>> Sorry, by "Americans" do you mean people living in the Americas? North Americans? U.S. Americans?
haha.
I knew someone would jump on that "American" thing faster than misusing there/their/they're. In the part of Canada where I live, the word "American" will be taken to mean USian.
>> we will likely pay a dear price for the greed of a powerful minority and the ignorance of politicians
>> They have applied extortion using the threat of a costly legal battle involving megacorporation vs one individual.
I'm betting virtually everyone who is served by the RIAA are counseled by their lawyers to settle. Do the math - pay a settlement that'll be less than your legal fees or face the prospect of a court ordered fine that crushes you financially from now to retirement.
My company has restrictive policies as well. we aggressively monitor systems use, external phone calls, email and internet traffic. I can tell you they're worried about the wrong thing:
USB drives are what the babysitters should be shitting themselves over. How many companies have a huge list of staff in engineering and other sensitive areas with have local admin rights?. plug, play, cut, paste and you could see hundred sensitive documents go to your competition.
Lift a gigabyte of restricted documents no one will notice, but send an email with a rude word in it and you get counselled for "unnaceptable" conduct.
security concious? no. righteous and moral? yes. wrong focus for a business, I think.
>> Usually slowing down light that much takes a great deal of infrastructure and effort, it's rarely a side-effect.
I think they did it by forming the photons into committees. They spend more time forming action plans and holding meetings than actually moving. Some of them actually go backwards...
I don't think the problem is forgetting to terminate a char array so much as counting on the other guy to provide a pointer to a properly terminated array of the correct size.
Always gotta check your arguments for termination within the correct bounds...
You did get the bit where no application for tap was turned down? They may not be able to tap everyone, but they can tap anyone which is nearly as scary...
>> They are allegedly being investigated for their rebate practices
I'm not shocked.
I bought a few grand worth of stuff from them last year. My experience as a customer was: Decent prices, decent service, very fast shipping and rebates that I actually get maybe half the time. I still buy from them, but not nearly as often and I never, ever count on getting the rebate as advertised. - If it's not a deal at full price, I do not buy...
>> I wish there was something in between a $70 DSL and a $1000+ t1 line. Too bad there is not a $200 DSL package that guarenteed 750k/second upstream, like splitting a t1 line.
You musn't have looked too hard. - There are plenty of business plans available in my jurisdiction with QOS agreements and they are much less than $1000.
Having said that, why would you not rent a server/buy hosting? It's cost effective to let someone else worry about the hardware and software while you worry about your business...
umm, it's an application not a development environment.
How many of us have been asked to fix an "application" only to find it's an Excel spreadsheet with page after page of uncommented macros and VBA behind it? arg.
"Excel" and "development" don't belong in the same sentence.
>> For people in India schedule is far more important than comments. So they'll cut&paste shit all over the place and leave it uncommented.
You don't need to go to India for code like that... The West has its' share of bad coders. and even its' share of skilled coders who just skip the documentation.
Particularly their advice on how the solicitors should best sodomize themselves. I'm thinking Apple's Solictors might put personal effort into this after the response they got. (I.E. forget the DMCA, think berne convention)
Making it personal with a lawyer is ill advised at best.
I agree - the 'lampshade' example was pretty week, since it breaks the password into two words.
Take a compound word or a word with multiple syllables and break it up, like:
wat72erfall
bi66cycle
ambu88lance
The idea is about using a password the user might just remember while still being more secure than "someword" + a number. The user only really has two elements to remember and it won't fail against a dictionary attack.
>> brute forcing all combinations of 2 4-6 letter english words plus 2 digits is rediciously easy...
You're right. A better scheme is to take alonger word and 'break' it somewhere with noise like:
'lamp56shade'
Easier for the user to remember "lampshade with 56 in the middle" than a true random password. Not quite as strong, but they're both going to end up on a post-it stuck to the bottom of his keyboard anyway...
Half the people I work with carry a pen drive. None carry a flash card of any sort.
The pen drive format is robust and simple. Don't bet on it going away.
Projects get headcount and too often headcount means warm bodies, with or without interest or ability. We seem to keep hiring these people that got into IT for the cash. They typically have decent marks in school and present well, but once it's time to actually work things suck.
