what he called "C bigots." These were guys that would spend three weeks hacking C just to put up a command button, and felt that that was only reasonable because, after all, the only real programming language was C.
Oh yeah? In my day we had to dress like janitors and break into Xerox ParcPlace to swipe GUI code to get our buttons.
Yeah yeah, "get off my lawn", I know. And that was an exaggeration (I think it was, my friend is not given to bouts of hyperbole) but if you've ever encountered that personality type, you'll know what I mean. Like that old article Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal said about such individuals, "If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in Assembler. If you can't do it in Assembler, it isn't worth doing." They may be smart, they may be good... but they aren't versatile, and because they insist upon fitting every application requirement into their limited repertoire, they waste a lot of time and energy. When your only tool is a hammer...
There's a lot in common between language bigots and many Apple owners, I've noticed. "I'm better'n you because I have this", which is simply a rationalization for their own self-imposed limitations. Also, I think a lot of that comes from a basic unwillingness to learn, a certain sense of ego-driven entitlement: "I already invested all this time learning {insert favorite language here} and the world owes me a living working in it." Well, the world doesn't, actually. To me, one of the great parts about having been in this field for so long is that there's always something new to learn, some new way to do what I love to do. As soon as that stops being true, because I no longer find learning worthwhile or interesting, then I'll find another way to earn a living. If I can. If I can't, well, I'll just have to deal with that.
Or retire. I'm not as far away from that as I would prefer to be, alas.
Reading this post makes me glad I don't live in America. Liking a company because they give you want any decent civilisation gives you by default (health care, retirement) must be awful.
Nice job of selective reading there. Did you also get the part about a "great bunch of coworkers?" Or does your "civilised" environment automatically grant you that? The very simple point I was trying to get across (which you willfully ignored in your attempt to slam my country by the way, thank you very much) is that there is more to any programming job than just the language you get to work in. Only very young, inexperienced people will look at the software field with such a narrow view. Once he gets a few jobs (and a few languages and operating systems under his belt) I think the submitter will probably have a very different take on the matter.
Something.NET proponents seem unable or unwilling to do. Most.NET apps would be better written as web apps and the remainder in C, C++, ObjC or something like Vala (I think Mono can do AOT compilation -- yet it's still a poor choice). Welcome to the real world where few except "pompous asshole" "language bigots" are placing long-term bets on the.NET platform.
I wasn't promoting.Net, and in fact I'm not a.Net proponent. I was just saying that limiting one's knowledge of one's own field isn't always a winning move. That's especially true when economics are a factor. I'm glad that you are able to work in the language(s) of your choice, and maybe don't have any real economic considerations to deal with. The rest of us don't live in that perfect world (I know I don't... I have people whom I care about, and who depend upon me.) And, as others have pointed out,.Net is, like it or not, popular in the corporate world and if what you need is a job, you do what you have to do. Maybe, if you're a Unix/Linux/Solaris guy you get to work in an environment that suits your personal preferences/prejudices. Or, maybe you have bills to pay... and you don't. That's life. It's not right or wrong, it's just the way things are.
There are a lot of people that have decided that their way of looking at the world is the only one, and don't accept that their might be another way. Maybe not a better way, necessarily, although "better" is a loaded term at best. That's true of any of the major camps:.Net, LAMP, you name it. If you took anything away from my post at all, it's that I believe that steadfastly refusing to look at what the other side has to offer is nothing but self-justified, willful ignorance. Even if after studying another approach you still find it wanting, well, one should know thine enemy.
These are the type of comments that I was blissfully unaware of when the old comments system was still in place and you could really filter everything that scored lower than 1 out. In the new system, that is not possible anymore. I keep seeing posts scoring 0 since the new system is in place. Or is there a trick that I don't know of to get rid of these posts?
Please do cite where those diesel electric plants are. Diesel is way to expensive to run even a decent size business generator on much less a power plant.
Depends. Self-generation can actually be cost-effective beyond a certain point, although local power companies will usually go to court to try and prevent it.
Doctors and mechanics, on the other hand, strive to provide corrective services. Bodies and cars break, they try to fix them... make things better in exchange for payment.
