I know why he's 80, I just don't know why he doesn't act like it in the movie. It's very hollywood to have your hero being all angsty and tortured by his dramatic destiny; it just doesn't fit when you're dealing with a guy who is basically moving into the moment he's worked his whole life for.
The movie pretty much just skips the whole idea of Numenoreans, which I kind of understand because the distinction is non-trivial, but it bothers me that they warp the character around.
Theoden is another good example; for Tolkien, living in the era of World War II, the idea of a ruler who is afraid to fight is real and immediate, but that might not translate to a younger generation in the same way. Fine. Make him possessed or whatever, but don't then turn around and make him afraid afterward...that makes no damn sense. It would have been better just to play him that way all the way through.
There are several smart things that need to be done to protect yourself.
Restrict the account that is used to access the database to the absolute minimum permissions it needs to run; using one set of credentials for insert/update/delete and another for selects is enough to foil a lot of exploits (I actually never allow deletes, just out of paranoia...I just update the record with an "inactive" flag, and purge them later with a local account).
For gods sake, don't allow a single account to access multiple databases, and even within the database make sure it only has access to the tables you're going to be using. I've seen more than a few MySQL injections that just dump the user table to the screen because some joker didn't think he needed to restrict access for "SELECT" statements.
Escape ALL data that comes from userland. This is your first line of defense, and it's where most people screw up. If you let an escape character past without it being escaped, your only protection is the privileges associated with the user account.
Abstract your data methods. If you just throw out random SQL queries all through your code, you're going to make a mistake somewhere. Make a single method that does your selects. Make a single method that does your inserts, etc. If it's only in ONE PLACE you can go over the code in extreme detail. If the queries are scattered through the code, you can't.
This is all just best practice stuff. The most important thing is to PAY ATTENTION and remember that one unsecured account can screw your entire server.
That one made me laugh. Wasn't that Einstein's definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
Anyone can make a mistake; forget to taint a variable or something, but when you've obviously got an exploitable bug, you need to fix it, not just constantly rebuild the hacked database, probably losing data every time.
That's still pretty new; I've been using php for a while, and it's only been recently that I stopped feeling the need to use my home-rolled anti-injection methods over the new code methods.
There are still plenty of examples of bad php out there; I'd hardly call it fixed when the problem has never really been a problem of the language, but instead a problem of lazy programmers.
It'd be more efficient to use land closer to where the stuff will be needed. The problem with the midwest is that you'd have to transport the stuff from there to be processed, and that would incur a lot of overhead.
With this sort of production, it makes more sense to set up centers based on usage. Remember, the great thing about bacteria is that they can be easily farmed vertically so we could get the same area without having to have to use purely horizontal cultivation.
Hey, I love Prachett. I thought Thud was one of the best books I'd read in years. But it's still really satire; he's making a point about the real world as much as he's telling a fantasy story.
Tolkien created an immensely detailed fantasy world, and set an epic story of good and evil there. There have been plenty of other authors who've tried to do the same, and very few have succeeded on anything like the same level. Most of them just come off as unfortunate knockoffs.
He's hardly unknown. Unlike Leiber, you can still find him in your everyday Barnes and Noble. He and Wolfe have a strong family resemblance, imho, though I've read more Moorcock.
I'd still not put them up there with Tolkien, though I'll qualify that by owning up to having a background in classical literature. Lot of people are comparing Tolkien to Prachett (which hurts my brain since one aspires to the epic, and the other revels in satire) and I think one of the reasons is purely relative difficulty of the prose.
Eddings wrote one series...Four times. Feist was better; I pretty much stopped after "Darkness at Sethanon" but up until then it was some quality work with excellent scope, and well developed characters.
Tolkien was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon epic poetry; two dimensional characters are what you get out of that stuff. The true genius of the book is the sense of history and environment, and the ability to build a believable world.
Very little fantasy does as good a job coming up with a developed pervasive world.
I always wonder what people think is superior in terms of actual fantasy...99% of fantasy is pure pulp. Very little of it achieves anything like epic scope.
Well, if you wanted to dwell on Aragorn you could; he was born, what, about 30 years after Bilbo? So when The Hobbit starts he'd be in his 20's.
Not that Jackson didn't do his best to portray him as being in his 20's during the LOTR movies...One of many deviations from the book that made me grind my teeth.
Frankly, I'm delighted that del Toro has got a shot at this; he's a great director.
I know it goes against the whole coolaid that all the PJ fans drink, but I'm delighted to see someone like Del Toro directing the Hobbit...If I'd had my choice of anyone in the world, he'd have been in the top five...And Jackson wouldn't have been.
Just as an aside, this sort of thing is where Python shines; it's very C friendly, and it has all the tools and ease of development to make excellent GUIs.
Program in Erlang for a while, and then try to do the same sort of thing in C and you'll see what I mean. And I'm not even a big fan of Erlang, but the kind of things it does to make shared memory access possible across multithreaded applications is something that C does not currently have a resource for.
