A more realistic scenario...
1a) Old person is in house, criminal comes in, old person has no weapon therefore not a threat, going to be assaulted and/or killed because they are a witness.
The fact that this is more likely than the "left alone" scenario presented by the GP is a sad indictment of the society you live in...
Most gun crimes are not committed by "violent criminals". They're crimes of opportunity, crimes of passion and other spur-of-the-moment kinds of things. Take guns away, and then ONLY the "violent criminals" will commit gun crimes. This may sound pretty bad, and to be honest, it is... but really, it's better than the alternative.
Yeh, it'd be sad, and I'd definitely shed a tear or two, but then I'd get over it and move on. As it is, I don't see what's left of my family more than once every few years (I say "what's left" since some have already died) and I don't have any friends so close that being without them would cause me extreme distress. Basically, I'd expect the "sad, moping around, missing people" stage to last up to a month at most, and then I'd be pretty much fine with the new friends I would have made. (actually, I also expect it'd take a week or two to get to the "sad" stage, since the first week would be the "holy crap, what the hell, I've been reanimated!" stage)
But when people say, "the speed of light", they're not really meaning what you're saying... they really mean "the speed that light travels in a vacuum with nothing else affecting it", also known as c. So, travelling faster than light is easy, if you slow light down, but that doesn't even begin to approach anything interesting and is just being an annoying pedant. Travelling faster than c is what is almost certainly impossible.
I would define death as the point at which there is no further possibility of living
But then you need to define "living" (as something other than "not dead")... and also, the definition of death would change depending on our tech level. Not so long ago, if your heart stopped, you would be dead... there's no way that you would have a further possibility of living. Now, it can be restarted by modern medical practices. Is there a technical limit as to how long someone's brain activity could have ceased before it's absolutely impossible they can be restored? I don't know, but honestly I doubt it - as long as the physical structure and make up is still there (including the structure/make up at microscopic levels), I'd say it's probably ALWAYS revivable, we just don't have the tech yet to do so.
Death is the permanent cessation of brain functions, nothing more nothing less.
This is the sticking point and where the question comes in to it. Death is the "permanent" cessation of brain functions. We don't know that functions have ended permanently because they may at some point be restarted. At what point can we be certain that they can NOT be restarted? Obviously, atomising the brain or something like that is a fairly safe bet, or even just when bacteria have eaten away at it until it's just "mush" after rotting for awhile, but what about less obvious cases. Are you dead 5 seconds after your last recorded brain activity? How about 30 minutes? What about a day? What about 10 years if the brain was preserved? Can we bring it back one day? In that case, was the person ever really "dead" since the brain function cessation wasn't permanent?
Seriously how could someone adjust to that? Having no close family or friends?
And then your sig....
Basements are SO overrated. The attic is where its at.
But seriously... the stereotype of socially reclusive geeks may not be all that common in the real world, but stereotypes often do get their basis from reality somewhere/somewhen, so I think there's more people out there that could handle it than you think... Personally, I'm quite confident that I personally would have no problem adjusting despite that I'm not one of those socially reclusive types (I'm not exactly "life of the party" either though) - I'd just make new friends. As it is, I already do that every time I move to a new city/country (a fairly common occurrence for me).
Germany.... I'm not from here originally, but been living here about a year and a half now. I've also lived in the Netherlands before, and it was similar. Beyond that, I'm originally from New Zealand, where it's more common than not for one parent to stay home (although, like here in Germany, it's not ALWAYS the case); and I lived a couple of years in the Kingdom of Tonga, where it is definitely VERY rare for a mother to work outside of the home (although, there it can be attributed to social/cultural factors as well perhaps). And to top of my list of places, I also spent 6 years in Australia, where it seems there are a lot more families with two working parents... so out of the 5 countries I've lived in, 4 have been typically "one parent working" and only 1 is "both parents working is common".
I actually thought in the UK it was more common for one parent to remain at home, but I've only been there a few times and never really looked in to that sort of thing specifically, so I may be wrong. Of course, there's always outliers in any place, so are you sure your experiences are typical for the UK? Think about your friends growing up... did they also have two working parents?
