I'm sure we've learned enough by now to determine how this virus works to the point where we can create a worm of our own and disable it's DoS attacks. I for one believe enough is enough, and it would be ethically ok to go ahead and create such a worm. All we'd have to do is infect in the same way this new virus does, and run arbitrary code to destroy the virus. Thoughts?
Actually now I want to take something back about the rain, apparently there was a big storm last night that produced enough cloud cover to finally cover our line of sight to the satellite, no TV last night:-(. All the same 1 out of every 4 or 5 rainstorms isn't too bad I suppose, cable probably goes out every so often as well, no?
True that, I could always take a closer look at the fine print of the contract, but initially if the starting rates or promo offers seem weird and not entirely upfront, I generally worry that I'll get fineprinted to death by something I didn't see.
This is my problem with doing anything with Adelphia. I want to know the prices upfront and in my face. Not what you'll stick me with behind my back unaware in 3 months.
JEEBUS!!! For that I could almost get my very own T-1 line...there is something to be said for honesty and telling us the real rate (DirecTV never tried a promo rate gimmick and was always upfront about rates). They'll have my business for as long as they continue this practice, even if they do raise rates every so often...
No I'm not a paid endoreser of them, nor do I wish to Spam, but in my experience, for $45/month for 150 channels (including NASA TV, all the basic channels but no premiums like HBO) amongst other wonderful channels with real content, I stay happy. Good value for my $ if you ask me.
Adelphia is the local cable company in my area, and while they have a promo rate of $19/month for 3 months I'm awfully suspicous of that rate after my 3 months are up and they are not willingly disclosing it. They seem kinda scummy to me.
Near as I can tell, weather conditions don't affect Satellites much either. My Satellite was doing just fine in big rainstorms here (I was a bit nervous about turning on my equipment in a big thunderstorm here not too long ago tho so I can't vouch for thunderstorms). My Dad who lives up in the mountains and has had many snowstorms has never complained about any issues with his Satellites (tho in all Fairness he's a DISH subscriber).
DVR? Can't help you there, people have been telling me to get one but they're appeal to me is limited.
Internet access? I've been told it's ok if not quite a bit laggy, but no firsthand experience myself either. For my high speed Internet I use DSL quite happily (again avoiding Adelphia like the plaque).
In short Satellite I think is a good value for the $. However your experiences may vary.
5:55am Monday Morning (Pacific Time), and they're still down. Pretty soon the Google Cache will be their main homepage I guess. I know, a cheap shot but can't help it!
Good point actually, shows you what I don't know about MD5, the trick is to come up with a method that shows that the voter did indeed vote, but not how he voted. I'd like to think Biometric data entry (storing a fingerprint in the DB of each person who voted, but of course not the record) but that just screams privacy and corruption issues. *sigh* can our society just be perfect?
Well you can give a receipt and make it difficult to impossible to track the voting record, figure this:
1) Joe Schmoe votes electronically
2) Voting machine spits out receipt with a MD5 hash key of his vote record, it's one way, it can never be decrypted again to determine how user voted. MD5 hash is also stored on server
Worst Case Scenario: Votes are suspected to be tampered. All voters are asked to submit their receipt. MD5 hashes are compared to what is on the server. If MD5 hash isn't the same, Joe Schmoe is asked to vote again.
This isn't 100% foolproof, but vote tampering and stuffing is tricky now, and as long as a MD5 has remains irreversible nobody will know Joe Schmoe voted. Thoughts?
One of the things about gold that makes it so valuable is it's relative scarcity. If anyone were to start growing gold (yes that's not quite what the article said but...) then the prices would come down due to abundance of supply and pretty soon gold is worthless. Same basic law of supply and demand that is affecting all the IT jobs heading to India, so I'd hope not....
"Great my Dog can use Linux now, W00t!" when they saw this article? Tho I wonder what some good canine applications of Linux would be (at risk of sounding off topic):
1) Smart sensors that automatically determine when your dog is not following his housebreaking and shock him accordingly
2) If Dog barks, it evaluates validity of threat (using spy camera embedded in collar) and alerts you if it's a problem...
3) Any others?
Ok I'll refine the banner ad method a little bit. Make them A) Answer the question about the company as described in parent as well as a random question about the ad itself (for example "What color is the text of the Banner Ad?", or "What is the keyword in the lower left corner of the Banner Ad?".
