Explain to me how you reconcile most MMORPGs' terms of service clearly stating that you're not allowed to sell in-game items or gold with "by definition they have permission".
>So can we assume you don't work as a programmer? Afterall, nobody that writes software produces any product whatsoever, just "a collection of bits on a hard drive somewhere".
Except a programmer usually works in an environment with well-defined and stable social and economical rules. They have reasonable certainty that, if there is demand for their product, they will be able to sell it on a market with an enforced system (however imperfect) that protects their ability to do so.
As long as you treat Second Life as entertainment, it's all good (in the same way that gambling is entertainment - I'm usually not entertained by losing my own money, but that's personal bias). When someone starts treating Second Life as a way of making money - as the article and the grandparent are discussing - you have a problem.
Chances are you don't invest your money in unstable third-world countries. Corruption means that the rules - such as they are - are usually not enforced. The system is pretty much an unknown unless you're actually running it. Laws and economic situation might change rapidly. In the worst cases, the government might collapse entirely, or decide to seize all your money.
From my point of view, something like Second Life is even worse than the above. You have no certainty that Second Life will still be around in a year (how is that NOT like a pyramid scheme?). The rules are set and enforced by Linden Labs, whose stated purpose is to make money off you, not to serve your best interests.
It's a great environment to scam people... or a great environment to be scammed in. None of this matters if you only treat it as a game, yes, but as soon as you start treating it as more, those are the only two outcomes I see.
Unlike 30 years ago, people today have a choice between two camps. The cable companies are expanding even further into the telecommunications area while the 'phone' companies are expanding into the television area That's not much consolation, given that the choice for most people seems to mean whether to hate the cable company or the phone company more...:-/
The amount of spin in this story is making me dizzy.
Getting malware when downloading a crack is always a possibility, yes.
However, this entire story smells of FUD - this is one of the oldest arguments software vendors use to scare people away from pirated software - "All pirated software has viruses in it! Don't use it, it'll make your computer blow up! Make sure your copy is legit!" It's a valid argument, and they have every right to defend their products from piracy, but I suspect it is often overstated.
Then take this article's headline - "Vista Designed to Make Malware Easy". We've gone from fact (one Vista crack was found - and caught by people downloading it - with malware in it), to speculation during an interview, to an entire Slashdot headline. Good good. The relevant part from the interview:
Dan Warne: I know that I have a cynical journalist's mind, but isn't that a bit of a risk for malware to be injected into Vista install DVDs, given that those apps are executed before logon?
John Pritchard: Yes, well I would certainly recommend when people are looking at any content they make sure they have the approved and hologrammed DVDs to make sure they're dealing with the genuine product, to get away from not knowing where the source comes from. But if they have got control of the unattend and built it themselves then hopefully they know what they are putting on it.
Finally, if the above headline is correct, then how is it different from "Linux Designed to Make Malware Easy"? Anyone can bundle a rootkit with a Linux distro and put a torrent of it up somewhere. Heck, it's even easier, since Linux is free and open to start with. The bottom line is, if you're not getting your software from a trusted source, then you have no reason to trust it.
I'm gonna go lie down for a bit until the spinning stops.
>follow the above advice if you want to create our own harness. But for an easier way check out the commercial tools
Commercial tools are definitely worth evaluating, yes, but as a programmer, I have yet to find one that actually makes my life easier (let alone be worth the usually exorbitant prices). They're great for places like banks, which might have a large budget and relatively low technical expertise, but (generalizing here) they don't sound like what the poster is looking for.
Step 1: write a systematic test plan. There are all kinds of acronyms and books out there on the subject - I doubt you need it. At the very least you can start with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and go from there. Cover the success path, cover the failure paths.
Step 2: automate. This isn't optional if you're planning to maintain a project beyond the 1.0 release. For specifics, it depends on your project. Is it mostly a Java app (http://www.junit.org/)? Is a lot of the logic in the database (http://www.dbunit.org/)? Is it a web app, regardless of language (http://webtest.canoo.com, http://wtr.rubyforge.org/)?