My favourite new-hire quote: "I don't really like programming. I plan to be a manager."
The new guy had been given his first "welcome-to-the-corp-lets-see-what-you-can-do" assignment a few days earlier. Small potatoes, easy to do - more a test of how you go about things than anything else. Asked no questions and did ZERO work on it. The above was his answer when asked why he had nothing done.
Another gem from the same guy: "Programming is all about abstraction. I don't need to understand the details."
Nothing tanks a project faster than getting this calibre of employee handed to you. These are the guys who should drop out of IT. The ones who really should be there will stick with it even if the starting salaries drop 20%...
>> I'm about to graduate with a CS degree. I had two well-paying offers
Perhaps you have something that sets you apart? Excellent marks, a body of previous work, good networking? All of those things? If you are skilled and passionate about what you do, you'll succeed.
I believe it when people say demand for IT grads is down. I wouldn't suggest anyone change majors, though, unless they have poor abilities to start with. - The marginal grads are the ones who will end up on the sh*t end of things..
>> When I'm within 50 feet of a person and can close the loop with a face to face encounter...I'll always choose that over email.
You must work somewhere without politics or dishonesty.
Anywhere else things need to be documented. When a situation goes bad and the fingers start pointing, and you say "I didn't save/have any emails", your bosses will cut you loose, more for lack of judgement than anything else...
...make it easy to defend you and they will - it looks bad on their record when someone under them screws up.
Slashdot Mirror
>> Sorry, by "Americans" do you mean people living in the Americas? North Americans? U.S. Americans?
haha.
I knew someone would jump on that "American" thing faster than misusing there/their/they're. In the part of Canada where I live, the word "American" will be taken to mean USian.
>> we will likely pay a dear price for the greed of a powerful minority and the ignorance of politicians
No better in Canada, my friend.
>> NAFTA! Ha! Good luck with that one. See: Softwood Lumber dispute, Mad Cow dispute... Both illegal under NAFTA.
Nearly
Always
Favours
The
Americans...
>> The USA can suck my balls
Careful there Anethema. There are 295,734,134 people down there - you'll get a seriously chapped bag.
>> They have applied extortion using the threat of a costly legal battle involving megacorporation vs one individual.
I'm betting virtually everyone who is served by the RIAA are counseled by their lawyers to settle. Do the math - pay a settlement that'll be less than your legal fees or face the prospect of a court ordered fine that crushes you financially from now to retirement.
Small wonder people reach settle.
My company has restrictive policies as well. we aggressively monitor systems use, external phone calls, email and internet traffic. I can tell you they're worried about the wrong thing:
USB drives are what the babysitters should be shitting themselves over. How many companies have a huge list of staff in engineering and other sensitive areas with have local admin rights?. plug, play, cut, paste and you could see hundred sensitive documents go to your competition.
Lift a gigabyte of restricted documents no one will notice, but send an email with a rude word in it and you get counselled for "unnaceptable" conduct.
security concious? no. righteous and moral? yes. wrong focus for a business, I think.
>> hack up a macro
:-).
heheh. Thanks for the idea. I'll write it on company time next week
>> Usually slowing down light that much takes a great deal of infrastructure and effort, it's rarely a side-effect.
I think they did it by forming the photons into committees. They spend more time forming action plans and holding meetings than actually moving. Some of them actually go backwards...
>> There is nothing unhackable.
and if it's difficult to hack the transmission media, there is probably cleartext versions of the transmission at either end.
"un-crackable" transmission will just change the point of attack...
>> '\0';
I don't think the problem is forgetting to terminate a char array so much as counting on the other guy to provide a pointer to a properly terminated array of the correct size.
Always gotta check your arguments for termination within the correct bounds...
>> is generated by PR firms, advocacy groups, political parties, etc., given a very thin coat of paint, and slapped on the page
Writers are people. People are lazy. Small wonder PR firms are smart enough to exploit it...
>> they can't listen in on EVERYONE.
You did get the bit where no application for tap was turned down? They may not be able to tap everyone, but they can tap anyone which is nearly as scary...
>> They are allegedly being investigated for their rebate practices
I'm not shocked.
I bought a few grand worth of stuff from them last year. My experience as a customer was: Decent prices, decent service, very fast shipping and rebates that I actually get maybe half the time. I still buy from them, but not nearly as often and I never, ever count on getting the rebate as advertised. - If it's not a deal at full price, I do not buy...
