and you're likely to get a dozen different answers, and if you tried to implement each of them you'd find reasons that they're all bad in one way or another.
Instead of looking for a dev who isn't bad at what they do, look for one who is passionate about building software and not *very* bad at building it.
(*) Except maybe Donald Knuth. That dude knows his shit. But even he choses some bazaar tools to solve problems making it difficult to work with other devs.
I am a long time member of the ACM, and I've always thought the value for money was excellent. I'm not an academic and I don't go to conferences. The Safari and 24/7 Books Online subscriptions, plus the skillsoft training is where I see most of the value.
Just the weekend before last I was writing a SMS slot machine game using my iPad while sitting around a camp fire at a Scout camp. A few of my Scouts were interested enough to let me walk them through how it worked. It was javascript for node.js.
I really liked my fitbit, but it somehow came off while I was camping and I never bothered replacing it.
Now I just use Endomondo to track activities I'm really interested in tracking from my phone. I'm very interested in the newer more energy efficient technologies being introduced to phones for tracking activity since I've almost always got mine on me anyway.
That is true for modern operating systems. The BIOS (Basic Input Output System) ran as the layer under DOS before Windows NT. I remember writing DOS apps, and invoking both DOS and BIOS interrupts to get things done with the disks, keyboard and monitor. DOS acted as a layer on top of the BIOS, so it was still generally used even when you made a call to DOS. Back in the day the BIOS code would have been a strong contender except for the fact that it was written in assembler and therefore disqualified.
I think you're on the right track though... The microcontrollers which run hard disk drives execute the same code repeatedly, and while many microcontrollers are programmed in assembler, I prefer to do my microcontroller programming in C. I betcha some hard drives have microcontrollers executing code written in C.
As you might have imagined, my beard is grey.
I used to have two full sized racks in my basement. I had smoked glass doors on the front side into my home office, and a storage room behind them so that I could get to the backs of them.
I also built a small data-centre with 12 full sized racks, and for it I had a 12RU box wall mounted in addition to the floor models which I used for the main routers and telephony. It was on hinges and swung away from the wall so that I could get at the back. I don't recall the price, but I know it wasn't cheap. Also I had trouble with the cable management between the equipment mounted in it, and the fibre and other feeds coming into it.
Either way I think you're correct that having access to the back is pretty much a requirement for it to be very usable.
BTW, I got rid of all my racks in the end. I gave away my hosting business and consolidated my home stuff into a couple of towers that sit on a desk. I now have a nice wood lathe where the old racks used to sit. I mounted my home routers and switches into the joists with wood screws. Maybe you don't need a rack at all?
Sounds a lot like iCraveTV: http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=icravetv
This captured signals in Canada and provided them for live streaming. It was eventually shut down by the broadcasters because it was illegal in the US, even though it was legal in Canada. The owners of the business wanted to be able to travel to the US without being arrested if I recall it correctly. I worked on the project at the time. It was loads of fun! I'd like to see this kind of thing thrive one day.
You will be missed. Best wishes for whatever the future brings!
Personally this reminded me of years gone by when Slashdot had more CmdrTaco in it. I didn't think it was petty; you said clearly that you weren't mad at Blizzard, you were just writing a short essay on attachment to online identities. I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work.
jason, I'm sorry mod points I have not for you.
Powerful is the Post-it notes plus apg force.
You may never know... I clicked the "URL" link under your handle, then clicked on your nav for "Resume" and got a broken link. Good luck with that job upgrade.
I'd hire a decent programmer that would work for $13/hr CDN and even give you a raise, but I don't even know if you live in the greater Toronto area.
Even law makers use Google. I'll eat my slashdot user number if this becomes law as now written. They'll find a way to make it more reasonable.
That said, "more reasonable" might not be enough, and I'm tired to seeing our rights to information eroded. I gain more and more respect for Mr. Stallman each day.
I've never had a spyware problem on my own PC. I use IE for web browsing and I use outlook for email. I do run Norton Antivirus and Norton Internet Security 2004. This is not an endorsement of these products, just a statement of fact.
I don't think my dad has ever had a spyware problem, but he runs Opera for his web and email needs. Most other Windows users I know have had/are having spyware problems. I think this is largely because they like to click buttons labled "Yes" or they don't keep their systems up to date with Windows Update. I don't know for sure.
