OT: Coding ethics (Was: With great power comes...)
on
When Good Spammers Go Bad
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I recently posted an "Ask Slashdot" article asking precisely what this code of ethics between coders should be.
I believe there is one, and I believe that most coders act maturely and for the benefit of the wider community and good whilst also protecting each other.
Would've been interesting to see what others thought on this.
The scenario I had encountered was regards illegal software and whether you would report a colleague to FAST (or equivalent) after you or that person had left the company. I personally wouldn't... but here we found that someone would.
Likewise... I would not wish harm, or act maliciously towards a Windows user or anyone else... even a spammer in some regards (use legal and legit ways to prevent them from harming me (e.g. filters) but not actively harm others to hurt them).
Most of the time, my coding ethics, beyond the bond of workmates and industry, is in tune with my real world ethics... do what you want providing it doesn't hurt others.
Oh, and before someone says anything... I couldn't RTFA as the site has been slashdotted... anyone got the text?
Even more incredibly:
19 ``(b) As used in this section, the term `enabling soft-
20 ware' means software that, when installed on the user's
21 computer, enables 3rd parties to store data on that com-
22 puter, or use that computer to search other computers'
23 contents over the Internet.''.
Would make all Internet browsers that have cookies enabled illegal! Maybe this is the perverse way in which the DoJ want to get back at Microsoft;)
i'm usually amazed how seldom people will resort to boycotts.
whilst i would have no doubt that MS are obviously a large part of their business, it is obvious that no business survives with just one good horse in their stable.
with a good enough word-of-mouth campaign it should be possible to inform local businesses and companies of the boycott, inform them of other options, and thus remove a chunk of their potential business.
500 cds may not hurt their purse strings, but 100 x 500 will.
initially linux is daunting if you're used to windows. buttons are in the wrong place, and my mother complains that the windows don't quite 'feel' the same and that she can't find all the same games!
but... beyond the fear of something new linux has a lot of very real applications within schools. not only does it give us the ability to teach all of the basic concepts, but it pushes beyond applications and should allow schools to focus on the core understanding of a concept (e.g. spreadsheet knowledge rather than excel know how).
i hope that the schools who have this opportunity to take a closer look will do so with an open enough mind to realise this though... but from my experience with my mother, i suspect it will take time before they do really 'get it'.
So a piece of software that does its job "well enough" is OK?
If taxes are miscalculated, then this is OK so long as it's a minority who suffer then? And the same of potentially life-threatening things such as air traffic control or medical systems?
Nope, not in my estimation at least. I would rather pay a little more in taxes and have the government choose the best software for the job. I suspect that in most cases this will be Open Source developed software (e.g. Linux or MySql), but I don't want them to HAVE to make that decision based on mandate. So in that small detail alone, I agree with pigopolists.
The idea of choosing software based upon freedom of choice is very good.
I suspect I'm different from most/.ers though, I don't get software just because it's free, nor because it's open source. I generally evaluate several pieces of software and the one that fulfils my set of requirements and is within my budget to purchase I opt for.
This generally has led me away from most freeware and open source stuff, and towards a hell of a lot of shareware and small company stuff (The Bat! as an email client for example).
I don't like the pigopolists and general borgification, but let's be sensisble, the proposal from them to ensure that our governments don't mandate towards software that may not actually be in our interests as citizens (it may not have matured enough, for example) is perfectly reasonable.
But by that count, could the pigopolists please refrain from lobbying with such force and effectively forcing software upon governments... this only serves to defeat their own argument about choice.
But the list is much longer than this. Now... are the exceptions going to be honoured? Because a news website which charges subscription is simply the same as a newspaper subscription, and that is VAT free in the UK... so it stands that to charge an EU members VAT would be to honour the VAT rules of that member state and in the case of the UK you would not be able to charge VAT on a subscription to a news source.
The comments regarding second hand goods is also true. Not everything that comes in is taxed. If someone emigrates to the UK they do not pay VAT or any tax on the possessions (old record player, furniture, clothing, etc, etc) but only on the service (the delivery from customs to the final destination as this is purchased locally).