That's pretty much what I meant when I said trojans rather than viruses... and I did specifically say that stupid users are a problem on any OS... so yes, you're 100% right, but you weren't actually disagreeing with me.
I wasn't meaning to imply that the CONCEPT of getting a mortgage is financially irresponsible, just that a lot of people that get them are doing so under circumstances when they shouldn't (e.g. getting a mortgage for a house they really CAN'T afford to pay off).
Besides, it's also worth mentioning that in many places in the world, renting is significantly cheaper per month (even if it's more expensive overall) than the repayments on a mortgage, so in such places it can be more financially sensible to rent for awhile until you can reasonably afford to pay off a mortgage.
As for myself never getting one, it's actually because I simply don't care about money - I COULD have a hell of a lot more than I do through various kinds of investments (including housing), but really just can't be bothered. As long as I have enough to live (which I do) and visit at least 5 new countries every year (which I do), then I'm happy and any extra, while nice to have, isn't worth the couple of hours of effort it takes per year to manage investment properties etc. (and I only mention investment properties, because the idea of ever actually living somewhere permanently is too horrible for me to even consider (personal opinion only - I don't expect others to hold the same view))
This is probably going to get considered as "Euro boasting" or whatever, so I'd like to ask in advance of my post to all people reading it please not to get too hotheaded before replying/moderating... (I fully expect the negative mods anyway, but my karma can take it, and I think this post is worth making)
It has been a long time since only one income could reliably support middle class subsistence
Here in Europe, it's something we do tend to be quite surprised about when we talk to Americans. The idea of a single parent going out and working while the other stays at home to raise the kids is quite normal here. You only find both parents working in situations where they want to make extra money or have a lifestyle "above" what they could on only one - subsistence is pretty much always possible with only one income.
While it may not be an economic definition, many people here would consider that you've been in a "recession" ever since it became nearly required that both parents work to have a reasonable lifestyle for a family...
1. I always thought that a virus (by definition) had local access. If you're talking about network attacks, wouldn't that would be a worm?
Yes, excuse my laziness and see another reply I just made for further explanation.
2. Windows-based antivirus programs usually work based on a database of signatures. If there are no viruses out there to put in the database, wouldn't the AV program be pointless?
In my understanding the database of signatures is mostly a "guaranteed hit" kind of thing. The most important part however is the ability to detect as yet unknown things which works by detecting "malware like activity" (also a kind of signature, but not specific to individual bits of malware). That's what would be implemented in a situation where there's "as yet no known specific viruses"
Technically correct, but any malware that runs purely with user privileges is going to be pretty tame - especially as it should be DEAD easy to find and kill (admittedly therefore some kind of "antivirus" software would actually be needed, but nowhere near the complex scale of current things)
Granted, that would protect system files from infection (which is good) and perhaps make the virus less dangerous; then again, infecting docs (e.g. macro viruses) and executables in your home directory would still suck
Maybe most users treat their systems differently, but I really don't have anything in my home folder that I couldn't stand to lose and regain. All important documents that don't get modified every day (especially my media files, as I'm a movie/music junkie) are stored in a directory that is read only, and on the rare occasions I need to write there, I'll enter my admin password (MacOS X makes this kind of setup trivial for even the average to dumb user, which is one of the reasons I like it as a home OS). The stuff in my home folder is mostly config files, temp stuff I haven't sorted yet (that's what my Desktop tends to get used for) and that sort of thing. I'd be annoyed at losing config settings, but not much else in there.
since viruses and worms are often conflated
Yep, I was being lazy in my wording... what I was describing was a worm with a viral payload, which is pretty much how any truly problematic viruses propagate in the real world at present.
Come on...having a Unix pedigree is indeed a large improvement but lets not forget where the "root" in "rootkit" comes from.
Absolutely, hence the qualifiers in my sentences... I wasn't saying, "impossible", just "much harder" and "none right now (AFAIK)"
Why would it need privilege escalation? If there's a hole in some commonly enabled service that runs as root, that would take care of it.