Or still another method, how about at a random location (to prevent snipping and cropping work) of each "Captcha" just put in the text "If you did not come from Yahoo, do not type this text into the site you are in"? That may not prevent every captcha (some people might say "to hell with it I want Porn"). However I'd respect that and not type the "Captcha" text. Thoughts again?
Rather than guess a single image, how about a feature on the page at random? For example Yahoo Mail can ask "What is the menu to the immediate right of Addresses. (which according to my Yahoo Mail screen would be "Calendar"), Or even "What company is the banner ad up top advertising" which serves 2 purposes 1) Captcha Test and 2) Ensuring the advertising is looked at:-)
Unless a Spammer plans on building a porno site exactly like Yahoo (and incur the wrath of a zillion lawyers consequently), this would be a difficult one to counter attack (unless someone here could prove otherwise). Thoughts?
'fraid so my friend...10 years for a PHd gets you just that, a Wal-Mart greeter, if you don't re-invent yourself so you're not the lowest common denominator. One of my favorite quotes as of late has been "If you're job can be done by the lowest common denominator, and you're not that lowest common denominator, then you have a problem...". If your 10 PHd years are now replaceable by a lower denominator...keep looking behind you... sorry man it bites but it is Darwin at it's finest...
I picked it up in my wired mag yesterday and read it, am I worried? Somewhat, what am I doing? Re-inventing is the only way I can keep head above water.
Already at work the Indians have come, they've worked on one project here quite well. Even though we're hiring American programmers still, Indians are good for the ground level work.
My adaptation? My brain, nobody can stay a drone level coder, I have my double Bachelors in Computers/Human Resources and I'm putting it to work developing and maybe someday deploying my applications in service to my niche.
I'm also contemplating my graduate school options, law school or business school? As far as the Indians go, they won't be able to represent me in court (at least not yet). Management still has possibilities (somebody needs to tell the Indians what to code, or the Indians are merely competition then...).
In short people, FIGHT, FIGHT TO THE DEATH!! Heed the lessons of Bethlehem steel and suffer the consequences of what happens when you are lazy (look up Bethlehem steel on the web if you don't know what I'm talking about). Money is not about sitting on your but and doing nothing, never has, never will!
Welcome our new monk overlords, well actually they kinda are if they talk to god and all.
In my prayers tonight: "God, give me strength to put up with my job to take care of my Fiance..."
God: "I can do that for you, but buy some new toner for your HP Laserjet 1100 for only $50 at http://www.lasermonks.com and you'll get a raise and your Fiance will love you forever..."
Noticed they were using ASP, from the Evil empire....heathens!!! Oh wait they're monks, and they offer me prayers so does that cancel out and make them ok again?
Granted IIS is losing it and it would be nice to have another language in my tool belt anyways. I guess I should quit the MS evil developer camp and pick up a *nix based language or 2...
It appears that this book is a good place to start, but anyone have any good intro to PHP book ideas for someone coming fresh out of the MS Camp? Also starting PHP tips and similar experiences appreciated:-)
So your point is that you're too lazy and afraid to make any kind of switch. Are you one of those programmers that detests any kind of change and lives by the motto, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?
I'll try not to take that personally but, yeah!
Generally as long as a system is performing to all the customers needs, there generally is no need to change a system at that time. By that I mean, is easy to use, carries out all needed and wanted functions and is cheap (comparatively speaking) why upgrade them? To pad my own invoice? That'll come back to me in the long run...
Really that's why I still use Win98, still meets most of my needs (tho notice I dual boot with XP), is easy enough to use and is cheaper as far as time spent than headaching myself finding new serials and re-installing everything.
1) I run a hardware firewall and Anti-Virus on subject computer so Security from the Operating system doesn't concern me hugely
2) The system runs fairly stable (not quite as stable as XP, but I crash maybe 1x per week).
3) I dual-boot with XP for everything that is XP only
4) Re-installing MS Office and the zillions of other programs that require serials that I may or may not have turns me on to no end...
Bottom line, I'm not leaving Win98 anytime soon if I can help...
I still remember getting a rush job assignment as an entry-level web developer "develop an email to 50 of our best clients and blast them with our new service"...
I code the whole thing up in ASP thinking I could use that as a quick and dirty bulk mailer. Unfortunately I didn't realize a condition in my code caused an infinity loop around the send command...
Unfortunately with no QA (remember I was young and stupid then) I hit the execute button. Five minutes later no response from the page...then the phone call came. The worst was one client who got about 17,000 emails advertising our new product in a single in-box.
