I imagine this will get lost in the depths of "not in the top 3 on/." and won't get much attention as a result, but on the off chance that it'll still get read the appropriate person I'll suggest it as I haven't seen anything like it moderated '3' or higher.
Fist, document your findings. I'd save things like the URL of the forum post, the HTML of the page (read: file->save as). The next thing I'd do is try and get in touch with the original author of the code and ask something like, "Is it fair to assume this code should be acceptable for anyone to use freely?" I wouldn't mention that it's for a commercial product; people tend to see dollar signs when you mention something like that. Document the interaction with the individual. If the original programmer says its fine, document that as well and give everything you've gathered to the individual who put it in the code in the first place. If they say that it isn't okay to use the code, document that, call a meeting with the manager, project lead and anyone else you feel is appropriate and explain the whole situation in a no-fault kind of way: "I found this, I asked the author, here's the answer, this is how much time we have until we go live and/or test, here are my proposed changes."
I freely admit that I'm frequently criticized for this type of approach because it "takes longer" (which isn't true, it just takes people longer to hear anything about it so they THINK it takes longer) than taking it through traditional channels, but I like to have everything I can possibly have before I bring something out into the open. This way I know what does and does not need to be done and I can present facts without any ambiguity and in your present situation this approach will document that you were not the one to use someone else's code illegally while addressing the issue at hand.
Oh, you'd think so, wouldn't you. That's how they did things where I went to college (they had a Laptop for students program) but they do all fresh installations when you ask to have your machine rebuilt here.
1. Anything you believe is morally right is not silly at all. Trying to do the right thing and failing is far better than not doing anything at all, in my opinion.
2. I work for giant consulting company and the client I'm assigned to started with Dell's business models. Those are a rather flop. I wasn't one of the (un)lucky few to get one, so I can't detail what was so horrible about them, but I do know they suffer from what I call "the mysterious dell slowdown" which is where the machine gets slower with age even with no new software installations. If I haven't seen this effect myself, I wouldn't believe it and blame it on crapware. I also wouldn't belive it unless it were anywhere other than this client. They're EXTREMELY restrictive about their machines and as a result, I can vouch that these machines don't have any crapware on them.
The whole dell thing came to a very abrupt halt and people started getting HP Business models (nc6400). They're nowhere near as small and light as the Thinkpad X31 they've got me on, but they're durable and have a solid feel to them, are more portable/lighter than the Dells and have quite a nice display. Overall they seem like a rather comparable step up from the older ThinkPad models.
I've ATI hardware. I know how terrible the ATI drivers are. That said, AMD has, historically, delivered what they say they will. As a result, I'm tentatively optimistic. To put it simply, the acquisition of ATI by AMD injects new hope.
I defiantly agree that they need to have something to (metaphorically speaking) hold up and point at before they go spreading the word, though.
What the hell is up with all the scathing remarks?! Let's remember that the ATI acquisition by AMD is new and let's be impressed, considering past support, that progress is being made in the Linux ATI drivers arena AT ALL! I really do believe that AMD is going to do the right thing by Linux. They're two underdogs that stand a lot to gain from each other and it would only stand to hurt any gains to be had by such a relationship by continuing what ATI was doing before the buyout. The fact of the matter is, ATI has undoubtedly undergone a mass re-organization and is, doubtlessly, also operating under a new philosophy. Anyone who knows someone who had their division bought out knows this to be true. Let's just sit back and see what happens before we start (effectively) blaming AMD for ATI's past mistakes and poorly written code.
I got heated and was going to post a snide comment, but you're absolutely right. That being said, I still would like to add that you're an ass. This is the internet and comments rarely get proofread. I certainly thought to proofread, but I know my grammar is not perfect and so I decided that it was not of importance in this situation. Having nothing better to do than to be a grammar Nazi on/. goes to show that you have too much time on your hands and that you lack the intelligence to know where to channel your talents in a more constructive manor. To put it simply, you are a waste of time.
I stared a website (DealsLab which is a lot like the much more popular TechDeals) not so long ago and found to be true exactly what the question addresses as I paid special attention to my website load time as an article had recently been up on Slashdot about website load time and how the average user is willing to wait about three seconds before giving up. Because of this I decided to write a php script that will resize (according to GET parameters) to scale the image and host the file until I dump the cache. The image URL is stored in a MySQL database, so anytime an individual visits a page with an un-cached image, it will attempt to re-cache the image and display it (or a 404). While this also has the advantage of circumventing the default settings of many ad blocking programs, I'm nice about how I do it and only use it for my 88x31px (microBar) sized ads.