So no VAT should be chargeable for auctioned items that are not new (being sold by retail via auction), and VAT should not be chargeable on any member state exception list.
Within the EU, a person pays VAT to the member state that the item purchased is purchased from. So a French consumer purchasing from the UK pays the UK VAT rate and not the french one. You don't simply pick a rate between 15% and 20% and charge it, you are tied to the rules of the member state that you are dealing with.
Then you've obviously never worked with it... they have some incredible salesmen, some bright-eyed but mostly clueless professional services consultants and an over-engineered under-performing product.
Vignette never delivered on its personalisation promises, and once you've removed that the only thing left going for them is caching.
It is the caching and cache flushing that enables those big sites to run so well... nothing to do with managing the content at all.
Purchase some cheap boxes and throw squid onto it or configure your own reverse proxy and you will have solved the cache issue.
I've been unfortunate enough to use Vignette for several years... and the single thing I've seen nearly every organisation that has it do... is replace it. But most kept the Vignette CURL (their 'custom URL') as it did faciliate easier cache management.
The place that I currently work at uses Tomcat instead of Vignette... but if you were to look at our URLs you wouldn't have been able to tell.
All that said... they had some incredible salesmen and good relationships with Accenture... and that has seen them a very long way.
Bottom line, Vignette was never real content management, it's just an application that connects to a database and makes text files which it can then delete if something gets updated in the database.
I've just been forced to download the Blur CD too.
on
When Copy Protection Fails
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Dead serious... not impressed.
I purchase the CD and try to play it at work on Windows 2000 and it just isn't recognised... WinAmp insisting that no audio CD was in the drive.
So to listen to the album on my PC I just downloaded the bloody thing from alt.binaries.sound.mp3.complete_cd
Not illegal in any way since I now own the original... but bloody stupid and makes me realise that the only way I may now enjoy EMI releases at work will be to download a copy... which really defeats everything their system is trying to stop.
add a layer of code between the advert click/render* to include a call to an image on a seperate server, sending the image a querystring of the session info you store in the cookie... all requests on that server will be in the log files for you to parse and thus deduce user patterns.
Don't attempt to come up with any of your own formatting rules (as much as it's tempting to make your code look like the rest of your code)... having a standard formatting implemented by the IDE results in much cleaner formatting and will ensure that the people you hire will understand the code that much sooner.
These do make considerable improvements in desktop applications and general speed of the system, but are unlikely to make any difference to 3D benchmarks.
usually it's comic relief... though there are interesting tidbits... i think the mantra is "news for nerds, stuff that matters", which thankfully doesn't exclude anything providing it's of some interest to most people... i actually found this one quite amusing, at least more than the others today.
with the ability to trace the origination of content it would become far more viable for the censors around the globe to be more assertive.
there is little doubt that some web content of a fascist nature must be generated in france (where it is illegal), and whilst i disagree with such content i would always choose to allow freedom of speech (such that they could be ridiculed)... but with locational information in meta data, it would be very easy for governments and other interested parties to become more stringent in their enforcement.
it is a terrible idea for the majority of information and documents.
that said, a flip side to the argument is more meanigful search results, especially when you look for services within a geographical region. i would opt for a few more minutes on google and freedom of speech than this additional useability though.
I'm sorry, I generally resist responding to posts which are of a inflammous nature, but I do disagree with this one.
I simply do not accept that the US and UK (and I am in the latter) are at war on the basis or weapons or dictatorship or the suffering of the Iraqi people... all are good reasons to go to war, but there are other countries much higher on the list if those are the criteria.
I suggest you read this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/business/programmes/mo neyprog ramme/archive/oil.shtml
The URL gives it away a little... but it should be noted that this is a pure money programme, economics and nothing else. No argument was given for or against the regime in Iraq or Bush and the US administration, it simply stated what had happened and the impact of declining production in Texas (in the 70's) and later around the world.
As much as I would like to believe in the government I helped elect, I simply cannot accept what they say against such a wealth of evidence.