>> I wish there was something in between a $70 DSL and a $1000+ t1 line. Too bad there is not a $200 DSL package that guarenteed 750k/second upstream, like splitting a t1 line.
You musn't have looked too hard. - There are plenty of business plans available in my jurisdiction with QOS agreements and they are much less than $1000.
Having said that, why would you not rent a server/buy hosting? It's cost effective to let someone else worry about the hardware and software while you worry about your business...
>> In Canada it's more like $35k and that's CAD!
...
Do you have a source for that number? The market sucks here in Canada, but I don't think it's that bad.
If it is, Perhaps I should shave more often and start showing up on time
>> Because it's an accounting application?
umm, it's an application not a development environment.
How many of us have been asked to fix an "application" only to find it's an Excel spreadsheet with page after page of uncommented macros and VBA behind it? arg.
"Excel" and "development" don't belong in the same sentence.
>> For people in India schedule is far more important than comments. So they'll cut&paste shit all over the place and leave it uncommented.
You don't need to go to India for code like that... The West has its' share of bad coders. and even its' share of skilled coders who just skip the documentation.
>> stupid AOL users
You made me think of this it's old, but funny...
>> Arrogant to no end
Particularly their advice on how the solicitors should best sodomize themselves. I'm thinking Apple's Solictors might put personal effort into this after the response they got. (I.E. forget the DMCA, think berne convention)
Making it personal with a lawyer is ill advised at best.
I agree - the 'lampshade' example was pretty week, since it breaks the password into two words.
Take a compound word or a word with multiple syllables and break it up, like:
wat72erfall
bi66cycle
ambu88lance
The idea is about using a password the user might just remember while still being more secure than "someword" + a number. The user only really has two elements to remember and it won't fail against a dictionary attack.
>> brute forcing all combinations of 2 4-6 letter english words plus 2 digits is rediciously easy...
You're right. A better scheme is to take alonger word and 'break' it somewhere with noise like:
'lamp56shade'
Easier for the user to remember "lampshade with 56 in the middle" than a true random password. Not quite as strong, but they're both going to end up on a post-it stuck to the bottom of his keyboard anyway...
Half the people I work with carry a pen drive. None carry a flash card of any sort.
The pen drive format is robust and simple. Don't bet on it going away.
>> We had 120mb floppies years ago (google for 'LS120').
And we had "flopticals" (magneto-optical floppies) before that. I think they were around 21 megs and no one bought them either
Mod this guy up.. ..he's got it right.
Projects get headcount and too often headcount means warm bodies, with or without interest or ability. We seem to keep hiring these people that got into IT for the cash. They typically have decent marks in school and present well, but once it's time to actually work things suck.
My favourite new-hire quote: "I don't really like programming. I plan to be a manager."
The new guy had been given his first "welcome-to-the-corp-lets-see-what-you-can-do" assignment a few days earlier. Small potatoes, easy to do - more a test of how you go about things than anything else. Asked no questions and did ZERO work on it. The above was his answer when asked why he had nothing done.
Another gem from the same guy: "Programming is all about abstraction. I don't need to understand the details."
Nothing tanks a project faster than getting this calibre of employee handed to you. These are the guys who should drop out of IT. The ones who really should be there will stick with it even if the starting salaries drop 20%...
>> I'm about to graduate with a CS degree. I had two well-paying offers
Perhaps you have something that sets you apart? Excellent marks, a body of previous work, good networking? All of those things? If you are skilled and passionate about what you do, you'll succeed.
I believe it when people say demand for IT grads is down. I wouldn't suggest anyone change majors, though, unless they have poor abilities to start with. - The marginal grads are the ones who will end up on the sh*t end of things..
The best rise to the top, demand or no.
>> When I'm within 50 feet of a person and can close the loop with a face to face encounter...I'll always choose that over email.
You must work somewhere without politics or dishonesty.
Anywhere else things need to be documented. When a situation goes bad and the fingers start pointing, and you say "I didn't save/have any emails", your bosses will cut you loose, more for lack of judgement than anything else...
...make it easy to defend you and they will - it looks bad on their record when someone under them screws up.