...not to mention that Santa and Satan are one & the same. Sounds like we're building a real profile now: Communist dictator of wayward souls forced into the bodies of elves, who, while enslaved, are treated well by their benevolent acting master because they now make the very toys that once trained them into the materialistic lifestyle that brought them to "Santa's workshop" (Hell). These toys will now go out into the hands of children of parents who have unknowingly been slated for the very same fate as they too once received these toys and feel socially pressured to continue the "tradition". Santa/Satan has manufactured a cycle that takes all to Hell who have or will ever receive a 'gift' from him. Santa is on sick and creative bastard. Makes me glad that my parents never celebrated Christmas (not for the reasons outlined above)....by this point, I've well passed when my fiancée would roll her eyes at me and say, "You're weird."
I was thinking the exact same thing, then I thought, "Wait! This is a doup!" But a little checking around would seem to show that they indeed are, all three, united in a new project. They've been The Film Crew for a while, but they seem to be jumping in on actual DVD releases now as we can see on The Film Crew's website the link for which seems to be missing in the article. Still, though, this is pretty old news. I remember voting for my 'first release' several months, if not a year, back. That could've been which to riff first I suppose, though.
I'm rather frustrated that I didn't see this when it was first posted, but I'll and my 2 cents anyway...
...I run a deals website where my goal is to optimize value (think product-quality to price ratio) for the consumer. Needless to say I've an eye for recognizing a deal as a result and I feel VERY confident in saying that eBay hasn't had 'deals' in a very long time. By the time the last bid has been placed and shipping costs have been factored in, you're almost always paying close to MSRP or market value (whichever happens to be less at the time). People really are best off using resources like Pricegrabber, Pricewatch and Google Products. The only exceptions to this that I've encountered to date are items not readily available in the US (e.g. my fiancée bought me a nice Japanese style lunchbox recently), products no longer in production, and collectables.
Between my own spare hardware and a few things given to me, my MythTV box has got the following
AMD Athlon XP 2400 - 2Ghz Socket A Processor
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard (with digital audio output)
2GB DDR2 RAM
ATI TV-Wonder
240GB (2 x 120GB) Maxtor HDDs
I havent spent a dime on this machine since I bought it as my gaming rig 5 or 6 years ago and has even undergone several upgrades since. The only thing I plan on blowing any money on is a couple nice fat hard drives, and considering hard drives are easy to find at 5GB per dollar, I don't expect it to be a huge expense.
...I was about to start this with, "I'm sorry, but" but that would be a complete lie. If State Farm is #50 in the 'top' list I don't want to work for anything less than #10. Accenture Technology Solutions does FAR better and they're nowhere to be seen on the list. Maybe that's because their headquarters is in Bermuda and their 'U.S.-based' status is debatable. Maybe the service work at SF just sucked far more than anything else they had going on (read: I wasn't the only one dissatisfied) but my time there was spent being very unimpressed. I scoff at this list.
I'm not privy or even remotly knowledgable about all the theories or facts involved, but I DO know that they should be in heavy communication with the post office as they're bound to know a few things about sending messages that so obviously intuitive to them but are beyond our means. Again, I don't claim to understand all the workings of this stuff, but I DO know that one time I set myself a letter in the mail, and it got to me in the future! The USPO clearly has got SOME kind of message/time machine up and running.
Moderation: -5 WTF?
I have to say I'm not finding anything insightful in the linked article. It's just a long winded way of saying, "The drivers aren't very good, but AMD/ATI is working hard on it." which we most of us likely already knew. It would have been good to see some insights on what AMD did to improve the driver development process, what impact the open source announcement made, etc.
So, on the recomendation of two people, including one who I had played WoW with a few times, I went out and just bought a copy expecting to love it. My reaction is much more "meh" than anything else. It's fun, but between the low framerate for the buttons and the ever persistant lag (I've yet to have smooth gameplay for more than half a minute) I'd rather not play any MMORPG right now.
Gmail has got a neat trick you can use to learn who sells your email address...
If your email is xyz@gmail.com and you're registering at site ABC, you can register at that site with the email address xyz+ABC@gmail.com. Gmail still delivers it to you and at the same time allows you to see who sold your email information.
I shure as hell hope so. Before this post and after making the changes to FTP quotas, I had 41 hits from that page and have not been hacked again.