Not that I agree with Russia and France, both of whom also have interests (current) in the oil in Iraq.
which then becomes interesting as Vignette have patents which cover the personalisation and delivery of web pages and components thereof... So one fool would have just crossed the patent held by another fool... both of which there is prior art on.
the key to using gzip is really not to compress at too high a ratio... a low rate of compression offers a pretty sizeable saving in bandwidth for an acceptable CPU usage... once you edge up to the higher compression levels then you pay for it in the CPU and your app slows.
i love the idea of a hardware based gzip... but i'd start by educating the software users on the cost vs benefit ratio of their existing configuration... i always seem to find that those who don't know what they're doing are the ones that have it set to maximum compression
which is fine until you travel to some parts of the world where such an advertisement will ensure you'll be mugged.
remember that you'll be wearing this for the rest of your lives if all goes well... as such whilst thoughts on a use are cool, there is a lot to be said for a simple gold band.
In the UK, you should reserve GBP100,000 for a professional album (CaVa studios in Glasgow, Town House post production in London, Masterpiece mastering and creation of masters in London)... It will take 6-9 months life cycle typically for an album to be recorded, mastered and released. Most of that time is spent in the studio.
The above figure includes session musicians.
It does not include manufacturing and distribution... think 30p per CD manufacturing (Tribal in London), and distribution is negotiable but we used 3MV/Pinnacle.
You then pay on top to market and position your release within a store... but that's a totally seperate discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently posted an "Ask Slashdot" article asking precisely what this code of ethics between coders should be. I believe there is one, and I believe that most coders act maturely and for the benefit of the wider community and good whilst also protecting each other. Would've been interesting to see what others thought on this. The scenario I had encountered was regards illegal software and whether you would report a colleague to FAST (or equivalent) after you or that person had left the company. I personally wouldn't... but here we found that someone would. Likewise... I would not wish harm, or act maliciously towards a Windows user or anyone else... even a spammer in some regards (use legal and legit ways to prevent them from harming me (e.g. filters) but not actively harm others to hurt them). Most of the time, my coding ethics, beyond the bond of workmates and industry, is in tune with my real world ethics... do what you want providing it doesn't hurt others. Oh, and before someone says anything... I couldn't RTFA as the site has been slashdotted... anyone got the text?
Even more incredibly: ;)
19 ``(b) As used in this section, the term `enabling soft- 20 ware' means software that, when installed on the user's 21 computer, enables 3rd parties to store data on that com- 22 puter, or use that computer to search other computers' 23 contents over the Internet.''.
Would make all Internet browsers that have cookies enabled illegal! Maybe this is the perverse way in which the DoJ want to get back at Microsoft
Before NASA's budget sees a major increase?
i'm usually amazed how seldom people will resort to boycotts.
whilst i would have no doubt that MS are obviously a large part of their business, it is obvious that no business survives with just one good horse in their stable.
with a good enough word-of-mouth campaign it should be possible to inform local businesses and companies of the boycott, inform them of other options, and thus remove a chunk of their potential business.
500 cds may not hurt their purse strings, but 100 x 500 will.
do we forget just how much power we have?
If it comes down to an issue of support... and a server is doing little more than serving files...
I wonder how many will now look to re-use their existing hardware and opt for linux...
Rather than upgrade their hardware too, to make the Windows 2003 Server HCL.
initially linux is daunting if you're used to windows. buttons are in the wrong place, and my mother complains that the windows don't quite 'feel' the same and that she can't find all the same games!
but... beyond the fear of something new linux has a lot of very real applications within schools. not only does it give us the ability to teach all of the basic concepts, but it pushes beyond applications and should allow schools to focus on the core understanding of a concept (e.g. spreadsheet knowledge rather than excel know how).
i hope that the schools who have this opportunity to take a closer look will do so with an open enough mind to realise this though... but from my experience with my mother, i suspect it will take time before they do really 'get it'.
So a piece of software that does its job "well enough" is OK?