True... I was sort of lazily accepting that as an unspoken obvious point, but you're right I should've mentioned it also. I'd consider this to also be extremely rare though, as it'd first require that there's something running as root listening on the network (only very few services do so), and then that it's exploitable (again the "well tested" part comes in to play here for these kinds of services).
Also, why couldn't a spambot just run in user space? Most people only ever use one account anyway.
Hmmm... I had to really think about this. I GUESS it's possible that code could be executed by a user's process that then causes some more code to be auto-executed at the user login with the privileges of that user only... Would be VERY noticeable to the system though, and killing it would be trivial, so I guess some kind of "very light" antivirus may be employed to guard against this kind of thing if anyone considers it to be a potential threat.
Giving risky loans to people less likely to be able to repay them is what caused the crisis.
Yep, and sorry to sound harsh and I know it's unfair on everyone else who is financially responsible, but they (both the stupid lenders and the bad borrowers) DESERVE hardship and suffering for their behaviour.
Personally, I live with a minimum of possessions and am NEVER in debt (if I can't afford something, I don't buy it... that includes things such as houses (never owned one, probably never will) and cars (I buy it outright)). As I also happen to earn way more than I need (about 210% of what I need based on what's left in my bank by the time the next pay cheque rolls in), it probably is a little harsh of me to make statements about people "deserving" it since I'm in one of the groups that is likely to be least affected by times of financial trouble, but as it's mostly of my own doing rather than "being lucky" (such as people born in to ultra-rich families), I feel at least somewhat justified.
Maybe the Mac has starting to reach that point where virus writers and security aficionados have enough a base to target their efforts?
Perhaps, but I am still waiting to see a real "virus" that hits MacOS. There's been a few trojans (such as the one mentioned in TFA), but nothing that qualifies as a virus yet as far as I know. It is likely much harder to write a real virus (rather than a trojan) for MacOS than Windows as you'll need to find a privilege escalation exploit (need I say, without local access) in one of the standard services first, all of which tend to be pretty robust and having a core that comes from the open source and Unix worlds... as far as I know, there aren't any such exploits known right now.
Trojans can of course still be fairly nasty, as there's a lot of stupid users in the world (of any OS)
Disclosure: I do use MacOS X as my primary OS at home, but I'm definitely not a "fanboy" (I also have Linux systems at home and use primarily Windows at work - I consider myself "OS agnostic").
Because they can control/own/dominate the car, so they're in control of this "angry/arrogant/mean" thing. If it was a guy rather than a car, they wouldn't feel so superior...
the common user want to switch the computer on, check their hotmail account, check facebook, and then talk to their friends on live messenger... THATS IT....
Unfortunately, that's not it. If it was, I could build a Linux distro that does these things (and ONLY these things) quite easily and it would be an enormous success. The common user wants to do these things plus "a few other things" that are generally very nebulously defined. Every distribution struggles with trying to meet all these requirements (when they do even try - some prefer to specialise to specific user types and just say "screw everyone else", which actually may not be a bad thing).
Fair enough... since I was born there and grew up there though, I'm a citizen, so it's not so relevant to me... I was aware of the points system, but wasn't aware that a degree is worth so many points. I'll keep that in mind next time someone asks me about moving there (really, people seem to ask me at least twice a week)
if you want/need to move to another country and that country requires a degree for immigration purposes
Out of interest, can you name any such countries? I've spend a lot of time moving around the world, and haven't needed a degree yet... (not arguing with you by saying they don't exist, just that I haven't encountered them yet, and am genuinely interested in which ones they are)
Potentially... but there are also those of us who TELL the HR department to hand over all CVs (resumes) that come in instead of pre-filtering them. The first time I asked them to do this, they were a bit unhappy, but then I simply explained that they don't have the technical knowledge of software development to make an informed decision (keywords don't cut it!), just as it would be a very bad idea for me to try and vet CVs for a new position in finance for example. While I was expecting that conversation to turn in to a rather nasty fight, they pretty much said, "Okay, that sounds fair enough", and handed over all CVs from that time on.