Admittedly I'm not big for programming in C; for what I do it's just not useful. But the problems with C are out there for anyone to see; applications designed to run on a single core are already plagued with memory problems. Compound that with multiple concurrently running threads that need the same system resources and I can't help but see more problems.
No no no, you can just reinvent the wheel and program all those methods in C! (sarcasm)
That was pretty much my original point; C can do threading, but C is not really geared toward making threading easy in the way it will need to be to well support multiprocessing.
But you can't say that without the C zealots going crazy. C can do anything better than any other language.
I don't know. A lot of it depends on what applications businesses are using; a few big companies pushing large Delphi projects could make a big difference.
I think Javascript is also hampered by the fact that there aren't all that many different apps, and that a lot of people do view it as a semi-essential skill, so it gets less play. You don't see HTML up there anywhere.
Heh. Well not to rain on your raining on your parade, but it was the only language in the 11-20 group that was gaining ground over last year, and in fact it increased it's position by 10 spots from 2007.
VB made huge gains as well. Wonder what was special about last year?
I'm not sure C is up to the multithreading/ multiprocessor support that is going to be required as processors keep shifting from single core to multicore architectures...I know it can be done, but C is hard to program for a single core...Multicore support may take it over the edge.
Mind you, I don't think anything else is really set up for it either (Erlang?) but that's going to be the next big challenge.
Well Java proves that by sitting solidly at number 1.
C's greatest strength is speed, and it's clear from the fact that Java (which is slow as hell) ranks higher that speed is not the primary consideration. Neither one of them are exactly a joy to develop in.
Just as well; I don't trust most people to program in C. It's great if can do it well, but for every person who CAN do it well there are 3 who only think they can.
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No unix using a non-encrypted file system is secure if you have physical access to the machine...Why would you assume it's any different with Windows?
I'd just boot knoppix and mount the partition. There, I have access to all the files. That goes for windows AND unix/linux.
If you really depend on the password for anything other than stopping casual or remote access, you're just fooling yourself.
I know why he's 80, I just don't know why he doesn't act like it in the movie. It's very hollywood to have your hero being all angsty and tortured by his dramatic destiny; it just doesn't fit when you're dealing with a guy who is basically moving into the moment he's worked his whole life for.
The movie pretty much just skips the whole idea of Numenoreans, which I kind of understand because the distinction is non-trivial, but it bothers me that they warp the character around.
Theoden is another good example; for Tolkien, living in the era of World War II, the idea of a ruler who is afraid to fight is real and immediate, but that might not translate to a younger generation in the same way. Fine. Make him possessed or whatever, but don't then turn around and make him afraid afterward...that makes no damn sense. It would have been better just to play him that way all the way through.
Like expecting the coin to stay up in the air.
There are several smart things that need to be done to protect yourself.
Restrict the account that is used to access the database to the absolute minimum permissions it needs to run; using one set of credentials for insert/update/delete and another for selects is enough to foil a lot of exploits (I actually never allow deletes, just out of paranoia...I just update the record with an "inactive" flag, and purge them later with a local account).
For gods sake, don't allow a single account to access multiple databases, and even within the database make sure it only has access to the tables you're going to be using. I've seen more than a few MySQL injections that just dump the user table to the screen because some joker didn't think he needed to restrict access for "SELECT" statements.
Escape ALL data that comes from userland. This is your first line of defense, and it's where most people screw up. If you let an escape character past without it being escaped, your only protection is the privileges associated with the user account.
Abstract your data methods. If you just throw out random SQL queries all through your code, you're going to make a mistake somewhere. Make a single method that does your selects. Make a single method that does your inserts, etc. If it's only in ONE PLACE you can go over the code in extreme detail. If the queries are scattered through the code, you can't.
This is all just best practice stuff. The most important thing is to PAY ATTENTION and remember that one unsecured account can screw your entire server.
That one made me laugh. Wasn't that Einstein's definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
Anyone can make a mistake; forget to taint a variable or something, but when you've obviously got an exploitable bug, you need to fix it, not just constantly rebuild the hacked database, probably losing data every time.
I'm sure you mean Persia.
That's still pretty new; I've been using php for a while, and it's only been recently that I stopped feeling the need to use my home-rolled anti-injection methods over the new code methods.
There are still plenty of examples of bad php out there; I'd hardly call it fixed when the problem has never really been a problem of the language, but instead a problem of lazy programmers.
It'd be more efficient to use land closer to where the stuff will be needed. The problem with the midwest is that you'd have to transport the stuff from there to be processed, and that would incur a lot of overhead.
With this sort of production, it makes more sense to set up centers based on usage. Remember, the great thing about bacteria is that they can be easily farmed vertically so we could get the same area without having to have to use purely horizontal cultivation.