If taxes are miscalculated, then this is OK so long as it's a minority who suffer then? And the same of potentially life-threatening things such as air traffic control or medical systems?
Nope, not in my estimation at least. I would rather pay a little more in taxes and have the government choose the best software for the job. I suspect that in most cases this will be Open Source developed software (e.g. Linux or MySql), but I don't want them to HAVE to make that decision based on mandate. So in that small detail alone, I agree with pigopolists.
It's actually not as bad as it sounds.
/.ers though, I don't get software just because it's free, nor because it's open source. I generally evaluate several pieces of software and the one that fulfils my set of requirements and is within my budget to purchase I opt for.
The idea of choosing software based upon freedom of choice is very good.
I suspect I'm different from most
This generally has led me away from most freeware and open source stuff, and towards a hell of a lot of shareware and small company stuff (The Bat! as an email client for example).
I don't like the pigopolists and general borgification, but let's be sensisble, the proposal from them to ensure that our governments don't mandate towards software that may not actually be in our interests as citizens (it may not have matured enough, for example) is perfectly reasonable.
But by that count, could the pigopolists please refrain from lobbying with such force and effectively forcing software upon governments... this only serves to defeat their own argument about choice.
Nor totally true, there are numerous exceptions in the UK to VAT. For example, the following things do not have VAT on them:
Books
Newspapers
Milk
Bread
Eggs
Childrens clothing
But the list is much longer than this.
Now... are the exceptions going to be honoured? Because a news website which charges subscription is simply the same as a newspaper subscription, and that is VAT free in the UK... so it stands that to charge an EU members VAT would be to honour the VAT rules of that member state and in the case of the UK you would not be able to charge VAT on a subscription to a news source.
The comments regarding second hand goods is also true. Not everything that comes in is taxed. If someone emigrates to the UK they do not pay VAT or any tax on the possessions (old record player, furniture, clothing, etc, etc) but only on the service (the delivery from customs to the final destination as this is purchased locally).
So no VAT should be chargeable for auctioned items that are not new (being sold by retail via auction), and VAT should not be chargeable on any member state exception list.
Within the EU, a person pays VAT to the member state that the item purchased is purchased from. So a French consumer purchasing from the UK pays the UK VAT rate and not the french one. You don't simply pick a rate between 15% and 20% and charge it, you are tied to the rules of the member state that you are dealing with.
Then you've obviously never worked with it... they have some incredible salesmen, some bright-eyed but mostly clueless professional services consultants and an over-engineered under-performing product.
Vignette never delivered on its personalisation promises, and once you've removed that the only thing left going for them is caching.
It is the caching and cache flushing that enables those big sites to run so well... nothing to do with managing the content at all.
Purchase some cheap boxes and throw squid onto it or configure your own reverse proxy and you will have solved the cache issue.
I've been unfortunate enough to use Vignette for several years... and the single thing I've seen nearly every organisation that has it do... is replace it. But most kept the Vignette CURL (their 'custom URL') as it did faciliate easier cache management.
The place that I currently work at uses Tomcat instead of Vignette... but if you were to look at our URLs you wouldn't have been able to tell.
All that said... they had some incredible salesmen and good relationships with Accenture... and that has seen them a very long way.
Bottom line, Vignette was never real content management, it's just an application that connects to a database and makes text files which it can then delete if something gets updated in the database.
Dead serious... not impressed.
I purchase the CD and try to play it at work on Windows 2000 and it just isn't recognised... WinAmp insisting that no audio CD was in the drive.
So to listen to the album on my PC I just downloaded the bloody thing from alt.binaries.sound.mp3.complete_cd
Not illegal in any way since I now own the original... but bloody stupid and makes me realise that the only way I may now enjoy EMI releases at work will be to download a copy... which really defeats everything their system is trying to stop.
'Tis a mad, mad world.
You really gotta wonder if it cuts the mustard when this is only the second comment!
add a layer of code between the advert click/render* to include a call to an image on a seperate server, sending the image a querystring of the session info you store in the cookie... all requests on that server will be in the log files for you to parse and thus deduce user patterns.