Some clients (like financial firms and governments) have strict InfoSec policies that frown upon Easter Eggs and other intentionally "unknown" bits of code. To them, Easter Eggs demonstrate the vendor's lack of control against unauthorized and malicious changes to the product.
The last time a piece of my software got sold to a government agency, they asked for a list of all functions that the application could perform. After getting an NDA from them, we happily provided a document explaining each and every function the application performed. One such function was of course the easter egg, and they were fine with it. As long as they know it's there, they generally are quite happy - if I DIDN'T mention it and they had found it themselves, that's when the shit would hit the fan.
You've been posting a lot of comments on this article and repeating yourself for most of them. It's coming pretty close to trolling really.
You're not wrong, when you're talking about your own domain - as you've said, you work on mission critical stuff where any screw-ups are VERY VERY bad. In that case, absolutely, you're right that any untested extra code is really not good. However, most programmers do NOT work in that domain.
Let me give you an example from my own code: I write a lot of Windows programs at work. Generally, they need to run as services, so I'll write two separate programs - one Windows service and one "configuration tool" that does nothing other than write settings to the config for the service to read. The config tools of my apps often contain an easter egg. And why not? The chances of such a trivial app (generally takes about 3 hours to write from scratch if I know what all the config entries actually need to be) having critical bugs that aren't picked up in QA is pretty much nil (the service is another story, as it might be pretty complex). Even in the amazingly improbable event that I could somehow code an easter egg that would cause it to crash (and I don't see how unless I'm really TRYING to do so, which of course I wouldn't be), then it would take out just the config tool, while the service merrily chugged along. Please tell me how there is anything wrong with that?
Slashdot Mirror
because we don't know how many of those deaths were undesirable.
I'll give you a clue... "All of them".
A more realistic scenario...
1a) Old person is in house, criminal comes in, old person has no weapon therefore not a threat, going to be assaulted and/or killed because they are a witness.
The fact that this is more likely than the "left alone" scenario presented by the GP is a sad indictment of the society you live in...
Most gun crimes are not committed by "violent criminals". They're crimes of opportunity, crimes of passion and other spur-of-the-moment kinds of things. Take guns away, and then ONLY the "violent criminals" will commit gun crimes. This may sound pretty bad, and to be honest, it is... but really, it's better than the alternative.
Yeh, it'd be sad, and I'd definitely shed a tear or two, but then I'd get over it and move on. As it is, I don't see what's left of my family more than once every few years (I say "what's left" since some have already died) and I don't have any friends so close that being without them would cause me extreme distress. Basically, I'd expect the "sad, moping around, missing people" stage to last up to a month at most, and then I'd be pretty much fine with the new friends I would have made. (actually, I also expect it'd take a week or two to get to the "sad" stage, since the first week would be the "holy crap, what the hell, I've been reanimated!" stage)
But when people say, "the speed of light", they're not really meaning what you're saying... they really mean "the speed that light travels in a vacuum with nothing else affecting it", also known as c. So, travelling faster than light is easy, if you slow light down, but that doesn't even begin to approach anything interesting and is just being an annoying pedant. Travelling faster than c is what is almost certainly impossible.
You'd get continuums with fractal numbers... but that'd just get rather heavy for a slashdot joke.
I would define death as the point at which there is no further possibility of living
But then you need to define "living" (as something other than "not dead")... and also, the definition of death would change depending on our tech level. Not so long ago, if your heart stopped, you would be dead... there's no way that you would have a further possibility of living. Now, it can be restarted by modern medical practices. Is there a technical limit as to how long someone's brain activity could have ceased before it's absolutely impossible they can be restored? I don't know, but honestly I doubt it - as long as the physical structure and make up is still there (including the structure/make up at microscopic levels), I'd say it's probably ALWAYS revivable, we just don't have the tech yet to do so.
I actually 100% agree with you, but...
Death is the permanent cessation of brain functions, nothing more nothing less.