Well, let me give you an example of an attorney that made things better. He wasn't even my attorney.
About twenty five years ago, I was working for a video game company. I worked there for a couple of years before I left. A few months later they contracted me to do a conversion of a game written for the IBM PC to the Apple ][/IIe. It was all in 8086 assembler, and needed to be ported to 6502 for the Apple. I should have known better (I had quit for a reason) but in the interim the old software manager had left, and the new guy seemed reasonable (and actually, he was, but I had forgotten what dicks upper management could be.)
The company promised to make some resources available to us for development: they did not, and I had to pay for them myself. We had a number of milestones in the contract: we met them, but they refused to pay. After a month or so, I told them flatly, "bring your accounts current or the project will be terminated" and gave them a copy of the work in progress up 'til that point, in case they wanted to hire someone else to complete it, or finish it themselves.
So, naturally, the company attorney gives me a ring. He wanted to know why were refusing to complete the contract, considering that we'd been delivering everything up until then (I think he expected that I was holding out for more money, or something like that.) Now, as I've pointed out elsewhere, I have attorneys in my family so I don't immediately get heart palpitations and faint when one of them calls me. So I explained what was going on, that we had continued to work for a month without pay, had met all our milestones, and that without the equipment and software they had agreed to provide. Needless to say, I was very irritated at the entire situation, but he was very pleasant, and seemed honestly surprised (what I was telling him was not, apparently, what he had been told. The man listened very patiently and said, "well, I understand your situation, but I still sense some enthusiasm for the project. Tell you what, give me 'til tomorrow before you do anything and I'll get back to you."
Much to my surprise, I received a check for the full amount due by Fed-Ex the next morning. We finished the job, and I actually did another one for them a little later. Never had a problem getting paid after that: I got the distinct impression he'd not appreciated being lied to by his employers.
Not all lawyers want to turn everything into a fight. This guy did what he was paid to do, and avoided a major headache for both sides (they had shipping dates and other commitments to make, so if I'd dropped the project it would have been a big deal.) They had tried to use (mis-use, really) their own attorney to get thousands of dollars of software development for free. That wasn't a huge surprise to me: some months before I left there had been a huge layoff, so I knew there were financial problems going on.
No, he is simply deciding that these particular principles are more important to him than a slightly better job prospect.
Oh I have no problem with that, I was just musing that it can bite you in the ass. In this economy if you're worried about your prospects it's probably best to keep one's options open. I can respect someone who stands on principle, but principle doesn't pay the mortgage. It's not like every time you code in C# God kills a kitten.
Or...does he! *eeeek!*
I agree. And there's nothing wrong with doing work that's not optimal in your opinion, but at least keeps the lights on, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for work that is more to your liking. It's not as if coding in.Net is amoral or illegal or something, not like selling your body to pay the rent (although some purists seem to believe that.) This is just his personal preference, a preference that he may very well find that he cannot afford. I'd rather not be doing Windows work myself, but you know what? I'd rather be employed than not, and besides, there are other aspects to a job besides the language you write in. In my case, I'm fortunate enough to have a great bunch of coworkers and a company that has good health benefits and retirement policies. Those count for a lot as well: a good coding gig is a complete package, not just your personal choice of programming language.
Having been in this business since before it was a business, I tend to look more at results. Is the end product of what I'm doing worth the effort? Am I proud of what I've accomplished? Does my work benefit others in addition to me and mine? Maybe that's because I started out coding for the likes of the Rockwell PPS4 and the MCS6502, and have been through a lot of different projects, in different industries, on different operating systems in a multitude of programming environments. I also spent the better part of fifteen years working as a contact programmer, and in that world you take what comes along. You never know when the next contract will be approved, or if, so if you're wise you don't get too stuffy about it. Still, it did help that after establishing a reputation as a reliable developer, I had some of my bigger corporate customers designate me as their preferred custom software vendor for industrial projects: they would pass all incoming RFPs to me for evaluation first, and I got to pick and choose. That was kind of a high point in my career actually, but I had to work very hard to get there. The point is, if I had told them "I only work in these languages", I wouldn't have gotten that far.