Step 3: run your automated tests and laugh at how much easier it makes your life than manual testing.
"[..]the Xelibri also marked the start of a return to back-to-basics devices, where talking and texting were uppermost. It's a trend that's still hot in advanced markets such as Japan, where stripped-down phones like the RakuRaku concentrate on the simplest of features."
Well, that gives me hope. The name "RakuRaku" aside, maybe I'll finally buy a cell phone then.
After seeing a project one of my friends worked on last year, I got pretty excited by the potential offered by a mix of SVG and AJAX. If we ever see a solid toolkit and good support for SVG in the major browsers, this might be a short-term answer to the poster's question.
Then again, the idea of any "platform" built on top of JavaScript scares the hell out of me...
I'm guessing you haven't been around any European teenagers lately. Frankly, they make the 308 presses/67 seconds record listed in the ad seem a bit low:p
"But the boss/HR keeps hiring losers" is the general cry. Well, yes, that might be true, but its also your job to let your managers know when you've got deadwood.
I stand by my point. I am also lucky to work only with intelligent and competent people - we've similarily shedded deadwood. But logically, there is a limited supply of talented, intelligent, experienced (or heck, even inexperienced) developers, and only a limited number of companies will be able to attract them - just like there is a (it seems) even more limited supply of talented, intelligent, experienced managers. You just can't have top people working for all the companies.
if you (your company) cant deliver what you promised then someone has been telling porky pies or is just plain old incompetent.
Fair enough, but my point was that there is a huge difference between agreeing on a set of specific functionality with a client and then delivering that functionality, and saying "hey, let's build the best search engine/online email client/desktop image organizer/whatever that we can build, any ideas what features we can put in it?". If you use the latter approach for the former, you will have one disappointed client on your hands, even if you think the software you built is the neatest ever.
This guys piece should remind us that work doesn't actually have to be so painful. Whose to blame, well, our bosses could certainly do their jobs a hell of a lot better, but we have to do more as well. Having a cry on/. aint going to change the world, but a one on one chat with the people that matter may go a long way to getting things started.
Couldn't agree more. My main problem with the blog entry (other than what I said in my original point) is that it read like ALL its arguments were from a developers' point of view. Wrong. Developers don't have the power to change anything, and neither do our bosses (project managers). It's the people 2 or 3 levels higher (at least, depending on the size of the company) who enforce the current structure. When all else fails, yes, it is up to developers to try to communicate improvements upwards - but a piece written from that point of view would've been more interesting to me, and potentially much more useful.
A friend from university interviewed with them in the spring. He had an initial screening call, then a phone interview that asked some technical questions and some brainteasers along with the usual "soft" questions, then a longer phone interview with more technical questions and a few more brainteasers, then they flew him down to CA for a series of 30-45 minute interviews with 6 or 7 of their engineers. That's as far as he got, so I don't know if there's anything past that (though they did call him again last week - we'll see how that goes).
So I agree 100%, they're very picky... but again, they can afford to be, and most other companies can't.
- there are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them more like tech leads.
- developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.
- Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously.
- there aren't Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management artifacts in evidence, not that I've ever seen.
- even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner, which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don't work insane hours unless they want to.
Sure, that sounds wonderful, as long as: - you're working with intelligent, competent, creative people - you have an effectively unlimited budget(relative to most other companies) - you're working for a software-only company which is only successful because of its innovation, not because it has to deliver specific functionality to specific clients
How many of us can say that? Hmm?
It sounds like a dream job, but let's face it: it relies on individual heroics, from everyone, all the time. Now that's fine if everyone working there is far above average, and "individual heroics" means "enough intelligence and maturity to keep a view of the big picture without being whipped with a rolled-up Gantt chart", but it's a recipe for disaster in most other places.
Is this the emerging ivory tower of Google developers? While I'm happy for the guy, most of the blog sounds like "look at me, I'm developing under near-ideal conditions, why isn't everyone else?"
If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?
And if you are attending a university where classes can be passed without attending lectures, then you are wasting your money, your parent's money, or some sort of scholarship money.