I did make one other change: I moved the install.php file out of my web directory. However my statistics (AWStats) do not show any access to that file for the time period.
I was able to recover well enough with some decent backups (mysqldump) and some help from the Drupal forum.
If I have any more updates on this, I'll be posting them in the drupal forum.
As someone who has just recently been hacked (Druapal 5.1, not WordPress, but I almost went that direction) I can say that I've recently seen my fair share of hacked Wordpress sites (via links to/from referrers) that have been listed as 'defaced' with, "Attack Technics : FTP Protokol" listed on the bragging-rights page. In my particular case it was because my hosting service allows anonymous FTP uploads(?!) with no 'correct' way to disable it (???!!!) -- my solution was to allow 0KB of FTP transfer for anonymous users.
For those whishing to see for themselves and laugh/shutter/worry, etc they can do so by clicking here AT THEIR OWN RISK.
"...8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users."
My website statistics puts the number of Linux users ahead of Mac users by more than 66%, so I found it interesting that it will take less time to exceed Linux users than Mac users. However, my website primarily promotes hardware that is more likely to be Linux compatible than Mac compatible, so it would follow that my numbers are eschew.
I freely admit that I'm speaking from my own personal experience and that (clearly, otherwise Ubuntu wouldn't be so popular) they'll be putting an unstable OS on unstable machines. So now the people that didn't want vista but couldn't get XP will be enjoying the same level of stability that most windows users did back in the days of Windows 95/98FE.
This might sound like I'm about to ramp up to "this'll be bad for Linux" post, but to the contrary, I think it'll be good. If selling Ubuntu machines pans out well for Dell, which I believe will happen (although I think there'll be a lot of Moms and Dads out there that'll end up not getting what they're expecting) then there's going to be a lot of blooming developers out there hacking into the config files Ubutntu much the same way I did until they work their way up to shell scripting and will eventually want to make Ubuntu more stable, creating a long-term benefit to Ubuntu which will have spillover to the whole of Linux in general.
Slashdot Mirror
I imagine this will get lost in the depths of "not in the top 3 on /." and won't get much attention as a result, but on the off chance that it'll still get read the appropriate person I'll suggest it as I haven't seen anything like it moderated '3' or higher.
Fist, document your findings. I'd save things like the URL of the forum post, the HTML of the page (read: file->save as). The next thing I'd do is try and get in touch with the original author of the code and ask something like, "Is it fair to assume this code should be acceptable for anyone to use freely?" I wouldn't mention that it's for a commercial product; people tend to see dollar signs when you mention something like that. Document the interaction with the individual. If the original programmer says its fine, document that as well and give everything you've gathered to the individual who put it in the code in the first place. If they say that it isn't okay to use the code, document that, call a meeting with the manager, project lead and anyone else you feel is appropriate and explain the whole situation in a no-fault kind of way: "I found this, I asked the author, here's the answer, this is how much time we have until we go live and/or test, here are my proposed changes."
I freely admit that I'm frequently criticized for this type of approach because it "takes longer" (which isn't true, it just takes people longer to hear anything about it so they THINK it takes longer) than taking it through traditional channels, but I like to have everything I can possibly have before I bring something out into the open. This way I know what does and does not need to be done and I can present facts without any ambiguity and in your present situation this approach will document that you were not the one to use someone else's code illegally while addressing the issue at hand.
Oh, you'd think so, wouldn't you. That's how they did things where I went to college (they had a Laptop for students program) but they do all fresh installations when you ask to have your machine rebuilt here.
1. Anything you believe is morally right is not silly at all. Trying to do the right thing and failing is far better than not doing anything at all, in my opinion.
2. I work for giant consulting company and the client I'm assigned to started with Dell's business models. Those are a rather flop. I wasn't one of the (un)lucky few to get one, so I can't detail what was so horrible about them, but I do know they suffer from what I call "the mysterious dell slowdown" which is where the machine gets slower with age even with no new software installations. If I haven't seen this effect myself, I wouldn't believe it and blame it on crapware. I also wouldn't belive it unless it were anywhere other than this client. They're EXTREMELY restrictive about their machines and as a result, I can vouch that these machines don't have any crapware on them.
The whole dell thing came to a very abrupt halt and people started getting HP Business models (nc6400). They're nowhere near as small and light as the Thinkpad X31 they've got me on, but they're durable and have a solid feel to them, are more portable/lighter than the Dells and have quite a nice display. Overall they seem like a rather comparable step up from the older ThinkPad models.
