Whether your job is boring or facsinating is largely your personal attitude. 99% of "Real" CS jobs have always been working on what you would probably consider boring. Visionary people tend to do visionary things - especially in boring situations.
If you are a true visionary, then put your "talent" to work. Come up with an amazing idea and start your own company.
The purpose of a monkey in the middle attack is to trick both parties into thinking they are talking to each other, but there is actually a proxy (monkey) in the middle that's relaying the info.
You would have an HTTPS connection, not to the bank, but to the monkey. That would be a successful monkey in the middle attack.
But, I think pulling this off is way beyond any phisher I have heard about. They are mostly just using simple (perhaps clever) scams to trick people.
Goodbye to all those who just wanted to get rich quick. I look forward to working with you brave students who are chosing your career based on a love of technology.
Yes, I'm a bible thumpin' ninny offended by the use of the word "frackin'" on Battlestar Galactica and hanging around on slashdot!
I meant that it's the lameness of the word "frackin" that bugs me. The word frackin' just doesn't have anything near the power of good, old-fashioned "fuckin'" I think it would be more powerful if they just left that word out altogether. "Damn it, Jim!" sounds more profane. Frackin' seems more appropriate for, say, a Scooby Doo cartoon.
Speaking of re-use, is anyone else starting to cringe at the number of times they use the word "frackin'"? (for those not watching the show, apparently in place of the f--- word)
A software patch is not the same as, say, a patch for your jeans where you add a completely new piece of material to cover up a hole.
A software patch just means that some part of the code was updated & they are providing you with only the minimum amount of files that need to be updated on your computer instead of the full application. It doesn't mean that new code was added "on top" of previous code. The update would hopefully be an improvement to the code, but it could also be a crappy work-around as you suggest. Since the source is closed, we really have no idea what the code change actually entails.
Most companies are hauling ass to get their product out the door on time as it is. Unless they're a dilligent team, they probably don't even release-quality docs for the in-house devs. Cleaning it up and writing specifications for a niche group is just not high on the developers priority list. They're busy working on bug fixes and/or next year's product.
Also, as much as you put disclaimers about "no support included" , if you publish the docs, developers will be looking for support. Then if you don't provide that, they'll piss and moan about your illegible docs and terrible support.
Even though it would be cool, I personally don't see why any hardware company would want to do this.
Re:Congratulations are in order!
on
A Decade of PHP
·
· Score: 1
Just because you use a good abstraction strategy doesn't mean you have to actually implement the code for every platform. I just write for the one that I need at the time & I can use as much platform-specific code as I want. But, having a strategy in place so you can plugin a new DB later is comforting.
As much as I hate to give up my SQL code, persistance layers for PHP like Propel and PEAR DataObject seem to be maturing nicely. DB abstaction becomes (in theory) a mute point. I'm really anxious for PHP 5 to become more widely installed so I can take advantage of these technologies that are already in production status for Java and.NET code.
oh yea, well 325 sites, uh, i..., oh i didn't actually think you were going to post proof that linux could be hacked. uh.. world... crumbling... noooooo!
oh wait - this isn't about what os is getting hacked.... uh... yea thats it! no *important* linux servers ever get hacked. ah, yes, rationalization complete. world safe again. whew!
If the preservation of your visual layout and style is important, then publish in a format like flash or pdf. When you use web standards, especially the newer markup specs, the whole point is that your content can be manipulated by the viewer for display on various devices (handhelds, phones, Xboxs, etc). Greasemonkey seems like just an extention of that concept to me.