A comment like that makes me doubt that you've ever been AT a university, let alone teach at one.
Newsflash: some professors are bad. Frighteningly bad. I won't argue that they're not extremely intelligent, or good at their research, or downright decent human beings, but they ARE incredibly bad at teaching. I have had courses where I was better off for not attending any of the lectures (and still loved the course and got an A).
For any intelligent and decently competent person who is NOT interested in academia, the two most important things in an university education are the contacts they will make, and that little piece of paper that companies seem to value. I don't want to downplay the learning experience, but more often than not, all except a small subset will be forgotten within a couple of years.
If you're truly not aware of that, I would suggest stepping out of your ivory tower and thinking about what exactly it is you're trying to provide to your students.
I agree that was my first (knee-jerk?) reaction after reading the somewhat FUD-ish summary. However:
"We ask the RFID industry to design systems that are secure"
If the "RFID industry" creates the reader software as well, and if the vulnerability is in that reader software (which is what it sounds like), then the criticism is perfectly valid.
FTA:
""Everyone working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an RFID tag cannot modify back-end software and certainly not in a malicious way. Unfortunately, they are wrong," wrote the trio in their research paper."
and
"The researchers urged companies working on RFID systems to start thinking seriously about security measures to protect against future threats."
No one's really saying the tags are inherently insecure, any more than they might say that a floppy disk or a CD are insecure. If the reader software currently has many vulnerabilities, no matter how obvious it might seem in hindsight, this seems like valuable research to me.
Remember all the threads with arguments about whether Slashdot is outdated and will be replaced by Digg (latest example being the story on The Top 10 Tech People Who Don't Matter?
Notice how the common defense of Slashdot for complaints about the quantity, quality or timeliness of news is "I come here for the comments, not for the articles"?
1. My desktop was a lot more stable. 2. The computer OS and games actually ran a little faster.
As opposed to a fresh install of the same version of Windows, which accomplishes exactly the same?
I'm not claiming there are no benefits to upgrading (although I'm still running 2000 on all my computers), but you can't make the claim that those benefits are exclusively caused by an upgrade to a new version.
Slashdot Mirror
Explain to me how you reconcile most MMORPGs' terms of service clearly stating that you're not allowed to sell in-game items or gold with "by definition they have permission".
Which is pretty close to the definition of a pyramid scheme, no?
>So can we assume you don't work as a programmer? Afterall, nobody that writes software produces any product whatsoever, just "a collection of bits on a hard drive somewhere".
Except a programmer usually works in an environment with well-defined and stable social and economical rules. They have reasonable certainty that, if there is demand for their product, they will be able to sell it on a market with an enforced system (however imperfect) that protects their ability to do so.
As long as you treat Second Life as entertainment, it's all good (in the same way that gambling is entertainment - I'm usually not entertained by losing my own money, but that's personal bias). When someone starts treating Second Life as a way of making money - as the article and the grandparent are discussing - you have a problem.
Chances are you don't invest your money in unstable third-world countries. Corruption means that the rules - such as they are - are usually not enforced. The system is pretty much an unknown unless you're actually running it. Laws and economic situation might change rapidly. In the worst cases, the government might collapse entirely, or decide to seize all your money.
From my point of view, something like Second Life is even worse than the above. You have no certainty that Second Life will still be around in a year (how is that NOT like a pyramid scheme?). The rules are set and enforced by Linden Labs, whose stated purpose is to make money off you, not to serve your best interests.
It's a great environment to scam people... or a great environment to be scammed in. None of this matters if you only treat it as a game, yes, but as soon as you start treating it as more, those are the only two outcomes I see.
Getting malware when downloading a crack is always a possibility, yes.
However, this entire story smells of FUD - this is one of the oldest arguments software vendors use to scare people away from pirated software - "All pirated software has viruses in it! Don't use it, it'll make your computer blow up! Make sure your copy is legit!" It's a valid argument, and they have every right to defend their products from piracy, but I suspect it is often overstated.
