You've obviously never BEEN in the real world, you overpaid spoiled troll (CEO?). Go broke and work for a living before you flame us honest hard working people.
Been there, done that, you're still a big cry baby. Worse still is that you're retarded and think you are somehow entitled to something you didn't work to obtain.
You know why you don't make as much as the CEO? Cause you don't deserve it. If you did, you'd have the job and the salary, but you don't. You aren't capable of getting it. Why? Could be any reason, maybe you really aren't that smart. Maybe you don't care enough. Maybe you don't want the life style that goes with it. I don't know the specific reason you don't deserve it, but you don't. You are not entitled to jack shit, you earn what you get, one way or another. I'll never be a CEO because I'm too lazy and too nice, but I'm also not living in some retarded delusion that came about because I was raised by a bunch of sissies who told me I was special and different all my life.
You can pretend you're special, you can even actually believe your special, but in reality if you were half as special as you think you are, you'd make good money because you'd have those jobs that make good money.
In reality, you're just a big baby crying about how his/her job is now becoming normal since the ratio of tech jobs to tech employees is equaling out. Companies are realizing that they don't need 20 geeks who do half assed jobs and get paid 60k a year, they only need 5 geeks, who get paid 60k a year, but do a good job and are happy to do so.
You go ahead, keep whining and talking about how unfair it is, let me know when food stamps pays for your blackberry bill, I'll text you and let you know how nice it is to still have a job.
Honest hard working people aren't the ones complaining, its the spoiled brats who haven't actually had a job that requires 'real work' that are complaining. Yes, you obviously fit this category.
So why don't YOU go get a dose of reality. I HAVE busted my ass to go from the poor house to a nice house, I HAVE put in the work and effort. Once you get over being spoiled and get a dose of reality like you claim, I doubt you'll bitch as much.
Now days, you're consultant generally sends one bill like that, and the next time around they call someone else who doesn't have his head so far up his ass.
Reality check: We ARE glorified janitors and automobile mechanics.
Very few in IT are actually worthy of being treated as something special, and regardless of how many people here don't understand it, most slashdotters are not 'special' with their skills today. 10 years ago, slashdot users had automatic street cred, today, its just another haven for wanna-bes with a few geeks still mixed in from the 'good ol days'
Yes, unions have helped some things, they've also crushed entire industries with their ridiculousness, but you know, some of us DO know a little about the history of unions which apparently doesn't include you.
Its nice that you pick out good things they've done while utterly ruining many many businesses and in the end resulting in massive amounts of unemployment.
Unfortunately today's union simply doesn't quit demanding more crap, even after driving a company to unprofitability due to high wages and ridiculous work 'safety' crap.
Read a little history about the companies that have went under, because of unions, that resulted in far lower wages for its workers, because you know, no incoming some income. Yea, unions get me paid more, and also Yea the union drove the company out of business resulting in me being unemployed with no hope of finding another job doing that sort of work since the market suddenly became flooded with people in EXACTLY my shoes.
There are other ways to fix the problem, unions are a shitty example of a solution that are nothing more than the result of pure greedy and selfishness.
When they get back, you tell them they are fired. It doesn't take that happening too many times before you stop having 'break' problems.
Reality check: You aren't special, neither are your skills. You are essentially a computer janitor (regardless of your actual position). You can be replaced, and in a few short years your skills will in no way be special as any grade school kid will be able to do your job, probably better since they've grown up with technology. If you don't realize this, you're already past the point of no return.
Your job isn't there to provide you benefits. You do not have any special rights because you work on computers. Why is it that computer geeks seem to have this retarded notion that you somehow deserve to get treated differently than the rest of the world? You need to pull your head out of your ass and realize that 'the basic office environment' as you think of it, isn't the basic office environment for pretty much any other job in the world outside of geekdom.
As soon as the need for computer literate people is balanced by the number of them, all perks will end and you'll be treated just like the guy in a steel mill, the guy building skyscrapers, and the guy who takes out your trash.
You are not entitled to anything, get over yourself. The fact that you got modded insightful just shows how many people who read slashdot now are so incredible out of touch. When I got into the field, I was excited about all the cool perks geeks get because of their rarity. Its been that way just long enough that all the little wanna-be geeks such as yourself think that you are entitled to such treatment, rather than realizing those were just initial perks to make up for the lack of available talent. There is no longer a lack of available talent, you have nothing to offer over the guy who is willing to go to work without coffee and willing to work for a wage you are actually worth rather than demanding a wage that you are in no way deserve.