All languages have interesting aspects to their behavior, nifty features, unique drawbacks, and some are better tools for certain applications than others. I mean, I don't think of a screwdriver as being intrinsically superior to a pair of tweezers. For what each does, it does it well, and it doesn't hurt the user to know how to use both. The submitter sounds like something of a language bigot: I don't pay much attention to such people. "Oh, I wouldn't be caught dead working in that language. I couldn't possibly." If you love coding, you'll find something interesting in virtually any language, any project. A friend of mine once worked with a number of what he called "C bigots." These were guys that would spend three weeks hacking C just to put up a command button, and felt that that was only reasonable because, after all, the only real programming language was C. They wouldn't even consider anything else, and would laugh at the mere suggestion. Then C# came out... suddenly they were huge fans of RAD and visual form design. My friend's comment? "Welcome to VB, you pompous assholes."
A language is just a tool, something to be learned, and you can accomplish significant things in pretty much any language. So maybe it's harder with language 'x" vs language 'Y': think of it as a challenge.
Our system is not actually designed for a justice outcome as the primary event.
Deterrence seems to be one of those primary goals nowadays, that of frightening the mass man into toeing the line. Of course, if your case happens to be one of those where a judge decides to make an example as a warning to others, odds are you won't get anything resembling justice.
It seems likely that T-Mobile might be very similar or even notably better in DE - but relatively to the state of the market in a given place, they would look either obnoxious or quite nice...
And you know, Verizon is largely Vodafone - a revenge?;)
Well, from a friend of mine who lives in Germany, Deutsche Telecom exhibits all the characteristics of an entrenched monopoly, that's about all I know on the subject. And if Verizon is Vodafone's revenge for DT's extension into the U.S.... well, I'd say it was successful!
It's funny though, a lot of people complain about U.S. corporate influence throughout the world, but you don't hear much about foreign influence into our little continent. All the big media companies are largely foreign-owned and controlled, for example, and China is angling to buy a stake in General Motors and would love to outright buy some of our oil companies.
I guess it goes both ways. Still, whatever the Germans do or do not have to put up with, I'm perfectly happy with T-Mobile for now.
Smith said the language is intended to clarify its stance on a class of software that can be used both to secure and penetrate protected networks.....If a piece of software can be used to test a network for vulnerability, it can likely be used to penetrate said network.
This software does not secure or test anything. It's used to a exploit SQL injection vulnerability found by other means. Go read its sourceforge page which says.
There are a lot of other SQL injection tools out there but sqlninja, instead of extracting the data, focuses on getting an interactive shell on the remote DB server and using it as a foothold in the target network
I'm afraid that I don't understand your point. Are you saying that, because this isn't a program that just goes "oh look, I think I found a vulnerability" but actually exploits it, that it's any less valuable to someone in charge of network security?
Well of course. Nobody looks for honesty in an attorney.
Sure they do. Everyone seems to think that the only thing attorneys do is fight court cases. And that's completely ridiculous. The vast majority of work that is done by attorneys is far more mundane, and actually serves to prevent lawsuits and other courtroom activity, because they foster and document agreements between multiple parties. And that's a case where you do want an honest, competent attorney. Well, you do if you are honest and aren't trying to cheat anyone yourself.
Not all lawyers are crooks, most are honest and earn their keep.
This is where your argument falls apart.
Lawyers are like doctors or car mechanics, or any other professional that you don't use very often, but when you need one, you need one. It's easy to sit back and criticize an entire profession, to claim that everyone in that class is dishonest, criminal or incompetent, but the reality is very different. Yes, you have to be careful when selecting a professional to work for you (caveat emptor) but that's true no matter what that profession is.
I would say a more correct complaint would be towards a legal system that requires attorneys to be such an integral part of our lives. That wasn't always the case, but as the law has increased in complexity and overall retardedness, the need for a competent lawyer to navigate it's intricacies is frequently a necessity.
Given that the large majority of lawmakers and judges are lawyers themselves, complaining about "the system" and complaining about "lawyers" is pretty much the same thing.