Then take this article's headline - "Vista Designed to Make Malware Easy". We've gone from fact (one Vista crack was found - and caught by people downloading it - with malware in it), to speculation during an interview, to an entire Slashdot headline. Good good. The relevant part from the interview:
Finally, if the above headline is correct, then how is it different from "Linux Designed to Make Malware Easy"? Anyone can bundle a rootkit with a Linux distro and put a torrent of it up somewhere. Heck, it's even easier, since Linux is free and open to start with. The bottom line is, if you're not getting your software from a trusted source, then you have no reason to trust it.
I'm gonna go lie down for a bit until the spinning stops.
>follow the above advice if you want to create our own harness. But for an easier way check out the commercial tools
Commercial tools are definitely worth evaluating, yes, but as a programmer, I have yet to find one that actually makes my life easier (let alone be worth the usually exorbitant prices). They're great for places like banks, which might have a large budget and relatively low technical expertise, but (generalizing here) they don't sound like what the poster is looking for.
Step 1: write a systematic test plan. There are all kinds of acronyms and books out there on the subject - I doubt you need it. At the very least you can start with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and go from there. Cover the success path, cover the failure paths.
Step 2: automate. This isn't optional if you're planning to maintain a project beyond the 1.0 release. For specifics, it depends on your project. Is it mostly a Java app (http://www.junit.org/)? Is a lot of the logic in the database (http://www.dbunit.org/)? Is it a web app, regardless of language (http://webtest.canoo.com, http://wtr.rubyforge.org/)?
Step 3: run your automated tests and laugh at how much easier it makes your life than manual testing.
"[..]the Xelibri also marked the start of a return to back-to-basics devices, where talking and texting were uppermost. It's a trend that's still hot in advanced markets such as Japan, where stripped-down phones like the RakuRaku concentrate on the simplest of features."
Well, that gives me hope. The name "RakuRaku" aside, maybe I'll finally buy a cell phone then.
After seeing a project one of my friends worked on last year, I got pretty excited by the potential offered by a mix of SVG and AJAX. If we ever see a solid toolkit and good support for SVG in the major browsers, this might be a short-term answer to the poster's question.
Then again, the idea of any "platform" built on top of JavaScript scares the hell out of me...
In other words... what might succeed at doing exactly what Java and Flash promised to do, but have failed?
:)
I'm interested to find out that answer myself.
I'm guessing you haven't been around any European teenagers lately. Frankly, they make the 308 presses/67 seconds record listed in the ad seem a bit low :p
Almost as amazing as the number of people who say "I hate taxes", and then continue to pay them.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, your wanton cruelty to the common comma seems all too appropriate for this article.
"But the boss/HR keeps hiring losers" is the general cry. Well, yes, that might be true, but its also your job to let your managers know when you've got deadwood.
/. aint going to change the world, but a one on one chat with the people that matter may go a long way to getting things started.
I stand by my point. I am also lucky to work only with intelligent and competent people - we've similarily shedded deadwood. But logically, there is a limited supply of talented, intelligent, experienced (or heck, even inexperienced) developers, and only a limited number of companies will be able to attract them - just like there is a (it seems) even more limited supply of talented, intelligent, experienced managers. You just can't have top people working for all the companies.
if you (your company) cant deliver what you promised then someone has been telling porky pies or is just plain old incompetent.
Fair enough, but my point was that there is a huge difference between agreeing on a set of specific functionality with a client and then delivering that functionality, and saying "hey, let's build the best search engine/online email client/desktop image organizer/whatever that we can build, any ideas what features we can put in it?". If you use the latter approach for the former, you will have one disappointed client on your hands, even if you think the software you built is the neatest ever.
This guys piece should remind us that work doesn't actually have to be so painful. Whose to blame, well, our bosses could certainly do their jobs a hell of a lot better, but we have to do more as well. Having a cry on
Couldn't agree more. My main problem with the blog entry (other than what I said in my original point) is that it read like ALL its arguments were from a developers' point of view. Wrong. Developers don't have the power to change anything, and neither do our bosses (project managers). It's the people 2 or 3 levels higher (at least, depending on the size of the company) who enforce the current structure. When all else fails, yes, it is up to developers to try to communicate improvements upwards - but a piece written from that point of view would've been more interesting to me, and potentially much more useful.