You know, every time I post to Slashdot in a way that isn't anti-microsoft I feel almost as though I'm trolling for Linux zealots, but I'm honestly just trying to provide some real information from a real Windows user. I've also been running Linux since 1993. There was a few years of that time when I only ran Linux, but on the desktop I honestly like Windows better even with the need for Norton like products.
I wish I could tell you how I replicated this! At first I was just thinking about the code. My first thought was authentication against a database vs against values in the web.config, but that was proven wrong. In the end, the only thing I could come up with was that my server is hardened with IISLockdown, which does pre-process URL's before they hit the webapp layer. That said, I've found some sites even on my local IIS under XP which isn't hardened with IISLockdown aren't vulnerable, so I don't know what the secrets of this trick are.
You may be right, or they may just be hedging since the fix was probably released in haste and probably wasn't fully tested.
I do know that before applying the fix I was able to bypass the authentication with the %5c trick, and now I cannot. I will keep my eye on the issue!
BTW, I realized an obvious pattern to which sites were not vulnerable. I'm hosting them all on my own box with IISLockdown installed. The vulnerable site is hosted elsewhere and I don't know if they've installed IISLockdown or not.
I tested the 5 sites I've used this feature on over the last couple of years. Out of those 5 sites, only one proved to be vulnerable. I didn't take the time to find any pattern. None was obvious.
The test took about 10 minutes. Then I applied the work-around from MS, and uploaded that to the server. That took about a minute. Then I tested the site in question, ensured that the hole was closed and the site still functioned correctly. The site isn't too complicated, so that took less than 5 minutes.
So the total impact to me so far was less than the time spent reading the replies to this post on slashdot!
That said, I agree that an open source solution where a patch could be released right away would have been much better.
For those who really want to know, it is pronounced "Zamel".
Traffic shaping is generally done by the port the communication uses (80 for web, 25 for sending email, etc). I had a quick look at the technical docs for this, but didn't see any mention of port selection. This leads me to think that it uses one port just like most other Internet services. The encryption has nothing to do with this. Still, I like the idea.
I had a similar idea that kept me up one night until I got up and started writing specs for it. I can now sleep comforatably knowing someone else has put a lot more thought into it than I have!
If I wrote a program that allowed users to put a CD into their CD-ROM drive and allow other users to rip a copy of that CD over the Internet, would that be legal? It looks to me like it might be.
I'm very very tempted to write such a program. We pay the levy anyway, might as well take full advantage of it. I just don't want to loose my house, business, etc when I get sued.
I bought a couple inexpensive racks like mucicians use that only had the fronts with no support for the back. These are great because I could bolt them into the concrete floor, and they're perfectly parallel, and they screws and spacing are the same as for computer gear. For my UPS, switches, and other small gear I just bolt in the front and I'm good to go. For servers with rails, I have some 2x4's at the back where I can use drywall screws to attach them. I do need to drill my own holes in the rails to make them fit, but it is cheap.
I made my office next to my storage room so the servers are in the storage room with nice heavy smoked glass doors in front of the racks. I ran mouse, keyboard, VGA Printer and a pile of cat5 cables through the wall when I built it so that I could run a KVM to control the servers from the office. Now I only have to worry about that stuff changing to USB or something before I have to run more cables. The storage room has a window in it, so when it is hot I just open the window and put a fan in the window... Cooling problem solved. I have about 8 servers, 2 switches, 2 routers, 1 large UPS and the KVM running in there with room to spare.
While in general I agree with you 100%, my favorite desktop of all time was a Solaris/SPARC box. Well, ok, it was also a AMD/Windows box. It had the PC on a card add-on, so I could run Windows on that with its own VGA monitor, plus I had two monitors on the Solaris side. Working between UNIX and Windows was easy, the mouse just moved across all three monitors, and cut and paste between them was transparent. Sweeeet. Unfortunately, when I quit that job I didn't get to keep the machine.
That said, a review of Solaris as a server OS would be useful. A review of Solaris as a desktop OS seems kind of silly to me.
Um, vb.net pretty much destroys backwards compatibility with other vb code. I don't think MS is afread of breaking compatibility in the interests of code compatibility. There are many other examples. Just look at database API's. Breaking compatibility is a good thing that both Linux and Microsoft share.
Ah, now that is +5 Informative material! The article does make it look as though they've specifically excluded cable and satellite. If that is not the case, then I'm equally against this <grin>, but more pissed off since it would affect my PVR habits. Oh well, I'll probably just stop watching anything I can't time shift. I watch too much TV anyway.