Not really. Your average working lawyer doesn't have any input into the way the system works, the way laws are written: he just understands them and uses them to his client's benefit. That's not in and of itself evil, it's just a job that's required by the system we live under.
I agree, that system has flaws and that many of those were created by ex-lawyers. But tarring all of them with the same brush is unfair. As a rule, I don't like it when people make generalized comments that "all people" in a given class suck, no matter what the reason, because given a large enough class, that's statistically improbable.
Pick a category: "All Americans are... ", "All lawyers are...", "All engineers are...", "All {blank} are...". No matter how you slice it, it's not right to judge everyone by the actions of some of their peers.
I'm not defending bad attorneys, because they're out there and I've met some over the years. I'm not defending any dishonest, sleazy individual who puts who rates his or her own self-interest so highly that other people get hurt by it. But I won't do a disservice to all those who are honest, who do earn their pay.
Those that want this specific tool (black, white,or grey hat) will know how to get it. It's not like anyone capable of using such tools cannot handle tar, make, and make install.
What if you have a red hat?
That is definitely a problem... unless it's a fedora.
If you don't like the way we do it, do it yourself.
Isn't that kind of the point of things being open? That you don't have to agree with the way things are done -- you have the source, change/fix/fork it yourself.
In other words -- non-story. Those that want this specific tool (black, white,or grey hat) will know how to get it. It's not like anyone capable of using such tools cannot handle tar, make, and make install.
True. The net effect of the Board's decision, so far as people actually using said tool, will be nil. My guess is that this is some kind of "cover their collective asses" move, over perceived liability for distributing such software. Given the current legal climate in many countries towards "hacking" tools (doesn't Germany take a rather hard line there?) they may actually have a legitimate concern. I don't know, not a lawyer, etc. etc.
Smith said the language is intended to clarify its stance on a class of software that can be used both to secure and penetrate protected networks.
There really should be no "stance", in that sense. They're blaming the tools here, not the users of those tools. If a piece of software can be used to test a network for vulnerability, it can likely be used to penetrate said network. And to that I say... so what? Do some people not understand the concept of a double-edged sword? Not to mention the fact that the only way security people can test their protective measures is by using many of the same software tools used by blackhats, and if you remove them from the hands of security people you will find that the crooks will still have them. So you really can't make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate tools, only legitimate and illegitimate uses..
Many handtools can be used to stab someone to death: but nobody who sells tools thinks "gee, maybe we should refrain from selling screwdrivers and only offer blunt tools with no sharp edges."
I'd just like to emphasise that boilerplate is used because it is language that has stood the test of the courts for explicitly defining the intent that is being expressed. Writing the same passage from scratch each time would be wasteful and legally dangerous.
True. And for what lawyers typically charge, the "wasteful" part isn't anywhere near as important as the "legally dangerous" part.
And you know what? Us programmers use boilerplate all the time. We call them "macros",or "scripts", or "libraries", pieces of code that we re-use because they do the job and have stood the test of time. Always writing code from scratch can be dangerous, especially when you have some good boilerplate libraries handy to do the work.
We wouldn't need lawyers to interpret the law if we didn't elect lawyers to write them.
Yeah, or if we didn't have an entire class of individuals formally known as "lawmakers." I mean, we've hired them for that purpose for a couple of hundred years, and we're surprised at the result?
Um, I think you meant "there's so little number of GNU/Linux desktop installations." And yeah, compared to Windows the market share isn't much. But... next year will be the Year of Linux on the Desktop. I'm certain of it.
Um, I think you meant, "there's such a small number of GNU/Linux desktop installations."
No, that's what he meant. I was focusing on meaning, not largely irrelevant detail.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah? In my day we had to dress like janitors and break into Xerox ParcPlace to swipe GUI code to get our buttons.
Yeah yeah, "get off my lawn", I know. And that was an exaggeration (I think it was, my friend is not given to bouts of hyperbole) but if you've ever encountered that personality type, you'll know what I mean. Like that old article Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal said about such individuals, "If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in Assembler. If you can't do it in Assembler, it isn't worth doing." They may be smart, they may be good ... but they aren't versatile, and because they insist upon fitting every application requirement into their limited repertoire, they waste a lot of time and energy. When your only tool is a hammer ...