That being said, I might be more concerned about people "monkeying" around and messing up javascripts that are needed for a particular web app to function. There's nothing more annoying than a self-rightous script kiddie complaining because your web app doesn't work to their satisfaction. Those of us who write web apps certainly don't want to be worrying about people stripping out our code and then wasting hours on tech support & debugging.
i hope that microsoft does change the color of the fatal error screen because i'm so tired of reading about BSODs on every simgle microsoft-related post. yea, Windows NT would crash a lot. That was, what, 7 years ago? so, once the color of that screen is changed, people who drag up BSOD will be instantly recognized as they should be - people who arent really qualified to talk about Windows.
i haven't even seen the old BSOD in i don't know how long. i have a few machines built from just aweful cheap, crap hardware & i constantly swap it with even cheaper, crappier hardware. still, no BSODs... i must be doing something wrong!
i will admit that freezing in windows does occur when playing 3d shooter games that are heavy with the graphics. perhaps i should switch to linux for my games. (it's a joke... get it?)
Guess/. is jumping on the tiger-direct hater bandwagon today. Since i love disagreeing with the mass anyway, I should mention that I've been happily ordering parts from them for several years.
Maybe i'm just too easy to please, but the prices are very low, the orders always show up as advertised & surprisingly fast (like next day in many cases w/o even expidited shipping). I've returned things a few times and I was surprised at how easy it was to do. No questions ever asked. Just called, got an RMA and my money was credited back quickly. The phone support doesn't seem outsourced from what I can tell and they always have been fairly knowledgeable as far as phone support goes.
Anyway, I've received nothing but great service from them. I guess people all have different experiences, though.
As for the "Tiger" lawsuit, seems kinda silly to me. I suppose when lawyers smell money, they'll do anything to get at it.
Why would anyone choose to spend thousands of dollars on something when they could get it for free? It's because they believe they will spend more money in the long run.
Why don't you try this as an experiment. Pretend that someone else built a firewall for the company three years ago. They left and it has been untouched in all that time. Imagine that it suddenly goes down, the whole office if offline, and nobody (including yourself) at the company knows anything about the mysterious firewall.
Now, try to find support - someone to come to your office and fix the machine. Actually go ahead and make the calls for emergency repair service - pretend like you're shopping around. See what the prices are.
I'd be curious to know the results of this myself. My gut tells me that it would be tricky to find someone. But, once you found them it might not be that much more expensive than windows.
They don't really ask him for the code, though. They do ask for "information concerning the extent of your uses of any elements of the SCRABBLE game, as well as information regarding the distribution of your electronic Scrabble game"
I assume they're interested to know how many copies of his game are out there. (Possibly to claim 100,000 copies = $5,000,000 in lost revenue?)
They're not using any loopholes. If you distribute materials that have been copyrighted then you're breaking the law. There's nothing really difficult to understand about that. If you know this and you share files, you're accepting the risk. If you get caught, maybe you can lie your way out of it by creating reasonable doubt (My IP was spoofed, etc). If you can and get away with it, hey, more power to you.
However, after your trial when you get home, will you have the balls to turn your file sharing back on? What rights have you defended with your IP spoofing story? That's my point.
A big part of the reason is because these people are pretty much all guilty. Whether or not you agree that it is a "crime" is perhaps a point worth arguing. But arguing that someone *could* have been spoofing your IP or leeching your wi-fi is skirting the real issue.
If you're going to make a stand for your rights to download free music, then make the stand. Don't try to weasle your way out with some technical possibility - that only proves that you a) agree that you comitted a crime and b) are able to get away with it using technical loopholes. It doesn't make any statement about the legality of file-sharing. If you really weren't sharing and someone was truly spoofing your IP, then you should definitely go to court. Otherwise fess up and pay your fine, or go to court and fight the real battle.
When PayPal first started they claimed to make their profit from the interest while your money sits in their accounts. When you send someone money, they take it right away. When you want to cash out, they write a check and it takes a few days or a week. Better yet for them, you maintain a positive balance. All the while they are earning interest on that money. It may not seem like much, but when you have millions and millions of users, many with hundreds of dollars on their balance.
Somehow PayPal manageges not to be classified as a bank either, which has been a hot topic in the past. They get to skirt much of the federal regulations.
I don't know if this is still their business model, but if so, i think it's great. Customers get a cool service and they make money as a byproduct of the service. It's a win-win situation when it works.