Hey, I love Prachett. I thought Thud was one of the best books I'd read in years. But it's still really satire; he's making a point about the real world as much as he's telling a fantasy story.
Tolkien created an immensely detailed fantasy world, and set an epic story of good and evil there. There have been plenty of other authors who've tried to do the same, and very few have succeeded on anything like the same level. Most of them just come off as unfortunate knockoffs.
He's hardly unknown. Unlike Leiber, you can still find him in your everyday Barnes and Noble. He and Wolfe have a strong family resemblance, imho, though I've read more Moorcock.
I'd still not put them up there with Tolkien, though I'll qualify that by owning up to having a background in classical literature. Lot of people are comparing Tolkien to Prachett (which hurts my brain since one aspires to the epic, and the other revels in satire) and I think one of the reasons is purely relative difficulty of the prose.
Eddings wrote one series...Four times. Feist was better; I pretty much stopped after "Darkness at Sethanon" but up until then it was some quality work with excellent scope, and well developed characters.
Tolkien was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon epic poetry; two dimensional characters are what you get out of that stuff. The true genius of the book is the sense of history and environment, and the ability to build a believable world.
Very little fantasy does as good a job coming up with a developed pervasive world.
I always wonder what people think is superior in terms of actual fantasy...99% of fantasy is pure pulp. Very little of it achieves anything like epic scope.
What do you consider the best of all time?
Well, if you wanted to dwell on Aragorn you could; he was born, what, about 30 years after Bilbo? So when The Hobbit starts he'd be in his 20's.
Not that Jackson didn't do his best to portray him as being in his 20's during the LOTR movies...One of many deviations from the book that made me grind my teeth.
Frankly, I'm delighted that del Toro has got a shot at this; he's a great director.
I know it goes against the whole coolaid that all the PJ fans drink, but I'm delighted to see someone like Del Toro directing the Hobbit...If I'd had my choice of anyone in the world, he'd have been in the top five...And Jackson wouldn't have been.
Just as an aside, this sort of thing is where Python shines; it's very C friendly, and it has all the tools and ease of development to make excellent GUIs.
Program in Erlang for a while, and then try to do the same sort of thing in C and you'll see what I mean. And I'm not even a big fan of Erlang, but the kind of things it does to make shared memory access possible across multithreaded applications is something that C does not currently have a resource for.
Admittedly I'm not big for programming in C; for what I do it's just not useful. But the problems with C are out there for anyone to see; applications designed to run on a single core are already plagued with memory problems. Compound that with multiple concurrently running threads that need the same system resources and I can't help but see more problems.
No no no, you can just reinvent the wheel and program all those methods in C! (sarcasm)
That was pretty much my original point; C can do threading, but C is not really geared toward making threading easy in the way it will need to be to well support multiprocessing.
But you can't say that without the C zealots going crazy. C can do anything better than any other language.
I agree that most sites use javascript, but what do they use it for? The same types of apps; in some cases the same apps.
Anyway it may just be a statistical bump...Last year was a huge year, maybe this year is seeing a fall off.
VB includes the following according to their methodology page:
.NET, Visual Basic 2005, VB 2005, Visual Basic 2003, VB 2003, Visual Basic 2002, VB 2002, VB
Basic, VB.NET, Visual Basic.NET, Visual Basic
The methodology page is here.
I don't know. A lot of it depends on what applications businesses are using; a few big companies pushing large Delphi projects could make a big difference.
I think Javascript is also hampered by the fact that there aren't all that many different apps, and that a lot of people do view it as a semi-essential skill, so it gets less play. You don't see HTML up there anywhere.
Heh. Well not to rain on your raining on your parade, but it was the only language in the 11-20 group that was gaining ground over last year, and in fact it increased it's position by 10 spots from 2007.
VB made huge gains as well. Wonder what was special about last year?
I'm not sure C is up to the multithreading/ multiprocessor support that is going to be required as processors keep shifting from single core to multicore architectures...I know it can be done, but C is hard to program for a single core...Multicore support may take it over the edge.
Mind you, I don't think anything else is really set up for it either (Erlang?) but that's going to be the next big challenge.
1. Java.....20.5%
2. C........14.7%
3. VB.......11.6%
4. PHP......10.3%
5. C++.......9.9%
6. Perl......5.9%
7. Python....4.5%
8. C#........3.8%
9. Ruby......2.9%
10. Delphi...2.7%
The other 10 in the top 20 are:
JavaScript, D, PL/SQL, SAS, Pascal, Lisp/Scheme, FoxPro/xBase, COBOL, Ada, and ColdFusion
Well Java proves that by sitting solidly at number 1.
C's greatest strength is speed, and it's clear from the fact that Java (which is slow as hell) ranks higher that speed is not the primary consideration. Neither one of them are exactly a joy to develop in.
Just as well; I don't trust most people to program in C. It's great if can do it well, but for every person who CAN do it well there are 3 who only think they can.