There's a lot in common between language bigots and many Apple owners, I've noticed. "I'm better'n you because I have this", which is simply a rationalization for their own self-imposed limitations. Also, I think a lot of that comes from a basic unwillingness to learn, a certain sense of ego-driven entitlement: "I already invested all this time learning {insert favorite language here} and the world owes me a living working in it." Well, the world doesn't, actually. To me, one of the great parts about having been in this field for so long is that there's always something new to learn, some new way to do what I love to do. As soon as that stops being true, because I no longer find learning worthwhile or interesting, then I'll find another way to earn a living. If I can. If I can't, well, I'll just have to deal with that.
Or retire. I'm not as far away from that as I would prefer to be, alas.
Reading this post makes me glad I don't live in America. Liking a company because they give you want any decent civilisation gives you by default (health care, retirement) must be awful.
Nice job of selective reading there. Did you also get the part about a "great bunch of coworkers?" Or does your "civilised" environment automatically grant you that? The very simple point I was trying to get across (which you willfully ignored in your attempt to slam my country by the way, thank you very much) is that there is more to any programming job than just the language you get to work in. Only very young, inexperienced people will look at the software field with such a narrow view. Once he gets a few jobs (and a few languages and operating systems under his belt) I think the submitter will probably have a very different take on the matter.
Something .NET proponents seem unable or unwilling to do. Most .NET apps would be better written as web apps and the remainder in C, C++, ObjC or something like Vala (I think Mono can do AOT compilation -- yet it's still a poor choice). Welcome to the real world where few except "pompous asshole" "language bigots" are placing long-term bets on the .NET platform.
I wasn't promoting .Net, and in fact I'm not a .Net proponent. I was just saying that limiting one's knowledge of one's own field isn't always a winning move. That's especially true when economics are a factor. I'm glad that you are able to work in the language(s) of your choice, and maybe don't have any real economic considerations to deal with. The rest of us don't live in that perfect world (I know I don't ... I have people whom I care about, and who depend upon me.) And, as others have pointed out, .Net is, like it or not, popular in the corporate world and if what you need is a job, you do what you have to do. Maybe, if you're a Unix/Linux/Solaris guy you get to work in an environment that suits your personal preferences/prejudices. Or, maybe you have bills to pay ... and you don't. That's life. It's not right or wrong, it's just the way things are.
.Net, LAMP, you name it. If you took anything away from my post at all, it's that I believe that steadfastly refusing to look at what the other side has to offer is nothing but self-justified, willful ignorance. Even if after studying another approach you still find it wanting, well, one should know thine enemy.
There are a lot of people that have decided that their way of looking at the world is the only one, and don't accept that their might be another way. Maybe not a better way, necessarily, although "better" is a loaded term at best. That's true of any of the major camps:
These are the type of comments that I was blissfully unaware of when the old comments system was still in place and you could really filter everything that scored lower than 1 out. In the new system, that is not possible anymore. I keep seeing posts scoring 0 since the new system is in place. Or is there a trick that I don't know of to get rid of these posts?
If you figure it out, let me know.
Please do cite where those diesel electric plants are. Diesel is way to expensive to run even a decent size business generator on much less a power plant.
Depends. Self-generation can actually be cost-effective beyond a certain point, although local power companies will usually go to court to try and prevent it.
That said, I wonder if many USA/UK/European research tasks are exported to China?
I don't know about China, but I understand that both Microsoft and IBM have built substantial research facilities in India.
Here, troll, have a candy bar.
Give him a few more, throw in some sugar cubes and a few cans of Red Bull. Maybe he'll get diabetes, fall into a coma and die. Evolution in action.
Doctors and mechanics, on the other hand, strive to provide corrective services. Bodies and cars break, they try to fix them... make things better in exchange for payment.
Well, let me give you an example of an attorney that made things better. He wasn't even my attorney.