That's a mighty generous offer of tech support for beer. but If you're going to do a fair comparison, you should at least compare your setup with that of an equally competent Windows user. Don't compare yourself with some dumb-ass who tries to install Windows (from an out-dated CD, probably) outside their firewall and gets owned.
I'm not at all surprised to hear this. I recently gave a try to one of the popular multiplayer games. It is pretty fun, but much of the play involves monotonous gathering and processing of natural resources in the world to build structures, items, etc. For those of you who have never played, a typical scenerio would involve gathering two materials (say hay and mud) which are not located in close proximity. So you must walk 10 minutes back and forth gathering small quanties of each. Then you mix them and leave them on the ground for 5 minutes until they form building bricks. you then use these bricks (sometimes hundreds or thousands) to build some other structure. The other structure allows you to build bricks even faster, etc, etc.
There is a certain amount of fun you can have, but i could see that there was a new level of play once you had built a certain amount of stuff. This level could only be reached with, literally, weeks of repetitive play. I use the term "play" loosly because it is only a little more fun than, say, a data-entry job.
It was obvious to me that i would never be able to put in the time to get there. I can easily see paying for the labor to build your empire. i wouldn't myself have paid because i wasn't planning to get that involved in the game. but, i know there are people with much more spare time and money than me. so it's not at all surprising to me.
God forbid I should say anything good about microsoft, but playing around on the MyMSN page shows some really awesome customization features.
It works a lot better in IE, but it still mostly works in firefox. (Well, there seem to be a lot of crashes and errors, but i guess it is still new).
Being able to hide, drag the various components around, add rss feeds, etc, is slick. i know it's nothing totally new, but it's really a nice design and i think pushes the boundries.
I added the slashdot RSS feed and now i can read the top slashdot stories on my MSN home page. oh the irony!
Slashdot Mirror
Whether your job is boring or facsinating is largely your personal attitude. 99% of "Real" CS jobs have always been working on what you would probably consider boring. Visionary people tend to do visionary things - especially in boring situations.
If you are a true visionary, then put your "talent" to work. Come up with an amazing idea and start your own company.
The purpose of a monkey in the middle attack is to trick both parties into thinking they are talking to each other, but there is actually a proxy (monkey) in the middle that's relaying the info.
You would have an HTTPS connection, not to the bank, but to the monkey. That would be a successful monkey in the middle attack.
But, I think pulling this off is way beyond any phisher I have heard about. They are mostly just using simple (perhaps clever) scams to trick people.
Oh yea. I forgot that a lot of the CS guys I went to school with were also arrogant dickheads. I don't look forward to working with you guys again!
Goodbye to all those who just wanted to get rich quick. I look forward to working with you brave students who are chosing your career based on a love of technology.
I heard that the death star subwoofer was created in an attempt to produce the dreaded brown noise frequency.
Yes, I'm a bible thumpin' ninny offended by the use of the word "frackin'" on Battlestar Galactica and hanging around on slashdot!
I meant that it's the lameness of the word "frackin" that bugs me. The word frackin' just doesn't have anything near the power of good, old-fashioned "fuckin'" I think it would be more powerful if they just left that word out altogether. "Damn it, Jim!" sounds more profane. Frackin' seems more appropriate for, say, a Scooby Doo cartoon.
Speaking of re-use, is anyone else starting to cringe at the number of times they use the word "frackin'"? (for those not watching the show, apparently in place of the f--- word)
A software patch is not the same as, say, a patch for your jeans where you add a completely new piece of material to cover up a hole.
A software patch just means that some part of the code was updated & they are providing you with only the minimum amount of files that need to be updated on your computer instead of the full application. It doesn't mean that new code was added "on top" of previous code. The update would hopefully be an improvement to the code, but it could also be a crappy work-around as you suggest. Since the source is closed, we really have no idea what the code change actually entails.
humorous but unlikely consiracy theory.