You are spoiled and unfortunately in for a very rude awakening and reality check over the next few years. Have fun, I'll enjoy watching you leave because you didn't get your coffee, mean while, I'll pull my drinks out of the bag I brought with me to work as I'm watching you walk out the door whining like a little bitch.
The decision wasn't based on technology not being in general use.
The 2001 decision was based on the ideals behind the consitution, that what you did in your home was your business and that using technology to see inside the home wasn't something the founding fathers thought of when writing the consitution, but clearly went against the spirit of the law. The spirit being that what you do in your home that doesn't bother anyone is your business until it puts someone else in danger or becomes obvious to the outside observer.
At the time no one would have imagined that the outside observer could see through walls in a few hundred years.
The supreme court decided that just because some unpredicted technology was invented, doesn't mean that its allowed to be used.
Its not illegal for them to get hit with it, you can't 'break' laws of physics.
Its illegal for them to use that information to charge you with a crime or perform other activities that they wouldn't otherwise have legal grounds to do so if they didn't have the technology.
I.E. They can't use a thermal camera to detect you growing pot and use that to get a warrant and then break into your house and find the pot.
They can, however, detect you growing pot all day long, they just can't do anything with that knowledge.
Whats better is if they even consider using the technology at all, they run the risk of getting court cases thrown out because a defense attorney will argue that they cheated, used the tech to find the criminal, then followed him until he/she did something illegal they could act on and that they are covering up the fact that they used the infrared cameras. The result is basically like cops breaking into homes without warrants or probably cause. It doesn't matter if they know the guy is growing weed, they need to have come by the information in a legitimate manner, the guy has to give them an 'IN' to his home someway before they can go in and do something about it.
Its also illegal for them to pull you over and search your car on the side of the road without reason, even though many of us have been subjected to it without legal grounds to do so.
I've been searched. I've had drugs found in my car. I have no criminal charges. Fortunately, since the cop pulled me over for a simple speeding ticket, there was no reason to search my car, except one, cops were (this is no longer the case) told (in NC) to request to search your car at every stop, and if you consented, they were required to search. Whats worse, is when you said yes, you most of the time were pissing the cop off because now the poor bastard HAS to do the search. Unfortunately for the state of NC, this resulted in a LOT of over turned convictions when the supreme court decided that you really did need to have a freaking reason before asking to search the car, which resulted in all those previous searches without cause to be deemed illegal, and all evidence from them thrown out if there was no probably cause. They were also told, very sternly, that the reason you pulled them over 'i.e. speeding or running a stop sign' is NEVER probably cause, regardless of what it is.
End result? Lots of criminals who got by with shit because of retarded laws that the supreme court stepped in and put down like a bad dog.
Unfortunately, the constitution and courts disagree with your take on this.
Courts have thrown out criminal cases where technology was used to look inside someones house to find them doing things that are illegal but they never would have known about without technology letting them see past the walls.
Cops used to use infrared cameras in heli's to fly over houses looking for hotspots associated with people growing Marijuana. This worked for a while until someone with some money fought it. Now there is precedent set against doing so. Doing things inside your home that don't actually result in immediate danger to another person can't be used against you regardless of how they find it unless they had a legitimate reason to be in the home to find it. Don't beat your wife and have the cops come over to stop it and you won't have to worry about your drugs being found.
In reality, they have far far easier ways to catch someone growing enough to be dangerous. They'll just catch you dealing, and use that to get back to your growing.
Much like Linux exploits, the installed base is so small no one notices when the product gets exploited.
Its no better, its just different exploits that happen to fewer total people. The percentage of installed users effected is likely identical, assuming the same ratio of exploits directed at Foxit versus Adobe Reader.
You gain security through obscurity. No one cares about exploiting foxit really, the install base is too small compared to adobe reader, so the bad guys target the one that they get the most effect on. Spend an hour exploiting foxit and get to exploit 10 machines. Spend a hour exploiting adobe and exploit 1 million machines. Only an idiot would bother writing Foxit exploits. The result, while code quality could be identical, Foxit is still SAFER to use at the moment.
How the script interacts with the rest of the software is a problem. The exploits (without actually looking at these specific details) are generally not with the JS engine, but are with the integration between the engine and the application. What generally happens is that someone connects JS to some component of the C code that does things that shouldn't be allowed in a document, but the guy who wired up the connection between JS and the C code doesn't know about the danger or doesn't realize that it allows someone to create a chain of objects that can do something nasty and otherwise normally not allowed.