About twenty five years ago, I was working for a video game company. I worked there for a couple of years before I left. A few months later they contracted me to do a conversion of a game written for the IBM PC to the Apple ][/IIe. It was all in 8086 assembler, and needed to be ported to 6502 for the Apple. I should have known better (I had quit for a reason) but in the interim the old software manager had left, and the new guy seemed reasonable (and actually, he was, but I had forgotten what dicks upper management could be.)
The company promised to make some resources available to us for development: they did not, and I had to pay for them myself. We had a number of milestones in the contract: we met them, but they refused to pay. After a month or so, I told them flatly, "bring your accounts current or the project will be terminated" and gave them a copy of the work in progress up 'til that point, in case they wanted to hire someone else to complete it, or finish it themselves.
So, naturally, the company attorney gives me a ring. He wanted to know why were refusing to complete the contract, considering that we'd been delivering everything up until then (I think he expected that I was holding out for more money, or something like that.) Now, as I've pointed out elsewhere, I have attorneys in my family so I don't immediately get heart palpitations and faint when one of them calls me. So I explained what was going on, that we had continued to work for a month without pay, had met all our milestones, and that without the equipment and software they had agreed to provide. Needless to say, I was very irritated at the entire situation, but he was very pleasant, and seemed honestly surprised (what I was telling him was not, apparently, what he had been told. The man listened very patiently and said, "well, I understand your situation, but I still sense some enthusiasm for the project. Tell you what, give me 'til tomorrow before you do anything and I'll get back to you."
Much to my surprise, I received a check for the full amount due by Fed-Ex the next morning. We finished the job, and I actually did another one for them a little later. Never had a problem getting paid after that: I got the distinct impression he'd not appreciated being lied to by his employers.
Not all lawyers want to turn everything into a fight. This guy did what he was paid to do, and avoided a major headache for both sides (they had shipping dates and other commitments to make, so if I'd dropped the project it would have been a big deal.) They had tried to use (mis-use, really) their own attorney to get thousands of dollars of software development for free. That wasn't a huge surprise to me: some months before I left there had been a huge layoff, so I knew there were financial problems going on.
yes, when you watch Firefly or Serenity, you'll understand why chinese is the future :-)
Jayne: "Just move the goram crate!"
No, he is simply deciding that these particular principles are more important to him than a slightly better job prospect.
Oh I have no problem with that, I was just musing that it can bite you in the ass. In this economy if you're worried about your prospects it's probably best to keep one's options open. I can respect someone who stands on principle, but principle doesn't pay the mortgage. It's not like every time you code in C# God kills a kitten.
Or...does he! *eeeek!*
I agree. And there's nothing wrong with doing work that's not optimal in your opinion, but at least keeps the lights on, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for work that is more to your liking. It's not as if coding in .Net is amoral or illegal or something, not like selling your body to pay the rent (although some purists seem to believe that.) This is just his personal preference, a preference that he may very well find that he cannot afford. I'd rather not be doing Windows work myself, but you know what? I'd rather be employed than not, and besides, there are other aspects to a job besides the language you write in. In my case, I'm fortunate enough to have a great bunch of coworkers and a company that has good health benefits and retirement policies. Those count for a lot as well: a good coding gig is a complete package, not just your personal choice of programming language.
... suddenly they were huge fans of RAD and visual form design. My friend's comment? "Welcome to VB, you pompous assholes."
Having been in this business since before it was a business, I tend to look more at results. Is the end product of what I'm doing worth the effort? Am I proud of what I've accomplished? Does my work benefit others in addition to me and mine? Maybe that's because I started out coding for the likes of the Rockwell PPS4 and the MCS6502, and have been through a lot of different projects, in different industries, on different operating systems in a multitude of programming environments. I also spent the better part of fifteen years working as a contact programmer, and in that world you take what comes along. You never know when the next contract will be approved, or if, so if you're wise you don't get too stuffy about it. Still, it did help that after establishing a reputation as a reliable developer, I had some of my bigger corporate customers designate me as their preferred custom software vendor for industrial projects: they would pass all incoming RFPs to me for evaluation first, and I got to pick and choose. That was kind of a high point in my career actually, but I had to work very hard to get there. The point is, if I had told them "I only work in these languages", I wouldn't have gotten that far.