Most companies are hauling ass to get their product out the door on time as it is. Unless they're a dilligent team, they probably don't even release-quality docs for the in-house devs. Cleaning it up and writing specifications for a niche group is just not high on the developers priority list. They're busy working on bug fixes and/or next year's product.
Also, as much as you put disclaimers about "no support included" , if you publish the docs, developers will be looking for support. Then if you don't provide that, they'll piss and moan about your illegible docs and terrible support.
Even though it would be cool, I personally don't see why any hardware company would want to do this.
Just because you use a good abstraction strategy doesn't mean you have to actually implement the code for every platform. I just write for the one that I need at the time & I can use as much platform-specific code as I want. But, having a strategy in place so you can plugin a new DB later is comforting.
.NET code.
As much as I hate to give up my SQL code, persistance layers for PHP like Propel and PEAR DataObject seem to be maturing nicely. DB abstaction becomes (in theory) a mute point. I'm really anxious for PHP 5 to become more widely installed so I can take advantage of these technologies that are already in production status for Java and
oh yea, well 325 sites, uh, i..., oh i didn't actually think you were going to post proof that linux could be hacked. uh.. world... crumbling... noooooo!
oh wait - this isn't about what os is getting hacked.... uh... yea thats it! no *important* linux servers ever get hacked. ah, yes, rationalization complete. world safe again. whew!
If the preservation of your visual layout and style is important, then publish in a format like flash or pdf. When you use web standards, especially the newer markup specs, the whole point is that your content can be manipulated by the viewer for display on various devices (handhelds, phones, Xboxs, etc). Greasemonkey seems like just an extention of that concept to me.
That being said, I might be more concerned about people "monkeying" around and messing up javascripts that are needed for a particular web app to function. There's nothing more annoying than a self-rightous script kiddie complaining because your web app doesn't work to their satisfaction. Those of us who write web apps certainly don't want to be worrying about people stripping out our code and then wasting hours on tech support & debugging.
i hope that microsoft does change the color of the fatal error screen because i'm so tired of reading about BSODs on every simgle microsoft-related post. yea, Windows NT would crash a lot. That was, what, 7 years ago? so, once the color of that screen is changed, people who drag up BSOD will be instantly recognized as they should be - people who arent really qualified to talk about Windows.
i haven't even seen the old BSOD in i don't know how long. i have a few machines built from just aweful cheap, crap hardware & i constantly swap it with even cheaper, crappier hardware. still, no BSODs... i must be doing something wrong!
i will admit that freezing in windows does occur when playing 3d shooter games that are heavy with the graphics. perhaps i should switch to linux for my games. (it's a joke... get it?)
Guess /. is jumping on the tiger-direct hater bandwagon today. Since i love disagreeing with the mass anyway, I should mention that I've been happily ordering parts from them for several years.
Maybe i'm just too easy to please, but the prices are very low, the orders always show up as advertised & surprisingly fast (like next day in many cases w/o even expidited shipping). I've returned things a few times and I was surprised at how easy it was to do. No questions ever asked. Just called, got an RMA and my money was credited back quickly. The phone support doesn't seem outsourced from what I can tell and they always have been fairly knowledgeable as far as phone support goes.
Anyway, I've received nothing but great service from them. I guess people all have different experiences, though.
As for the "Tiger" lawsuit, seems kinda silly to me. I suppose when lawyers smell money, they'll do anything to get at it.
Why would anyone choose to spend thousands of dollars on something when they could get it for free? It's because they believe they will spend more money in the long run.
Why don't you try this as an experiment. Pretend that someone else built a firewall for the company three years ago. They left and it has been untouched in all that time. Imagine that it suddenly goes down, the whole office if offline, and nobody (including yourself) at the company knows anything about the mysterious firewall.
Now, try to find support - someone to come to your office and fix the machine. Actually go ahead and make the calls for emergency repair service - pretend like you're shopping around. See what the prices are.
I'd be curious to know the results of this myself. My gut tells me that it would be tricky to find someone. But, once you found them it might not be that much more expensive than windows.