Security in complex systems such as a browser or pdf viewer is insanely complex. Not only do you have to protect against the user doing potentially bad things, you also have to make sure that the document the user is opening doesn't do something the user doesn't expect, while still allowing all the other stuff the user wants to do to work.
Or, just do away with PDF in favor of a portable document format, like HTML which is supported on far more platforms than PDF, and far better than PDF in every conceivable way.
As for PDF forms, has anyone ever seen them used properly. By that I mean made, actually will allow you to input data on them and allow it to be submitted to where it needs to go or printed or something useful?
There are two situations where what you speak of occurs.
A) You aren't doing it right, so she's not thinking about whats happening, but is instead so bored she's written 2 books, 3 short stories and translated the UN documents into every language on the planet.
B) She's a teenager (literally or emotionally, physical age isn't always the best indication)
Normal women really don't have those issues. Of course, the same is true for men as well, for us its just a little easier to distract a man with a pair of tits and a few tugs.
By this time next year, it might night be a problem. You can already get them for $250 new.
Then again, $200 starts getting into the range of too under powered to be a replacement for the more expensive bigger version.
You think that its a matter of not getting the price down, personally from your own statements about yours being underpowered, perhaps you don't actually want them to produce cheaper ones than they currently are.
That works fine when your company is all of 10 employees.
Doesn't work out the same way when your company is 10k or 100k employees, you'll spend all your time realizing that exactly 3 seconds after you fixed the last screw up that someone else made a new one, or that 5 minutes before you fixed the last screw up, someone else screwed up 20 more things while you were finding the last one.
What you're describing as a developer is actually just some guy who writes code.
I don't think you're a bad support guy, most 'developers' suck. Any developer that feels like you describe is at the very best a newbie and has no clue how complex of a system he or she is dealing with, but its more likely that they are just never going to be capable of being a competent developer.
You are correct in blaming the computer gods, because sometimes its not part of your focus to figure out WHY some settings does something unexpected, your focus is to produce product. You can't dissect every bug to a root cause, sometimes the root cause is beyond your control, such as in someone elses source. When thats the case at some point you have to stop troubleshooting that problem, accept that it is a problem, work around it and move on. If it costs you 10k dollars to troubleshoot and fix a problem, or alternatively, just not fix the problem and say 'dont do that' while losing 5k in sales, then you accept the 5k loss as far better than a 10k to get a proper fix. Either way, you're out 5K in money, and one is a lot less time consuming. Of course you never really know if its going to cost you 10k to fix or that you'll lose 5k if you don't. Good developers recognize that the business isn't there to produce the perfect product, its there to produce profit.
Of course, this is slashdot, so you're going to see almost every post talking about how developers should be able to do whatever they want, and how the poster wouldn't work somewhere that didn't let them have admin rights. Pay attention closely, these guys are the unemployed ones still living in mommies basement, or probably on their way there soon.
I develop software currently on OS X, Windows and FreeBSD, and I've done Solaris development in the past. None of these OSes currently require root for developing software. You will need permission to do what you're trying to do for testing. You may need root to test a kernel module or driver, thats what test hardware (or virtual machine) on its own network is for. That separate machine makes isolating changes required in production a lot easier to find, since you start off with an image thats basically a default install to test against, so you always know what changes are required to make it work else where.
QA should always be separate from development. Developers freaking SUCK at QA. They know EXACTLY how the app is SUPPOSED to work and test all those situations it deals with. Good QA can be done with no knowledge of the application itself, and is sometimes better if the testers have no knowledge. Testers need to throw unexpected situations at the code to find out where it fails and why.
1. Yes, in a fantasy world, things look different and aren't really better. Thats what happens when you compare fantasy to reality, you get a retarded comparison.
2. Wrong, most office installations now days dont' preload anything. Nice try though. That is, unless you mean by 'preload' that it uses the default OS toolkit rather than loading its own. Either way you look at it, not using the OS toolkit isn't a feature, its a bug that causes inconsistency and unexpected results.
3. Awesome, you just named 3 things that 300 people in the entire world are going to use OO.org for. Thats awesome, but useless the the other 6 billion or so people on the planet. Pointing out how its got some great obscure features that very very few people actually use doesnt' not make it impressive, it shows the OO.org developers are disconnected from reality. They're developing an app that every likes to pretend is an MS Office replacement, except they aren't making features for those users. How many people NEED pyhton scripting in their documens? VERY FEW. Office will save to PDF so thats a silly point to bring up. Great, you can use LaTeX in your presentations, you've found a feature 0.00001% of the OO.org users actually use.
