> How is it that you have time to answer > questions on Slashdot but elect to ignore > questions and problems reported by paying users > on your own forums?
This is an excellent question. I quit World of Warcraft for exactly this reason. I check the forums occasionally to see if the situation has changed, but clearly it has not.
For example, the class of my "avatar" was a "rogue". Until just recently, the rogue forums were barely ever responded to. In the last week, Tyren, the rogue correspondent, decided to post a few topics for user feedback. The catch? He's gone on a 2 week vacation now. Some feedback.
Wake up Blizzard! You absolutely NEED TO USE SOMETHING LIKE BUGZILLA to track and monitor issues, requests for enchancements, and bugs.
How open source projects can provide better levels of customer service than a commercial service with 3.5 million paying customers, I'll never understand.
Wake up, or someone else will come along and steal your customers away.
Ignoring for a moment the serious constitutional issues that result from this "presumed guilty" "pre-search & seizure", how will this information be secured?
Just the other day, Citibank lost a boatload of customer information; how will you feel when script kiddies and black hats, not the government, have access to everything you've done online?
This is an extortionist's wet dream. Break into this 2 month cache of info, find the embarrising (not even illegal) behavior, and... 3) profit!
Awesome, now folks don't have to spend any money to realize what a boring timesink EQ is.
See that "You hit foo for 3 hps?"
In only 65 levels, it can be "You hit foo for 300 hps!" Holy crap! That's worth hundreds of hours of your time!
Maybe Sun intends to provide you and I with free "online storage", perhaps with some synergy with their Java productline to provide services? I could see a strategy here to compliment or compete with where Google is going.
There's probably a lot more to this than just looking to sell storage solutions with each server. Perhaps in 10 years the idea of hosting all your data (and programs) on your own computer will seem antiquated... you know that whole "net computing" concept they were talking about 7 years ago.
It's not often that a large company or organization manages to read the writing on the wall and adjust a business model accordingly. Just look at the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.
IBM realized that the software industry would change the most from the era of the Internet, unlike hardware and consulting services. A company expecting to make its bread and butter from software will be in a constant rush to stay one step ahead of thousands, if not millions, of unpaid software developers who write software for no other purpose than to have it the way they want. The Internet made it possible for those legions of volunteers to congregate internationally, as well as publicize and distribute for free.
If only other companies had the vision to look that far ahead and make the hard decisions necessary to evolve.
I was just thinking the other day that we need another first person shooter about extra-dimensional creatures that break into our world due to a secret experiment and only one brave soul can save us.
> What I want to know is what Microsoft is trying to do with this release.
Microsoft market research had concluded that hatred for Microsoft was lowest in asia, so they pulled together, worked long nights, and have tackled that problem with the usual Microsoft gusto.
Not that I'd be surprised about the emergency broadcast system having security problems, but consider one way the government could make this work to their advantage.
They could have already set up monitors that could very quickly traingulate the source of an interference, while in parallel secretly laying down a secure system. Then by encouraging press coverage of the security holes, they would raise the possibility of a terrorist trying to use said security holes, and in doing so, give up their location.
If you consider the working/living conditions in mainland China, home of countless "outsourced" wage-slaves for western industry, age-discrimination seems downright harmless.
Some users of FC2-test3 discovered that, unlike FC1, it will render your coexisting Windows XP partitions unbootable. This may possibly be limited to certain hardware configurations, but it's hard to say with no official word from the Fedora team on a fix for this, despite it having been in bugzilla since at least the test 2 release.
In soviet russia, Linux disables your Windows installation.
This may sound extremely cynical but, I'll say it anyways:
Microsoft, or more specifically the LEADERSHIP of Microsoft, has consistently shown themselves to be the closest thing to an organized crime racket we have in the computing industry. Don't take my word for it; it's a matter of public record.
Microsoft has demonstrated no change of heart. Bill Gates and his capos have everything to lose from open source, and have demonstrated no understanding of how to evolve their business model to fit with the opensource juggernaut. (Compare and contrast with today's IBM.)
So my point is: how the hell can ANYONE trust ANYTHING Microsoft does anymore? If Bill Gates shows up at your house with a million dollar check, the first thing you should do is write your will. These guys play for blood, they know no mercy, and there is always a catch.
So when I see that Microsoft has dumped some source code on sourceforge, the only thing that comes to mind is: where's the booby trap. Because it is there. You can take the code, build off of it, think you got something for nothing -- but you are dead wrong.
You know what they say about those who don't learn from history...
Given the known fact that many (MANY) exploits have existed for browsers such as IE, and many still exist as zero day exploits, one has to wonder how ANY CONVICTION can occur based on the activities of a computer system without a confession, (coerced or otherwise.)