Ah yes, the hiring developers. lets hope that horrible trend goes away soon.
They don't really ask him for the code, though. They do ask for "information concerning the extent of your uses of any elements of the SCRABBLE game, as well as information regarding the distribution of your electronic Scrabble game"
I assume they're interested to know how many copies of his game are out there. (Possibly to claim 100,000 copies = $5,000,000 in lost revenue?)
They're not using any loopholes. If you distribute materials that have been copyrighted then you're breaking the law. There's nothing really difficult to understand about that. If you know this and you share files, you're accepting the risk. If you get caught, maybe you can lie your way out of it by creating reasonable doubt (My IP was spoofed, etc). If you can and get away with it, hey, more power to you.
However, after your trial when you get home, will you have the balls to turn your file sharing back on? What rights have you defended with your IP spoofing story? That's my point.
But why would you want to put all of those Chinese people out of work?
A big part of the reason is because these people are pretty much all guilty. Whether or not you agree that it is a "crime" is perhaps a point worth arguing. But arguing that someone *could* have been spoofing your IP or leeching your wi-fi is skirting the real issue.
If you're going to make a stand for your rights to download free music, then make the stand. Don't try to weasle your way out with some technical possibility - that only proves that you a) agree that you comitted a crime and b) are able to get away with it using technical loopholes. It doesn't make any statement about the legality of file-sharing. If you really weren't sharing and someone was truly spoofing your IP, then you should definitely go to court. Otherwise fess up and pay your fine, or go to court and fight the real battle.
here's the dude in chicago that makes 'em
http://www.fenslerfilm.com/
When PayPal first started they claimed to make their profit from the interest while your money sits in their accounts. When you send someone money, they take it right away. When you want to cash out, they write a check and it takes a few days or a week. Better yet for them, you maintain a positive balance. All the while they are earning interest on that money. It may not seem like much, but when you have millions and millions of users, many with hundreds of dollars on their balance.
Somehow PayPal manageges not to be classified as a bank either, which has been a hot topic in the past. They get to skirt much of the federal regulations.
I don't know if this is still their business model, but if so, i think it's great. Customers get a cool service and they make money as a byproduct of the service. It's a win-win situation when it works.
That's a mighty generous offer of tech support for beer. but If you're going to do a fair comparison, you should at least compare your setup with that of an equally competent Windows user. Don't compare yourself with some dumb-ass who tries to install Windows (from an out-dated CD, probably) outside their firewall and gets owned.
I'm not at all surprised to hear this. I recently gave a try to one of the popular multiplayer games. It is pretty fun, but much of the play involves monotonous gathering and processing of natural resources in the world to build structures, items, etc. For those of you who have never played, a typical scenerio would involve gathering two materials (say hay and mud) which are not located in close proximity. So you must walk 10 minutes back and forth gathering small quanties of each. Then you mix them and leave them on the ground for 5 minutes until they form building bricks. you then use these bricks (sometimes hundreds or thousands) to build some other structure. The other structure allows you to build bricks even faster, etc, etc.
There is a certain amount of fun you can have, but i could see that there was a new level of play once you had built a certain amount of stuff. This level could only be reached with, literally, weeks of repetitive play. I use the term "play" loosly because it is only a little more fun than, say, a data-entry job.
It was obvious to me that i would never be able to put in the time to get there. I can easily see paying for the labor to build your empire. i wouldn't myself have paid because i wasn't planning to get that involved in the game. but, i know there are people with much more spare time and money than me. so it's not at all surprising to me.
God forbid I should say anything good about microsoft, but playing around on the MyMSN page shows some really awesome customization features.
It works a lot better in IE, but it still mostly works in firefox. (Well, there seem to be a lot of crashes and errors, but i guess it is still new).
Being able to hide, drag the various components around, add rss feeds, etc, is slick. i know it's nothing totally new, but it's really a nice design and i think pushes the boundries.
I added the slashdot RSS feed and now i can read the top slashdot stories on my MSN home page. oh the irony!