4. False. Educational Institutions are not biased towards geeks, they get the same ratios as everything else. Its just one of the few places geeks actually come out of their basement long enough to realize there are other people in the world. Just because the first time you ran into other people was at your college computer club meeting, and that the only people you talk to are geeks, doesn't mean the proportions are different.
5. I think it already has, its used by a few zealots with their heads so far up their asses they think its god gift to the world, when all they need to do is pull their heads out of their self absorbed asses long enough to realize that the rest of the world has moved far beyond that level of crappy software.
If after playing with it for only 5 minutes, he found things that didn't work as he expected, then the GUI is most definitely broken. Any GUI designer worth his/her salt knows that the GUI is supposed to do EXACTLY WHAT YOU EXPECT, without needing Google or help files.
People know how to use these utilities in their traditional form in their office, making a GUI that lets them use the software out of the box without help or searching isn't hard.
On a daily basis I run Office 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010.
I don't really care which one you pick, or what kind of machine or what installation options you picked, OO.org takes longer to do pretty much everything.
If you don't realize this, you shouldn't be making comments comparing or contrasting OO.org and MS Office as you've obviously not got the experience to do so.
OO.org doesn't do basic things that the OS controls due out of the box without any changes. Why is it everyone thinks they need to write their own fucking toolkit? USE THE OS CONTROLS! I realize Linux doesn't have any OS provided GUI controls and multiple toolkits. Thats great, good for Linux. But for the rest of the world that wants software that does what they expect rather than to circle jerk each other about how 'free' it is, then it sucks ass.
If your product doesn't memic the basic controls of the OS because you felt you had to go redesign everything yourself, you've not only made a POS software package, you've broken rule number 1 in GUI design, which is to do what the user EXPECTS without requiring 'education' about how to use the product.
For something like an Office product, if your everyday user needs to read a help file or gets confused about the way something works, you fucked up your GUI.
Not that I disagree with you in principal, I always feel its necessary to point out that encryption is nothing more than security through calculated obscurity.
There are differing levels of obscurity and differing levels of difficulty to get useful information out of the obsfucation, but in the end, its all just security through obscurity.
Posts like your own are generally by people who don't really understand encryption in general, as such I recommend that while your post has a valid point, you try to refrain from commenting on the more technical aspects of security.
We haven't really been cloning all that long and as such, planning out how to best disassemble species as they become extinct isn't standard practice yet. They're still writing the RFCs, they haven't even been commented on yet, its gonna take a few tries to get it figured out.
Just curious, which provider do you work for so everyone knows who to avoid?
I can understand not providing service to someone who is making your job impossible, locking them out of the machine? That is unacceptable.
Our company regularly has customer who refuse to provide more info or allow us to debug our software further in their environment. We don't turn their accounts off, we just say 'we can't help you any more because you won't help us.' At that point they either let us, or not, and if not, we may or may not let them out of the contract. Sometimes they can't let us help them for valid reasons, like the machine with the problem has confidential data we're not allowed to see, so we let them go if they want to. Sometimes, if the customer isn't making any effort at all to work with us to solve the problem, we'll hold them to their contractual financial obligation.
Never, under any circumstance will we hold their data hostage. Thats just fucking wrong asshole.
If they wanted your root password that bad, they'd have it, you obviously aren't booting from an encrypted drive so they could just single user boot your machine and do whatever they wanted, since you claim they are rebooting it.
There is no logical reason for them to lock you out of your own machine to get you to give them a root password.
There is more to this story that you're leaving out, intentionally I suspect.
Perhaps I'm wrong but my guess is you should just pay them or stop trying to scam them, whichever it is and stop giving slashdot some bullshit line of crap in hope that you'll get someone else to give you a sneaky way to turn the tables on them.
Slashdot Mirror
Been there, done that, you're still a big cry baby. Worse still is that you're retarded and think you are somehow entitled to something you didn't work to obtain.
You know why you don't make as much as the CEO? Cause you don't deserve it. If you did, you'd have the job and the salary, but you don't. You aren't capable of getting it. Why? Could be any reason, maybe you really aren't that smart. Maybe you don't care enough. Maybe you don't want the life style that goes with it. I don't know the specific reason you don't deserve it, but you don't. You are not entitled to jack shit, you earn what you get, one way or another. I'll never be a CEO because I'm too lazy and too nice, but I'm also not living in some retarded delusion that came about because I was raised by a bunch of sissies who told me I was special and different all my life.