All languages have interesting aspects to their behavior, nifty features, unique drawbacks, and some are better tools for certain applications than others. I mean, I don't think of a screwdriver as being intrinsically superior to a pair of tweezers. For what each does, it does it well, and it doesn't hurt the user to know how to use both. The submitter sounds like something of a language bigot: I don't pay much attention to such people. "Oh, I wouldn't be caught dead working in that language. I couldn't possibly." If you love coding, you'll find something interesting in virtually any language, any project. A friend of mine once worked with a number of what he called "C bigots." These were guys that would spend three weeks hacking C just to put up a command button, and felt that that was only reasonable because, after all, the only real programming language was C. They wouldn't even consider anything else, and would laugh at the mere suggestion. Then C# came out
A language is just a tool, something to be learned, and you can accomplish significant things in pretty much any language. So maybe it's harder with language 'x" vs language 'Y': think of it as a challenge.
Our system is not actually designed for a justice outcome as the primary event.
Deterrence seems to be one of those primary goals nowadays, that of frightening the mass man into toeing the line. Of course, if your case happens to be one of those where a judge decides to make an example as a warning to others, odds are you won't get anything resembling justice.
Sadly many "hackers" cannot figure out how to download such tools.
That may be. If so, those types don't qualify as "hackers" in any sense of the word. Script kiddies, maybe, or just vandals ... but not hackers.
It seems likely that T-Mobile might be very similar or even notably better in DE - but relatively to the state of the market in a given place, they would look either obnoxious or quite nice...
And you know, Verizon is largely Vodafone - a revenge? ;)
Well, from a friend of mine who lives in Germany, Deutsche Telecom exhibits all the characteristics of an entrenched monopoly, that's about all I know on the subject. And if Verizon is Vodafone's revenge for DT's extension into the U.S. ... well, I'd say it was successful!
It's funny though, a lot of people complain about U.S. corporate influence throughout the world, but you don't hear much about foreign influence into our little continent. All the big media companies are largely foreign-owned and controlled, for example, and China is angling to buy a stake in General Motors and would love to outright buy some of our oil companies.
I guess it goes both ways. Still, whatever the Germans do or do not have to put up with, I'm perfectly happy with T-Mobile for now.
Huh. Must be some cell-phone-company employees moderating today.
Smith said the language is intended to clarify its stance on a class of software that can be used both to secure and penetrate protected networks.....If a piece of software can be used to test a network for vulnerability, it can likely be used to penetrate said network.
This software does not secure or test anything. It's used to a exploit SQL injection vulnerability found by other means. Go read its sourceforge page which says.
There are a lot of other SQL injection tools out there but sqlninja, instead of extracting the data, focuses on getting an interactive shell on the remote DB server and using it as a foothold in the target network
I'm afraid that I don't understand your point. Are you saying that, because this isn't a program that just goes "oh look, I think I found a vulnerability" but actually exploits it, that it's any less valuable to someone in charge of network security?
Well of course. Nobody looks for honesty in an attorney.
Sure they do. Everyone seems to think that the only thing attorneys do is fight court cases. And that's completely ridiculous. The vast majority of work that is done by attorneys is far more mundane, and actually serves to prevent lawsuits and other courtroom activity, because they foster and document agreements between multiple parties. And that's a case where you do want an honest, competent attorney. Well, you do if you are honest and aren't trying to cheat anyone yourself.
Not all lawyers are crooks, most are honest and earn their keep.
This is where your argument falls apart.
Lawyers are like doctors or car mechanics, or any other professional that you don't use very often, but when you need one, you need one. It's easy to sit back and criticize an entire profession, to claim that everyone in that class is dishonest, criminal or incompetent, but the reality is very different. Yes, you have to be careful when selecting a professional to work for you (caveat emptor) but that's true no matter what that profession is.
I would say a more correct complaint would be towards a legal system that requires attorneys to be such an integral part of our lives. That wasn't always the case, but as the law has increased in complexity and overall retardedness, the need for a competent lawyer to navigate it's intricacies is frequently a necessity.