I agree. Its just that it reads like a lot of people take it personally.
I've ATI hardware. I know how terrible the ATI drivers are. That said, AMD has, historically, delivered what they say they will. As a result, I'm tentatively optimistic. To put it simply, the acquisition of ATI by AMD injects new hope.
I defiantly agree that they need to have something to (metaphorically speaking) hold up and point at before they go spreading the word, though.
What the hell is up with all the scathing remarks?! Let's remember that the ATI acquisition by AMD is new and let's be impressed, considering past support, that progress is being made in the Linux ATI drivers arena AT ALL! I really do believe that AMD is going to do the right thing by Linux. They're two underdogs that stand a lot to gain from each other and it would only stand to hurt any gains to be had by such a relationship by continuing what ATI was doing before the buyout. The fact of the matter is, ATI has undoubtedly undergone a mass re-organization and is, doubtlessly, also operating under a new philosophy. Anyone who knows someone who had their division bought out knows this to be true. Let's just sit back and see what happens before we start (effectively) blaming AMD for ATI's past mistakes and poorly written code.
I got heated and was going to post a snide comment, but you're absolutely right. That being said, I still would like to add that you're an ass. This is the internet and comments rarely get proofread. I certainly thought to proofread, but I know my grammar is not perfect and so I decided that it was not of importance in this situation. Having nothing better to do than to be a grammar Nazi on /. goes to show that you have too much time on your hands and that you lack the intelligence to know where to channel your talents in a more constructive manor. To put it simply, you are a waste of time.
I stared a website (DealsLab which is a lot like the much more popular TechDeals) not so long ago and found to be true exactly what the question addresses as I paid special attention to my website load time as an article had recently been up on Slashdot about website load time and how the average user is willing to wait about three seconds before giving up. Because of this I decided to write a php script that will resize (according to GET parameters) to scale the image and host the file until I dump the cache. The image URL is stored in a MySQL database, so anytime an individual visits a page with an un-cached image, it will attempt to re-cache the image and display it (or a 404). While this also has the advantage of circumventing the default settings of many ad blocking programs, I'm nice about how I do it and only use it for my 88x31px (microBar) sized ads.
...and for the record, everyone in Germany from 1939-1945 was out on holiday.
Linux personal Web & file server + DDNS + TorrentFlux + Cellphone with data (read: internet) access = BitTorrent WITH file downloads on a cell phone.
...not to mention that Santa and Satan are one & the same. Sounds like we're building a real profile now: Communist dictator of wayward souls forced into the bodies of elves, who, while enslaved, are treated well by their benevolent acting master because they now make the very toys that once trained them into the materialistic lifestyle that brought them to "Santa's workshop" (Hell). These toys will now go out into the hands of children of parents who have unknowingly been slated for the very same fate as they too once received these toys and feel socially pressured to continue the "tradition". Santa/Satan has manufactured a cycle that takes all to Hell who have or will ever receive a 'gift' from him. Santa is on sick and creative bastard. Makes me glad that my parents never celebrated Christmas (not for the reasons outlined above). ...by this point, I've well passed when my fiancée would roll her eyes at me and say, "You're weird."
There are no MST3K fans, Santa is not a benevolent dictator, and there is no angry mob quetly forming outside your door.
I was thinking the exact same thing, then I thought, "Wait! This is a doup!" But a little checking around would seem to show that they indeed are, all three, united in a new project. They've been The Film Crew for a while, but they seem to be jumping in on actual DVD releases now as we can see on The Film Crew's website the link for which seems to be missing in the article. Still, though, this is pretty old news. I remember voting for my 'first release' several months, if not a year, back. That could've been which to riff first I suppose, though.
I'm rather frustrated that I didn't see this when it was first posted, but I'll and my 2 cents anyway...
...I run a deals website where my goal is to optimize value (think product-quality to price ratio) for the consumer. Needless to say I've an eye for recognizing a deal as a result and I feel VERY confident in saying that eBay hasn't had 'deals' in a very long time. By the time the last bid has been placed and shipping costs have been factored in, you're almost always paying close to MSRP or market value (whichever happens to be less at the time). People really are best off using resources like Pricegrabber, Pricewatch and Google Products. The only exceptions to this that I've encountered to date are items not readily available in the US (e.g. my fiancée bought me a nice Japanese style lunchbox recently), products no longer in production, and collectables.