Believe it or not I got to keep my job, and we were able to spin most of those clients to stay with us, but damn that was a scary day.
hehe, well if you work for Dell do give me their phone # and extension (email to me if you prefer), I'd appreciate still having this power supply from the source:-)
Yeah, I do wish they'd move their residential call centers back as well. After having an old power supply on a Dell Dimension Pentium II 350 break down, I decided to try and keep the computer running, and wanted to see if I could get an OEM power supply from Dell.
I call their tech support number, and get a guy in India, after indicating what I want, I go to their sales department which appears to still be back in the states (American accent anyways). After saying that he can't help me, he transfers me back to India for tech support. After which I just hang up...
Ultimately I searched the web and found someone who does sell Dell Parts including for the older computers.
However Dell gets a Failure mark from me on this, which will affect how I buy my computers in the future. If I can't even get a straight answer about a power supply, can I get a straight answer about other issues that I could have? All I really wished for was a "Yes this is how you order your power supply" or "Sorry this power supply is no longer offered" sheesh...
Did some of this have to do with the fact that one part of the company was in India, and the other part of this was in America, and nobody really knew who to talk to, so I could get a straight answer? Probably...
Anyways herein another issue is realized, collaboration becomes more difficult. It is harder to instruct people on what to do, and what not to do when they aren't in the same place, and instead are half a world away. They don't go to the same management briefings, the support people never hang around the water cooler with the sales people, and in general are the last to know in any such policy changes. Thus would be the least likely to know where I could get a power supply.
Anyways I've vented enough but hope I've provided enough insight on to the difficulties of Outsourcing vs. In-House.
Yup, yup, yup and yup respectively:-) props to my friend sheetrock for sticking up for me as well, those elements mentioned up above can be used as elements to the core competency just as well as anything else.
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I'm sure we've learned enough by now to determine how this virus works to the point where we can create a worm of our own and disable it's DoS attacks. I for one believe enough is enough, and it would be ethically ok to go ahead and create such a worm. All we'd have to do is infect in the same way this new virus does, and run arbitrary code to destroy the virus. Thoughts?
Actually now I want to take something back about the rain, apparently there was a big storm last night that produced enough cloud cover to finally cover our line of sight to the satellite, no TV last night :-(. All the same 1 out of every 4 or 5 rainstorms isn't too bad I suppose, cable probably goes out every so often as well, no?
*zoom into DirecTv customer Support*
Rep: Hello This is DirecTV customer support how may I help you?
Customer: Hi I got a Boeing 747 from Northwest Airlines blocking my satellite signal, can you do something about it?
Rep: Airplanes don't block satellite signals sir, but how do you know it's Northwest Airlines?
Customer: 'cuz the airplane is in my backyard, apparently it crashed and all...
Rep: Hold on I'll call 911 and the FAA, once the airplane is clear you'll get your service back
Customer: GOD DAMN THIS CRAPPY SERVICE!!! I'M GOING BACK TO CABLE WHERE THINGS ARE DONE RIGHT!!!
True that, I could always take a closer look at the fine print of the contract, but initially if the starting rates or promo offers seem weird and not entirely upfront, I generally worry that I'll get fineprinted to death by something I didn't see.
This is my problem with doing anything with Adelphia. I want to know the prices upfront and in my face. Not what you'll stick me with behind my back unaware in 3 months.
JEEBUS!!! For that I could almost get my very own T-1 line...there is something to be said for honesty and telling us the real rate (DirecTV never tried a promo rate gimmick and was always upfront about rates). They'll have my business for as long as they continue this practice, even if they do raise rates every so often...
No I'm not a paid endoreser of them, nor do I wish to Spam, but in my experience, for $45/month for 150 channels (including NASA TV, all the basic channels but no premiums like HBO) amongst other wonderful channels with real content, I stay happy. Good value for my $ if you ask me.
Adelphia is the local cable company in my area, and while they have a promo rate of $19/month for 3 months I'm awfully suspicous of that rate after my 3 months are up and they are not willingly disclosing it. They seem kinda scummy to me.
Near as I can tell, weather conditions don't affect Satellites much either. My Satellite was doing just fine in big rainstorms here (I was a bit nervous about turning on my equipment in a big thunderstorm here not too long ago tho so I can't vouch for thunderstorms). My Dad who lives up in the mountains and has had many snowstorms has never complained about any issues with his Satellites (tho in all Fairness he's a DISH subscriber).