* your choice as to which is important
... but they can't build a website that can handle slashdot ;)
I'll try later, eh?
Don't attempt to come up with any of your own formatting rules (as much as it's tempting to make your code look like the rest of your code)... having a standard formatting implemented by the IDE results in much cleaner formatting and will ensure that the people you hire will understand the code that much sooner.
The first one is for registry and group policy changes to remove the bloat and make more things memory resident:/ winxptweak/1.html
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides
The next is a guide to services, to aid you in knowing which ones that you wish to prevent from running automatically:
These do make considerable improvements in desktop applications and general speed of the system, but are unlikely to make any difference to 3D benchmarks.http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm
usually it's comic relief... though there are interesting tidbits... i think the mantra is "news for nerds, stuff that matters", which thankfully doesn't exclude anything providing it's of some interest to most people... i actually found this one quite amusing, at least more than the others today.
with the ability to trace the origination of content it would become far more viable for the censors around the globe to be more assertive.
there is little doubt that some web content of a fascist nature must be generated in france (where it is illegal), and whilst i disagree with such content i would always choose to allow freedom of speech (such that they could be ridiculed)... but with locational information in meta data, it would be very easy for governments and other interested parties to become more stringent in their enforcement.
it is a terrible idea for the majority of information and documents.
that said, a flip side to the argument is more meanigful search results, especially when you look for services within a geographical region. i would opt for a few more minutes on google and freedom of speech than this additional useability though.
I'm sorry, I generally resist responding to posts which are of a inflammous nature, but I do disagree with this one.
o neyprog ramme/archive/oil.shtml
I simply do not accept that the US and UK (and I am in the latter) are at war on the basis or weapons or dictatorship or the suffering of the Iraqi people... all are good reasons to go to war, but there are other countries much higher on the list if those are the criteria.
I suggest you read this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/business/programmes/m
The URL gives it away a little... but it should be noted that this is a pure money programme, economics and nothing else. No argument was given for or against the regime in Iraq or Bush and the US administration, it simply stated what had happened and the impact of declining production in Texas (in the 70's) and later around the world.
As much as I would like to believe in the government I helped elect, I simply cannot accept what they say against such a wealth of evidence.
Not that I agree with Russia and France, both of whom also have interests (current) in the oil in Iraq.
Ah well, there goes my Karma.
which then becomes interesting as Vignette have patents which cover the personalisation and delivery of web pages and components thereof... So one fool would have just crossed the patent held by another fool... both of which there is prior art on.
the key to using gzip is really not to compress at too high a ratio... a low rate of compression offers a pretty sizeable saving in bandwidth for an acceptable CPU usage... once you edge up to the higher compression levels then you pay for it in the CPU and your app slows.
i love the idea of a hardware based gzip... but i'd start by educating the software users on the cost vs benefit ratio of their existing configuration... i always seem to find that those who don't know what they're doing are the ones that have it set to maximum compression
which is fine until you travel to some parts of the world where such an advertisement will ensure you'll be mugged.
remember that you'll be wearing this for the rest of your lives if all goes well... as such whilst thoughts on a use are cool, there is a lot to be said for a simple gold band.
In the UK, you should reserve GBP100,000 for a professional album (CaVa studios in Glasgow, Town House post production in London, Masterpiece mastering and creation of masters in London)... It will take 6-9 months life cycle typically for an album to be recorded, mastered and released. Most of that time is spent in the studio.
The above figure includes session musicians.
It does not include manufacturing and distribution... think 30p per CD manufacturing (Tribal in London), and distribution is negotiable but we used 3MV/Pinnacle.
You then pay on top to market and position your release within a store... but that's a totally seperate discussion.
...unless you're fighting with propaganda.
A Faraday cage is the cheap defense... but what it doesn't defend against is the propaganda.
This is a little like Catch 22's glue gun isn't it?
Hokeys looked cool, and OK I quickly looked at the price and considered it... but what it needs is better power source.
Surely this one is crying out for converting kinetic energy!