Between my own spare hardware and a few things given to me, my MythTV box has got the following
AMD Athlon XP 2400 - 2Ghz Socket A Processor
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard (with digital audio output)
2GB DDR2 RAM
ATI TV-Wonder
240GB (2 x 120GB) Maxtor HDDs
I havent spent a dime on this machine since I bought it as my gaming rig 5 or 6 years ago and has even undergone several upgrades since. The only thing I plan on blowing any money on is a couple nice fat hard drives, and considering hard drives are easy to find at 5GB per dollar, I don't expect it to be a huge expense.
...I was about to start this with, "I'm sorry, but" but that would be a complete lie. If State Farm is #50 in the 'top' list I don't want to work for anything less than #10. Accenture Technology Solutions does FAR better and they're nowhere to be seen on the list. Maybe that's because their headquarters is in Bermuda and their 'U.S.-based' status is debatable. Maybe the service work at SF just sucked far more than anything else they had going on (read: I wasn't the only one dissatisfied) but my time there was spent being very unimpressed. I scoff at this list.
I'm not privy or even remotly knowledgable about all the theories or facts involved, but I DO know that they should be in heavy communication with the post office as they're bound to know a few things about sending messages that so obviously intuitive to them but are beyond our means. Again, I don't claim to understand all the workings of this stuff, but I DO know that one time I set myself a letter in the mail, and it got to me in the future! The USPO clearly has got SOME kind of message/time machine up and running. Moderation: -5 WTF?
I have to say I'm not finding anything insightful in the linked article. It's just a long winded way of saying, "The drivers aren't very good, but AMD/ATI is working hard on it." which we most of us likely already knew. It would have been good to see some insights on what AMD did to improve the driver development process, what impact the open source announcement made, etc.
So, on the recomendation of two people, including one who I had played WoW with a few times, I went out and just bought a copy expecting to love it. My reaction is much more "meh" than anything else. It's fun, but between the low framerate for the buttons and the ever persistant lag (I've yet to have smooth gameplay for more than half a minute) I'd rather not play any MMORPG right now.
Gmail has got a neat trick you can use to learn who sells your email address...
If your email is xyz@gmail.com and you're registering at site ABC, you can register at that site with the email address xyz+ABC@gmail.com. Gmail still delivers it to you and at the same time allows you to see who sold your email information.
I shure as hell hope so. Before this post and after making the changes to FTP quotas, I had 41 hits from that page and have not been hacked again.
I did make one other change: I moved the install.php file out of my web directory. However my statistics (AWStats) do not show any access to that file for the time period.
I was able to recover well enough with some decent backups (mysqldump) and some help from the Drupal forum.
If I have any more updates on this, I'll be posting them in the drupal forum.
As someone who has just recently been hacked (Druapal 5.1, not WordPress, but I almost went that direction) I can say that I've recently seen my fair share of hacked Wordpress sites (via links to/from referrers) that have been listed as 'defaced' with, "Attack Technics : FTP Protokol" listed on the bragging-rights page. In my particular case it was because my hosting service allows anonymous FTP uploads(?!) with no 'correct' way to disable it (???!!!) -- my solution was to allow 0KB of FTP transfer for anonymous users.
For those whishing to see for themselves and laugh/shutter/worry, etc they can do so by clicking here AT THEIR OWN RISK.
...as long as Puma Man doesn't fall into the picture in any way, I'm happy.
"...8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users." My website statistics puts the number of Linux users ahead of Mac users by more than 66%, so I found it interesting that it will take less time to exceed Linux users than Mac users. However, my website primarily promotes hardware that is more likely to be Linux compatible than Mac compatible, so it would follow that my numbers are eschew.
I freely admit that I'm speaking from my own personal experience and that (clearly, otherwise Ubuntu wouldn't be so popular) they'll be putting an unstable OS on unstable machines. So now the people that didn't want vista but couldn't get XP will be enjoying the same level of stability that most windows users did back in the days of Windows 95/98FE.
This might sound like I'm about to ramp up to "this'll be bad for Linux" post, but to the contrary, I think it'll be good. If selling Ubuntu machines pans out well for Dell, which I believe will happen (although I think there'll be a lot of Moms and Dads out there that'll end up not getting what they're expecting) then there's going to be a lot of blooming developers out there hacking into the config files Ubutntu much the same way I did until they work their way up to shell scripting and will eventually want to make Ubuntu more stable, creating a long-term benefit to Ubuntu which will have spillover to the whole of Linux in general.