A friend from university interviewed with them in the spring. He had an initial screening call, then a phone interview that asked some technical questions and some brainteasers along with the usual "soft" questions, then a longer phone interview with more technical questions and a few more brainteasers, then they flew him down to CA for a series of 30-45 minute interviews with 6 or 7 of their engineers. That's as far as he got, so I don't know if there's anything past that (though they did call him again last week - we'll see how that goes).
So I agree 100%, they're very picky... but again, they can afford to be, and most other companies can't.
Sure, that sounds wonderful, as long as:
- you're working with intelligent, competent, creative people
- you have an effectively unlimited budget(relative to most other companies)
- you're working for a software-only company which is only successful because of its innovation, not because it has to deliver specific functionality to specific clients
How many of us can say that? Hmm?
It sounds like a dream job, but let's face it: it relies on individual heroics, from everyone, all the time. Now that's fine if everyone working there is far above average, and "individual heroics" means "enough intelligence and maturity to keep a view of the big picture without being whipped with a rolled-up Gantt chart", but it's a recipe for disaster in most other places.
Is this the emerging ivory tower of Google developers? While I'm happy for the guy, most of the blog sounds like "look at me, I'm developing under near-ideal conditions, why isn't everyone else?"
If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?
And if you are attending a university where classes can be passed without attending lectures, then you are wasting your money, your parent's money, or some sort of scholarship money.
A comment like that makes me doubt that you've ever been AT a university, let alone teach at one.
Newsflash: some professors are bad. Frighteningly bad. I won't argue that they're not extremely intelligent, or good at their research, or downright decent human beings, but they ARE incredibly bad at teaching. I have had courses where I was better off for not attending any of the lectures (and still loved the course and got an A).
For any intelligent and decently competent person who is NOT interested in academia, the two most important things in an university education are the contacts they will make, and that little piece of paper that companies seem to value. I don't want to downplay the learning experience, but more often than not, all except a small subset will be forgotten within a couple of years.
If you're truly not aware of that, I would suggest stepping out of your ivory tower and thinking about what exactly it is you're trying to provide to your students.
One quack good/accepted, two quacks bad/rejected.
Now to figure out how to get pigeons to quack.
*duck*
What's the difference from divers who forget to check how much O2 they have before they dive?
I agree that was my first (knee-jerk?) reaction after reading the somewhat FUD-ish summary. However:
"We ask the RFID industry to design systems that are secure"
If the "RFID industry" creates the reader software as well, and if the vulnerability is in that reader software (which is what it sounds like), then the criticism is perfectly valid.
FTA:
""Everyone working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an RFID tag cannot modify back-end software and certainly not in a malicious way. Unfortunately, they are wrong," wrote the trio in their research paper."
and
"The researchers urged companies working on RFID systems to start thinking seriously about security measures to protect against future threats."
No one's really saying the tags are inherently insecure, any more than they might say that a floppy disk or a CD are insecure. If the reader software currently has many vulnerabilities, no matter how obvious it might seem in hindsight, this seems like valuable research to me.
Remember all the threads with arguments about whether Slashdot is outdated and will be replaced by Digg (latest example being the story on The Top 10 Tech People Who Don't Matter?
Notice how the common defense of Slashdot for complaints about the quantity, quality or timeliness of news is "I come here for the comments, not for the articles"?
Well, there you have it.
That's my theory, anyway.
downloading from petshopboys.com will freeze songbird.
That's a feature.
Best. Question. Ever.
As opposed to a fresh install of the same version of Windows, which accomplishes exactly the same?
I'm not claiming there are no benefits to upgrading (although I'm still running 2000 on all my computers), but you can't make the claim that those benefits are exclusively caused by an upgrade to a new version.
I'm looking forward to Spore more than to any recent game, but:
d en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.V.O.:_Search_for_E