Given that the large majority of lawmakers and judges are lawyers themselves, complaining about "the system" and complaining about "lawyers" is pretty much the same thing.
Not really. Your average working lawyer doesn't have any input into the way the system works, the way laws are written: he just understands them and uses them to his client's benefit. That's not in and of itself evil, it's just a job that's required by the system we live under.
... ", "All lawyers are ...", "All engineers are ...", "All {blank} are ...". No matter how you slice it, it's not right to judge everyone by the actions of some of their peers.
I agree, that system has flaws and that many of those were created by ex-lawyers. But tarring all of them with the same brush is unfair. As a rule, I don't like it when people make generalized comments that "all people" in a given class suck, no matter what the reason, because given a large enough class, that's statistically improbable.
Pick a category: "All Americans are
I'm not defending bad attorneys, because they're out there and I've met some over the years. I'm not defending any dishonest, sleazy individual who puts who rates his or her own self-interest so highly that other people get hurt by it. But I won't do a disservice to all those who are honest, who do earn their pay.
Yes. The Thin Armani Line.
Really more of a pinstripe, actually.
True, but pinstripe doesn't imply "lots and lots of money", it just says "gangster", really.
Okay, I stand corrected.
Those that want this specific tool (black, white,or grey hat) will know how to get it. It's not like anyone capable of using such tools cannot handle tar, make, and make install.
What if you have a red hat?
That is definitely a problem ... unless it's a fedora.
If you don't like the way we do it, do it yourself.
Isn't that kind of the point of things being open? That you don't have to agree with the way things are done -- you have the source, change/fix/fork it yourself.
In other words -- non-story. Those that want this specific tool (black, white,or grey hat) will know how to get it. It's not like anyone capable of using such tools cannot handle tar, make, and make install.
True. The net effect of the Board's decision, so far as people actually using said tool, will be nil. My guess is that this is some kind of "cover their collective asses" move, over perceived liability for distributing such software. Given the current legal climate in many countries towards "hacking" tools (doesn't Germany take a rather hard line there?) they may actually have a legitimate concern. I don't know, not a lawyer, etc. etc.
Smith said the language is intended to clarify its stance on a class of software that can be used both to secure and penetrate protected networks.
There really should be no "stance", in that sense. They're blaming the tools here, not the users of those tools. If a piece of software can be used to test a network for vulnerability, it can likely be used to penetrate said network. And to that I say ... so what? Do some people not understand the concept of a double-edged sword? Not to mention the fact that the only way security people can test their protective measures is by using many of the same software tools used by blackhats, and if you remove them from the hands of security people you will find that the crooks will still have them. So you really can't make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate tools, only legitimate and illegitimate uses..
Many handtools can be used to stab someone to death: but nobody who sells tools thinks "gee, maybe we should refrain from selling screwdrivers and only offer blunt tools with no sharp edges."
I'd just like to emphasise that boilerplate is used because it is language that has stood the test of the courts for explicitly defining the intent that is being expressed. Writing the same passage from scratch each time would be wasteful and legally dangerous.
True. And for what lawyers typically charge, the "wasteful" part isn't anywhere near as important as the "legally dangerous" part.
And you know what? Us programmers use boilerplate all the time. We call them "macros",or "scripts", or "libraries", pieces of code that we re-use because they do the job and have stood the test of time. Always writing code from scratch can be dangerous, especially when you have some good boilerplate libraries handy to do the work.
to navigate it's intricacies
Dammit, I hate it when I do that.
So you're a generalist, then? =p
Yes, indeed I am.
M. Twain
We wouldn't need lawyers to interpret the law if we didn't elect lawyers to write them.
Yeah, or if we didn't have an entire class of individuals formally known as "lawmakers." I mean, we've hired them for that purpose for a couple of hundred years, and we're surprised at the result?
Um, I think you meant "there's so little number of GNU/Linux desktop installations." And yeah, compared to Windows the market share isn't much. But ... next year will be the Year of Linux on the Desktop. I'm certain of it.
Um, I think you meant, "there's such a small number of GNU/Linux desktop installations."
No, that's what he meant. I was focusing on meaning, not largely irrelevant detail.