Once malware is running on your system, it chooses what to do -- or rather, it's author chooses to do. Sure there are possible defenses to malware, but none of them are foolproof. The vast majority of Internet users are spread eagle on the information superhiway, relying on Bill Gates to guard their anus.
In fact, there is no way to prove that any activity originating from a computer system was produced by the user at that computer system short of either filming them doing it (and you gotta love digital film folks!) or hooking up a device to their brain. (Wait a few years for that.)
Not convinced? A trojan can install itself without detection, do whatever the hell it pleases, and cover its tracks completely. All it needs are the right holes, and if you don't believe the holes are there to be found then you obviously don't read the news. Just imagine if that teenager from Germany caught this last week had decided his worm should mail death threats to public officials, or download illegal pictures, before shredding itself completely off the hard drive after propagating. The malware writers have, on the whole, been very very kind and very very stupid so far people; well, at least the trojans/worms/viruses/spyware we know about.
Even going beyond this, there's always the question of physical security on a machine. If someone can access a computer physically, chances are they can plant whatever they want to on it, AND YOU WONT BE ABLE TO DISTINGUISH IT FROM NON-PLANTED EVIDENCE. That, my friends, sucks.
The digital world is a scarey scarey place. Gone are the physical evidence trails. And don't think prosecuters dislike this new domain; it makes their job easier, not harder. Prosecuters don't have to consider the very real possibility that the actions of a computer system were hijacked. They only have to MAKE THINGS TERRIFYING ENOUGH for you to force you into the only rational decision; to take the deal, to sell out the truth and your rights to a jury trial because the cost of trying to convince someone on a jury that a completely untraceable event is possible in this digital world, something tantamount to "magic" in the real world happened. Good luck!
Cheers and remember, there's really no way you can prove I posted this
I've found that aspect-oriented programming using tools like AspectJ (for Java) can be a big help. There are aspect-oriented programming tools for many other languages.
Basically, you can define an aspect to capture points in your program that are of particular note, and then do debug handling at those points. Aspect oriented programming allows you to break out that debug-handling logic into seperate modules, keeping your main sourcecode nice and clean.
Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) has a lot of other uses too. I think in 5 years or so talking about AOP will be as commonplace as talking about OOP. They are orthogonal concepts.
Slashdot Mirror
> How is it that you have time to answer
> questions on Slashdot but elect to ignore
> questions and problems reported by paying users
> on your own forums?
This is an excellent question. I quit World of Warcraft for exactly this reason. I check the forums occasionally to see if the situation has changed, but clearly it has not.
For example, the class of my "avatar" was a "rogue". Until just recently, the rogue forums were barely ever responded to. In the last week, Tyren, the rogue correspondent, decided to post a few topics for user feedback. The catch? He's gone on a 2 week vacation now. Some feedback.
Wake up Blizzard! You absolutely NEED TO USE SOMETHING LIKE BUGZILLA to track and monitor issues, requests for enchancements, and bugs.
How open source projects can provide better levels of customer service than a commercial service with 3.5 million paying customers, I'll never understand.
Wake up, or someone else will come along and steal your customers away.
Whatever Raph says, just remember that he's the guy that took the Star Wars franchise and managed to make a crappy MMRPG out of it.
His ego is even bigger than his gut.
Ever try the Visual Editor for Eclipse?
http://www.eclipse.org/ve/
It's quite nice.
Just the other day, Citibank lost a boatload of customer information; how will you feel when script kiddies and black hats, not the government, have access to everything you've done online?
This is an extortionist's wet dream. Break into this 2 month cache of info, find the embarrising (not even illegal) behavior, and ... 3) profit!
Awesome, now folks don't have to spend any money to realize what a boring timesink EQ is. See that "You hit foo for 3 hps?" In only 65 levels, it can be "You hit foo for 300 hps!" Holy crap! That's worth hundreds of hours of your time!
Maybe Sun intends to provide you and I with free "online storage", perhaps with some synergy with their Java productline to provide services? I could see a strategy here to compliment or compete with where Google is going.
There's probably a lot more to this than just looking to sell storage solutions with each server. Perhaps in 10 years the idea of hosting all your data (and programs) on your own computer will seem antiquated... you know that whole "net computing" concept they were talking about 7 years ago.
The article fails to mention that three of the six sides were arranged to spell out "WMD."
I'd show ya, but goats.cx is no longer online.
IBM realized that the software industry would change the most from the era of the Internet, unlike hardware and consulting services. A company expecting to make its bread and butter from software will be in a constant rush to stay one step ahead of thousands, if not millions, of unpaid software developers who write software for no other purpose than to have it the way they want. The Internet made it possible for those legions of volunteers to congregate internationally, as well as publicize and distribute for free.