You can pretend you're special, you can even actually believe your special, but in reality if you were half as special as you think you are, you'd make good money because you'd have those jobs that make good money.
In reality, you're just a big baby crying about how his/her job is now becoming normal since the ratio of tech jobs to tech employees is equaling out. Companies are realizing that they don't need 20 geeks who do half assed jobs and get paid 60k a year, they only need 5 geeks, who get paid 60k a year, but do a good job and are happy to do so.
You go ahead, keep whining and talking about how unfair it is, let me know when food stamps pays for your blackberry bill, I'll text you and let you know how nice it is to still have a job.
Honest hard working people aren't the ones complaining, its the spoiled brats who haven't actually had a job that requires 'real work' that are complaining. Yes, you obviously fit this category.
So why don't YOU go get a dose of reality. I HAVE busted my ass to go from the poor house to a nice house, I HAVE put in the work and effort. Once you get over being spoiled and get a dose of reality like you claim, I doubt you'll bitch as much.
Unfortunately, that no longer holds true today when anyone can say:
http://www.google.com/?q=where+do+I+hit+this+machine+to+fix+it
And likely will get a legitimate response.
Now days, you're consultant generally sends one bill like that, and the next time around they call someone else who doesn't have his head so far up his ass.
You say that as if its not the truth ...
Reality check: We ARE glorified janitors and automobile mechanics.
Very few in IT are actually worthy of being treated as something special, and regardless of how many people here don't understand it, most slashdotters are not 'special' with their skills today. 10 years ago, slashdot users had automatic street cred, today, its just another haven for wanna-bes with a few geeks still mixed in from the 'good ol days'
Yes, unions have helped some things, they've also crushed entire industries with their ridiculousness, but you know, some of us DO know a little about the history of unions which apparently doesn't include you.
Its nice that you pick out good things they've done while utterly ruining many many businesses and in the end resulting in massive amounts of unemployment.
Unfortunately today's union simply doesn't quit demanding more crap, even after driving a company to unprofitability due to high wages and ridiculous work 'safety' crap.
Read a little history about the companies that have went under, because of unions, that resulted in far lower wages for its workers, because you know, no incoming some income. Yea, unions get me paid more, and also Yea the union drove the company out of business resulting in me being unemployed with no hope of finding another job doing that sort of work since the market suddenly became flooded with people in EXACTLY my shoes.
There are other ways to fix the problem, unions are a shitty example of a solution that are nothing more than the result of pure greedy and selfishness.
I have a far simpler solution to this problem.
When they get back, you tell them they are fired. It doesn't take that happening too many times before you stop having 'break' problems.
Reality check: You aren't special, neither are your skills. You are essentially a computer janitor (regardless of your actual position). You can be replaced, and in a few short years your skills will in no way be special as any grade school kid will be able to do your job, probably better since they've grown up with technology. If you don't realize this, you're already past the point of no return.
Your job isn't there to provide you benefits. You do not have any special rights because you work on computers. Why is it that computer geeks seem to have this retarded notion that you somehow deserve to get treated differently than the rest of the world? You need to pull your head out of your ass and realize that 'the basic office environment' as you think of it, isn't the basic office environment for pretty much any other job in the world outside of geekdom.
As soon as the need for computer literate people is balanced by the number of them, all perks will end and you'll be treated just like the guy in a steel mill, the guy building skyscrapers, and the guy who takes out your trash.
You are not entitled to anything, get over yourself. The fact that you got modded insightful just shows how many people who read slashdot now are so incredible out of touch. When I got into the field, I was excited about all the cool perks geeks get because of their rarity. Its been that way just long enough that all the little wanna-be geeks such as yourself think that you are entitled to such treatment, rather than realizing those were just initial perks to make up for the lack of available talent. There is no longer a lack of available talent, you have nothing to offer over the guy who is willing to go to work without coffee and willing to work for a wage you are actually worth rather than demanding a wage that you are in no way deserve.
You are spoiled and unfortunately in for a very rude awakening and reality check over the next few years. Have fun, I'll enjoy watching you leave because you didn't get your coffee, mean while, I'll pull my drinks out of the bag I brought with me to work as I'm watching you walk out the door whining like a little bitch.
The decision wasn't based on technology not being in general use.