DVR? Can't help you there, people have been telling me to get one but they're appeal to me is limited.
Internet access? I've been told it's ok if not quite a bit laggy, but no firsthand experience myself either. For my high speed Internet I use DSL quite happily (again avoiding Adelphia like the plaque).
In short Satellite I think is a good value for the $. However your experiences may vary.
5:55am Monday Morning (Pacific Time), and they're still down. Pretty soon the Google Cache will be their main homepage I guess. I know, a cheap shot but can't help it!
Good point actually, shows you what I don't know about MD5, the trick is to come up with a method that shows that the voter did indeed vote, but not how he voted. I'd like to think Biometric data entry (storing a fingerprint in the DB of each person who voted, but of course not the record) but that just screams privacy and corruption issues. *sigh* can our society just be perfect?
Well you can give a receipt and make it difficult to impossible to track the voting record, figure this: 1) Joe Schmoe votes electronically
2) Voting machine spits out receipt with a MD5 hash key of his vote record, it's one way, it can never be decrypted again to determine how user voted. MD5 hash is also stored on server
Worst Case Scenario: Votes are suspected to be tampered. All voters are asked to submit their receipt. MD5 hashes are compared to what is on the server. If MD5 hash isn't the same, Joe Schmoe is asked to vote again.
This isn't 100% foolproof, but vote tampering and stuffing is tricky now, and as long as a MD5 has remains irreversible nobody will know Joe Schmoe voted. Thoughts?
One of the things about gold that makes it so valuable is it's relative scarcity. If anyone were to start growing gold (yes that's not quite what the article said but...) then the prices would come down due to abundance of supply and pretty soon gold is worthless. Same basic law of supply and demand that is affecting all the IT jobs heading to India, so I'd hope not....
"Great my Dog can use Linux now, W00t!" when they saw this article? Tho I wonder what some good canine applications of Linux would be (at risk of sounding off topic):
1) Smart sensors that automatically determine when your dog is not following his housebreaking and shock him accordingly
2) If Dog barks, it evaluates validity of threat (using spy camera embedded in collar) and alerts you if it's a problem...
3) Any others?
Ok I'll refine the banner ad method a little bit. Make them A) Answer the question about the company as described in parent as well as a random question about the ad itself (for example "What color is the text of the Banner Ad?", or "What is the keyword in the lower left corner of the Banner Ad?".
Or still another method, how about at a random location (to prevent snipping and cropping work) of each "Captcha" just put in the text "If you did not come from Yahoo, do not type this text into the site you are in"? That may not prevent every captcha (some people might say "to hell with it I want Porn"). However I'd respect that and not type the "Captcha" text. Thoughts again?
Rather than guess a single image, how about a feature on the page at random? For example Yahoo Mail can ask "What is the menu to the immediate right of Addresses. (which according to my Yahoo Mail screen would be "Calendar"), Or even "What company is the banner ad up top advertising" which serves 2 purposes 1) Captcha Test and 2) Ensuring the advertising is looked at :-)
Unless a Spammer plans on building a porno site exactly like Yahoo (and incur the wrath of a zillion lawyers consequently), this would be a difficult one to counter attack (unless someone here could prove otherwise). Thoughts?
'fraid so my friend...10 years for a PHd gets you just that, a Wal-Mart greeter, if you don't re-invent yourself so you're not the lowest common denominator. One of my favorite quotes as of late has been "If you're job can be done by the lowest common denominator, and you're not that lowest common denominator, then you have a problem...". If your 10 PHd years are now replaceable by a lower denominator...keep looking behind you... sorry man it bites but it is Darwin at it's finest...
I picked it up in my wired mag yesterday and read it, am I worried? Somewhat, what am I doing? Re-inventing is the only way I can keep head above water.
Already at work the Indians have come, they've worked on one project here quite well. Even though we're hiring American programmers still, Indians are good for the ground level work.
My adaptation? My brain, nobody can stay a drone level coder, I have my double Bachelors in Computers/Human Resources and I'm putting it to work developing and maybe someday deploying my applications in service to my niche.
I'm also contemplating my graduate school options, law school or business school? As far as the Indians go, they won't be able to represent me in court (at least not yet). Management still has possibilities (somebody needs to tell the Indians what to code, or the Indians are merely competition then...).
In short people, FIGHT, FIGHT TO THE DEATH!! Heed the lessons of Bethlehem steel and suffer the consequences of what happens when you are lazy (look up Bethlehem steel on the web if you don't know what I'm talking about). Money is not about sitting on your but and doing nothing, never has, never will!