If only other companies had the vision to look that far ahead and make the hard decisions necessary to evolve.
That's kind of a metaphor for the Republican convention.
(Don't mod this post up or you'll stack overflow.)
That would totally rock!
Well, it is Microsoft Windows ...
> What I want to know is what Microsoft is trying to do with this release.
Microsoft market research had concluded that hatred for Microsoft was lowest in asia, so they pulled together, worked long nights, and have tackled that problem with the usual Microsoft gusto.
Microsoft went on to proclaim the security benefits of this latest release: "Only three instances of worms, spyware, and trojans can run at once!"
They could have already set up monitors that could very quickly traingulate the source of an interference, while in parallel secretly laying down a secure system. Then by encouraging press coverage of the security holes, they would raise the possibility of a terrorist trying to use said security holes, and in doing so, give up their location.
Puting on my meta-tin-foil-hat.
... I guess I'll have to make sure I'm not doing anything financially rewarding to make sure I'm "cool".
In honor of the recording industries deep-seated ethical convictions, I submit:
"Payola the Weasel"
> I am increasingly beginning to wonder if /. is the place to look for an answer.
You're new here, aren't you?
Finally we know step #2 of the formula:
1. Steal underpants.
2. Paint anti-bush slogan on underpants, sell to Hollywood/Indie industry.
3. Profit!
... must be running on a PocketPC. (... notes MySQL error...)
In soviet russia, Linux disables your Windows installation.
Microsoft, or more specifically the LEADERSHIP of Microsoft, has consistently shown themselves to be the closest thing to an organized crime racket we have in the computing industry. Don't take my word for it; it's a matter of public record.
Microsoft has demonstrated no change of heart. Bill Gates and his capos have everything to lose from open source, and have demonstrated no understanding of how to evolve their business model to fit with the opensource juggernaut. (Compare and contrast with today's IBM.)
So my point is: how the hell can ANYONE trust ANYTHING Microsoft does anymore? If Bill Gates shows up at your house with a million dollar check, the first thing you should do is write your will. These guys play for blood, they know no mercy, and there is always a catch.
So when I see that Microsoft has dumped some source code on sourceforge, the only thing that comes to mind is: where's the booby trap. Because it is there. You can take the code, build off of it, think you got something for nothing -- but you are dead wrong.
You know what they say about those who don't learn from history...
Once malware is running on your system, it chooses what to do -- or rather, it's author chooses to do. Sure there are possible defenses to malware, but none of them are foolproof. The vast majority of Internet users are spread eagle on the information superhiway, relying on Bill Gates to guard their anus.
In fact, there is no way to prove that any activity originating from a computer system was produced by the user at that computer system short of either filming them doing it (and you gotta love digital film folks!) or hooking up a device to their brain. (Wait a few years for that.)
Not convinced? A trojan can install itself without detection, do whatever the hell it pleases, and cover its tracks completely. All it needs are the right holes, and if you don't believe the holes are there to be found then you obviously don't read the news. Just imagine if that teenager from Germany caught this last week had decided his worm should mail death threats to public officials, or download illegal pictures, before shredding itself completely off the hard drive after propagating. The malware writers have, on the whole, been very very kind and very very stupid so far people; well, at least the trojans/worms/viruses/spyware we know about.
Even going beyond this, there's always the question of physical security on a machine. If someone can access a computer physically, chances are they can plant whatever they want to on it, AND YOU WONT BE ABLE TO DISTINGUISH IT FROM NON-PLANTED EVIDENCE. That, my friends, sucks.
The digital world is a scarey scarey place. Gone are the physical evidence trails. And don't think prosecuters dislike this new domain; it makes their job easier, not harder. Prosecuters don't have to consider the very real possibility that the actions of a computer system were hijacked. They only have to MAKE THINGS TERRIFYING ENOUGH for you to force you into the only rational decision; to take the deal, to sell out the truth and your rights to a jury trial because the cost of trying to convince someone on a jury that a completely untraceable event is possible in this digital world, something tantamount to "magic" in the real world happened. Good luck!
Cheers and remember, there's really no way you can prove I posted this
Basically, you can define an aspect to capture points in your program that are of particular note, and then do debug handling at those points. Aspect oriented programming allows you to break out that debug-handling logic into seperate modules, keeping your main sourcecode nice and clean.
Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) has a lot of other uses too. I think in 5 years or so talking about AOP will be as commonplace as talking about OOP. They are orthogonal concepts.
Cheers, Me