The 2001 decision was based on the ideals behind the consitution, that what you did in your home was your business and that using technology to see inside the home wasn't something the founding fathers thought of when writing the consitution, but clearly went against the spirit of the law. The spirit being that what you do in your home that doesn't bother anyone is your business until it puts someone else in danger or becomes obvious to the outside observer.
At the time no one would have imagined that the outside observer could see through walls in a few hundred years.
The supreme court decided that just because some unpredicted technology was invented, doesn't mean that its allowed to be used.
Its not illegal for them to get hit with it, you can't 'break' laws of physics.
Its illegal for them to use that information to charge you with a crime or perform other activities that they wouldn't otherwise have legal grounds to do so if they didn't have the technology.
I.E. They can't use a thermal camera to detect you growing pot and use that to get a warrant and then break into your house and find the pot.
They can, however, detect you growing pot all day long, they just can't do anything with that knowledge.
Whats better is if they even consider using the technology at all, they run the risk of getting court cases thrown out because a defense attorney will argue that they cheated, used the tech to find the criminal, then followed him until he/she did something illegal they could act on and that they are covering up the fact that they used the infrared cameras. The result is basically like cops breaking into homes without warrants or probably cause. It doesn't matter if they know the guy is growing weed, they need to have come by the information in a legitimate manner, the guy has to give them an 'IN' to his home someway before they can go in and do something about it.
Its also illegal for them to pull you over and search your car on the side of the road without reason, even though many of us have been subjected to it without legal grounds to do so.
I've been searched. I've had drugs found in my car. I have no criminal charges. Fortunately, since the cop pulled me over for a simple speeding ticket, there was no reason to search my car, except one, cops were (this is no longer the case) told (in NC) to request to search your car at every stop, and if you consented, they were required to search. Whats worse, is when you said yes, you most of the time were pissing the cop off because now the poor bastard HAS to do the search. Unfortunately for the state of NC, this resulted in a LOT of over turned convictions when the supreme court decided that you really did need to have a freaking reason before asking to search the car, which resulted in all those previous searches without cause to be deemed illegal, and all evidence from them thrown out if there was no probably cause. They were also told, very sternly, that the reason you pulled them over 'i.e. speeding or running a stop sign' is NEVER probably cause, regardless of what it is.
End result? Lots of criminals who got by with shit because of retarded laws that the supreme court stepped in and put down like a bad dog.
Unfortunately, the constitution and courts disagree with your take on this.
Courts have thrown out criminal cases where technology was used to look inside someones house to find them doing things that are illegal but they never would have known about without technology letting them see past the walls.
Cops used to use infrared cameras in heli's to fly over houses looking for hotspots associated with people growing Marijuana. This worked for a while until someone with some money fought it. Now there is precedent set against doing so. Doing things inside your home that don't actually result in immediate danger to another person can't be used against you regardless of how they find it unless they had a legitimate reason to be in the home to find it. Don't beat your wife and have the cops come over to stop it and you won't have to worry about your drugs being found.
In reality, they have far far easier ways to catch someone growing enough to be dangerous. They'll just catch you dealing, and use that to get back to your growing.
Much like Linux exploits, the installed base is so small no one notices when the product gets exploited.
Its no better, its just different exploits that happen to fewer total people. The percentage of installed users effected is likely identical, assuming the same ratio of exploits directed at Foxit versus Adobe Reader.
You gain security through obscurity. No one cares about exploiting foxit really, the install base is too small compared to adobe reader, so the bad guys target the one that they get the most effect on. Spend an hour exploiting foxit and get to exploit 10 machines. Spend a hour exploiting adobe and exploit 1 million machines. Only an idiot would bother writing Foxit exploits. The result, while code quality could be identical, Foxit is still SAFER to use at the moment.
Browsers are used FAR FAR more than PDF. Browsers user FAR FAR more likely to have already experienced these exploits and had them fixed.
It isn't that Adobe isn't as good as it so much as that Adobe is just a new player in the JavaScript world.
And for reference, Firefox and Adobe are sharing some implementation details.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
How the script interacts with the rest of the software is a problem. The exploits (without actually looking at these specific details) are generally not with the JS engine, but are with the integration between the engine and the application. What generally happens is that someone connects JS to some component of the C code that does things that shouldn't be allowed in a document, but the guy who wired up the connection between JS and the C code doesn't know about the danger or doesn't realize that it allows someone to create a chain of objects that can do something nasty and otherwise normally not allowed.