Welcome our new monk overlords, well actually they kinda are if they talk to god and all.
In my prayers tonight: "God, give me strength to put up with my job to take care of my Fiance..."
God: "I can do that for you, but buy some new toner for your HP Laserjet 1100 for only $50 at http://www.lasermonks.com and you'll get a raise and your Fiance will love you forever..."
Noticed they were using ASP, from the Evil empire....heathens!!! Oh wait they're monks, and they offer me prayers so does that cancel out and make them ok again?
Granted IIS is losing it and it would be nice to have another language in my tool belt anyways. I guess I should quit the MS evil developer camp and pick up a *nix based language or 2...
:-)
It appears that this book is a good place to start, but anyone have any good intro to PHP book ideas for someone coming fresh out of the MS Camp? Also starting PHP tips and similar experiences appreciated
So your point is that you're too lazy and afraid to make any kind of switch. Are you one of those programmers that detests any kind of change and lives by the motto, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?
I'll try not to take that personally but, yeah!
Generally as long as a system is performing to all the customers needs, there generally is no need to change a system at that time. By that I mean, is easy to use, carries out all needed and wanted functions and is cheap (comparatively speaking) why upgrade them? To pad my own invoice? That'll come back to me in the long run...
Really that's why I still use Win98, still meets most of my needs (tho notice I dual boot with XP), is easy enough to use and is cheaper as far as time spent than headaching myself finding new serials and re-installing everything.
Granted the following:
1) I run a hardware firewall and Anti-Virus on subject computer so Security from the Operating system doesn't concern me hugely
2) The system runs fairly stable (not quite as stable as XP, but I crash maybe 1x per week).
3) I dual-boot with XP for everything that is XP only
4) Re-installing MS Office and the zillions of other programs that require serials that I may or may not have turns me on to no end...
Bottom line, I'm not leaving Win98 anytime soon if I can help...
I still remember getting a rush job assignment as an entry-level web developer "develop an email to 50 of our best clients and blast them with our new service"...
I code the whole thing up in ASP thinking I could use that as a quick and dirty bulk mailer. Unfortunately I didn't realize a condition in my code caused an infinity loop around the send command...
Unfortunately with no QA (remember I was young and stupid then) I hit the execute button. Five minutes later no response from the page...then the phone call came. The worst was one client who got about 17,000 emails advertising our new product in a single in-box.
Believe it or not I got to keep my job, and we were able to spin most of those clients to stay with us, but damn that was a scary day.
hehe, well if you work for Dell do give me their phone # and extension (email to me if you prefer), I'd appreciate still having this power supply from the source :-)
Yeah, I do wish they'd move their residential call centers back as well. After having an old power supply on a Dell Dimension Pentium II 350 break down, I decided to try and keep the computer running, and wanted to see if I could get an OEM power supply from Dell.
I call their tech support number, and get a guy in India, after indicating what I want, I go to their sales department which appears to still be back in the states (American accent anyways). After saying that he can't help me, he transfers me back to India for tech support. After which I just hang up...
Ultimately I searched the web and found someone who does sell Dell Parts including for the older computers.
However Dell gets a Failure mark from me on this, which will affect how I buy my computers in the future. If I can't even get a straight answer about a power supply, can I get a straight answer about other issues that I could have? All I really wished for was a "Yes this is how you order your power supply" or "Sorry this power supply is no longer offered" sheesh...
Did some of this have to do with the fact that one part of the company was in India, and the other part of this was in America, and nobody really knew who to talk to, so I could get a straight answer? Probably...
Anyways herein another issue is realized, collaboration becomes more difficult. It is harder to instruct people on what to do, and what not to do when they aren't in the same place, and instead are half a world away. They don't go to the same management briefings, the support people never hang around the water cooler with the sales people, and in general are the last to know in any such policy changes. Thus would be the least likely to know where I could get a power supply.
Anyways I've vented enough but hope I've provided enough insight on to the difficulties of Outsourcing vs. In-House.
Well as of lately (post 1970) I'd agree on that, but back in the days of yore (think 1920's) what I said would apply.
So I retract the statement using Ford as a success in a present tense anyways (unless someone would care to challenge yet again).
Yup, yup, yup and yup respectively :-) props to my friend sheetrock for sticking up for me as well, those elements mentioned up above can be used as elements to the core competency just as well as anything else.