Security in complex systems such as a browser or pdf viewer is insanely complex. Not only do you have to protect against the user doing potentially bad things, you also have to make sure that the document the user is opening doesn't do something the user doesn't expect, while still allowing all the other stuff the user wants to do to work.
Or, just do away with PDF in favor of a portable document format, like HTML which is supported on far more platforms than PDF, and far better than PDF in every conceivable way.
As for PDF forms, has anyone ever seen them used properly. By that I mean made, actually will allow you to input data on them and allow it to be submitted to where it needs to go or printed or something useful?
I've never seen a PDF form that worked.
There are two situations where what you speak of occurs.
A) You aren't doing it right, so she's not thinking about whats happening, but is instead so bored she's written 2 books, 3 short stories and translated the UN documents into every language on the planet.
B) She's a teenager (literally or emotionally, physical age isn't always the best indication)
Normal women really don't have those issues. Of course, the same is true for men as well, for us its just a little easier to distract a man with a pair of tits and a few tugs.
By this time next year, it might night be a problem. You can already get them for $250 new.
Then again, $200 starts getting into the range of too under powered to be a replacement for the more expensive bigger version.
You think that its a matter of not getting the price down, personally from your own statements about yours being underpowered, perhaps you don't actually want them to produce cheaper ones than they currently are.
That works fine when your company is all of 10 employees.
Doesn't work out the same way when your company is 10k or 100k employees, you'll spend all your time realizing that exactly 3 seconds after you fixed the last screw up that someone else made a new one, or that 5 minutes before you fixed the last screw up, someone else screwed up 20 more things while you were finding the last one.
What you're describing as a developer is actually just some guy who writes code.
I don't think you're a bad support guy, most 'developers' suck. Any developer that feels like you describe is at the very best a newbie and has no clue how complex of a system he or she is dealing with, but its more likely that they are just never going to be capable of being a competent developer.
You are correct in blaming the computer gods, because sometimes its not part of your focus to figure out WHY some settings does something unexpected, your focus is to produce product. You can't dissect every bug to a root cause, sometimes the root cause is beyond your control, such as in someone elses source. When thats the case at some point you have to stop troubleshooting that problem, accept that it is a problem, work around it and move on. If it costs you 10k dollars to troubleshoot and fix a problem, or alternatively, just not fix the problem and say 'dont do that' while losing 5k in sales, then you accept the 5k loss as far better than a 10k to get a proper fix. Either way, you're out 5K in money, and one is a lot less time consuming. Of course you never really know if its going to cost you 10k to fix or that you'll lose 5k if you don't. Good developers recognize that the business isn't there to produce the perfect product, its there to produce profit.
Of course, this is slashdot, so you're going to see almost every post talking about how developers should be able to do whatever they want, and how the poster wouldn't work somewhere that didn't let them have admin rights. Pay attention closely, these guys are the unemployed ones still living in mommies basement, or probably on their way there soon.
I develop software currently on OS X, Windows and FreeBSD, and I've done Solaris development in the past. None of these OSes currently require root for developing software. You will need permission to do what you're trying to do for testing. You may need root to test a kernel module or driver, thats what test hardware (or virtual machine) on its own network is for. That separate machine makes isolating changes required in production a lot easier to find, since you start off with an image thats basically a default install to test against, so you always know what changes are required to make it work else where.
QA should always be separate from development. Developers freaking SUCK at QA. They know EXACTLY how the app is SUPPOSED to work and test all those situations it deals with. Good QA can be done with no knowledge of the application itself, and is sometimes better if the testers have no knowledge. Testers need to throw unexpected situations at the code to find out where it fails and why.
There isn't a 'social aspect' to the phone other than using it to call other people.
Even most kids to who the 'social' aspect would be important don't give a shit beyond the basics.
People care more about the social aspect of their forks than they do about their phones.
Right, its her fault that OO.org isn't intuitive and doesn't use existing well established conventions for common things.
1. Yes, in a fantasy world, things look different and aren't really better. Thats what happens when you compare fantasy to reality, you get a retarded comparison.
2. Wrong, most office installations now days dont' preload anything. Nice try though. That is, unless you mean by 'preload' that it uses the default OS toolkit rather than loading its own. Either way you look at it, not using the OS toolkit isn't a feature, its a bug that causes inconsistency and unexpected results.
3. Awesome, you just named 3 things that 300 people in the entire world are going to use OO.org for. Thats awesome, but useless the the other 6 billion or so people on the planet. Pointing out how its got some great obscure features that very very few people actually use doesnt' not make it impressive, it shows the OO.org developers are disconnected from reality. They're developing an app that every likes to pretend is an MS Office replacement, except they aren't making features for those users. How many people NEED pyhton scripting in their documens? VERY FEW. Office will save to PDF so thats a silly point to bring up. Great, you can use LaTeX in your presentations, you've found a feature 0.00001% of the OO.org users actually use.
4. False. Educational Institutions are not biased towards geeks, they get the same ratios as everything else. Its just one of the few places geeks actually come out of their basement long enough to realize there are other people in the world. Just because the first time you ran into other people was at your college computer club meeting, and that the only people you talk to are geeks, doesn't mean the proportions are different.
5. I think it already has, its used by a few zealots with their heads so far up their asses they think its god gift to the world, when all they need to do is pull their heads out of their self absorbed asses long enough to realize that the rest of the world has moved far beyond that level of crappy software.
You would be wrong.
If after playing with it for only 5 minutes, he found things that didn't work as he expected, then the GUI is most definitely broken. Any GUI designer worth his/her salt knows that the GUI is supposed to do EXACTLY WHAT YOU EXPECT, without needing Google or help files.
People know how to use these utilities in their traditional form in their office, making a GUI that lets them use the software out of the box without help or searching isn't hard.
I develope a plugin that runs in Outlook.
On a daily basis I run Office 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010.
I don't really care which one you pick, or what kind of machine or what installation options you picked, OO.org takes longer to do pretty much everything.
If you don't realize this, you shouldn't be making comments comparing or contrasting OO.org and MS Office as you've obviously not got the experience to do so.
OO.org doesn't do basic things that the OS controls due out of the box without any changes. Why is it everyone thinks they need to write their own fucking toolkit? USE THE OS CONTROLS! I realize Linux doesn't have any OS provided GUI controls and multiple toolkits. Thats great, good for Linux. But for the rest of the world that wants software that does what they expect rather than to circle jerk each other about how 'free' it is, then it sucks ass.
If your product doesn't memic the basic controls of the OS because you felt you had to go redesign everything yourself, you've not only made a POS software package, you've broken rule number 1 in GUI design, which is to do what the user EXPECTS without requiring 'education' about how to use the product.
For something like an Office product, if your everyday user needs to read a help file or gets confused about the way something works, you fucked up your GUI.
Not that I disagree with you in principal, I always feel its necessary to point out that encryption is nothing more than security through calculated obscurity.
There are differing levels of obscurity and differing levels of difficulty to get useful information out of the obsfucation, but in the end, its all just security through obscurity.
Posts like your own are generally by people who don't really understand encryption in general, as such I recommend that while your post has a valid point, you try to refrain from commenting on the more technical aspects of security.
Hindsight is 20/20 they say.
We haven't really been cloning all that long and as such, planning out how to best disassemble species as they become extinct isn't standard practice yet. They're still writing the RFCs, they haven't even been commented on yet, its gonna take a few tries to get it figured out.
Just curious, which provider do you work for so everyone knows who to avoid?
I can understand not providing service to someone who is making your job impossible, locking them out of the machine? That is unacceptable.
Our company regularly has customer who refuse to provide more info or allow us to debug our software further in their environment. We don't turn their accounts off, we just say 'we can't help you any more because you won't help us.' At that point they either let us, or not, and if not, we may or may not let them out of the contract. Sometimes they can't let us help them for valid reasons, like the machine with the problem has confidential data we're not allowed to see, so we let them go if they want to. Sometimes, if the customer isn't making any effort at all to work with us to solve the problem, we'll hold them to their contractual financial obligation.
Never, under any circumstance will we hold their data hostage. Thats just fucking wrong asshole.
I call bullshit on your story.
If they wanted your root password that bad, they'd have it, you obviously aren't booting from an encrypted drive so they could just single user boot your machine and do whatever they wanted, since you claim they are rebooting it.
There is no logical reason for them to lock you out of your own machine to get you to give them a root password.
There is more to this story that you're leaving out, intentionally I suspect.
Perhaps I'm wrong but my guess is you should just pay them or stop trying to scam them, whichever it is and stop giving slashdot some bullshit line of crap in hope that you'll get someone else to give you a sneaky way to turn the tables on them.
Its called something else now, in typical MS style. Can't remember the new name off the top of my head.
They also dropped the NIS or NFS server, perhaps both. Added an ssh server maybe? I can't remember exactly, I haven't dealt with it recently.