This is the sticking point and where the question comes in to it. Death is the "permanent" cessation of brain functions. We don't know that functions have ended permanently because they may at some point be restarted. At what point can we be certain that they can NOT be restarted? Obviously, atomising the brain or something like that is a fairly safe bet, or even just when bacteria have eaten away at it until it's just "mush" after rotting for awhile, but what about less obvious cases. Are you dead 5 seconds after your last recorded brain activity? How about 30 minutes? What about a day? What about 10 years if the brain was preserved? Can we bring it back one day? In that case, was the person ever really "dead" since the brain function cessation wasn't permanent?
Seriously how could someone adjust to that? Having no close family or friends?
And then your sig....
Basements are SO overrated. The attic is where its at.
But seriously... the stereotype of socially reclusive geeks may not be all that common in the real world, but stereotypes often do get their basis from reality somewhere/somewhen, so I think there's more people out there that could handle it than you think... Personally, I'm quite confident that I personally would have no problem adjusting despite that I'm not one of those socially reclusive types (I'm not exactly "life of the party" either though) - I'd just make new friends. As it is, I already do that every time I move to a new city/country (a fairly common occurrence for me).
Germany.... I'm not from here originally, but been living here about a year and a half now. I've also lived in the Netherlands before, and it was similar. Beyond that, I'm originally from New Zealand, where it's more common than not for one parent to stay home (although, like here in Germany, it's not ALWAYS the case); and I lived a couple of years in the Kingdom of Tonga, where it is definitely VERY rare for a mother to work outside of the home (although, there it can be attributed to social/cultural factors as well perhaps). And to top of my list of places, I also spent 6 years in Australia, where it seems there are a lot more families with two working parents... so out of the 5 countries I've lived in, 4 have been typically "one parent working" and only 1 is "both parents working is common".
I actually thought in the UK it was more common for one parent to remain at home, but I've only been there a few times and never really looked in to that sort of thing specifically, so I may be wrong. Of course, there's always outliers in any place, so are you sure your experiences are typical for the UK? Think about your friends growing up... did they also have two working parents?
That's pretty much what I meant when I said trojans rather than viruses... and I did specifically say that stupid users are a problem on any OS... so yes, you're 100% right, but you weren't actually disagreeing with me.
I wasn't meaning to imply that the CONCEPT of getting a mortgage is financially irresponsible, just that a lot of people that get them are doing so under circumstances when they shouldn't (e.g. getting a mortgage for a house they really CAN'T afford to pay off).
Besides, it's also worth mentioning that in many places in the world, renting is significantly cheaper per month (even if it's more expensive overall) than the repayments on a mortgage, so in such places it can be more financially sensible to rent for awhile until you can reasonably afford to pay off a mortgage.
As for myself never getting one, it's actually because I simply don't care about money - I COULD have a hell of a lot more than I do through various kinds of investments (including housing), but really just can't be bothered. As long as I have enough to live (which I do) and visit at least 5 new countries every year (which I do), then I'm happy and any extra, while nice to have, isn't worth the couple of hours of effort it takes per year to manage investment properties etc. (and I only mention investment properties, because the idea of ever actually living somewhere permanently is too horrible for me to even consider (personal opinion only - I don't expect others to hold the same view))
This is probably going to get considered as "Euro boasting" or whatever, so I'd like to ask in advance of my post to all people reading it please not to get too hotheaded before replying/moderating... (I fully expect the negative mods anyway, but my karma can take it, and I think this post is worth making)
It has been a long time since only one income could reliably support middle class subsistence
Here in Europe, it's something we do tend to be quite surprised about when we talk to Americans. The idea of a single parent going out and working while the other stays at home to raise the kids is quite normal here. You only find both parents working in situations where they want to make extra money or have a lifestyle "above" what they could on only one - subsistence is pretty much always possible with only one income.
While it may not be an economic definition, many people here would consider that you've been in a "recession" ever since it became nearly required that both parents work to have a reasonable lifestyle for a family...
1. I always thought that a virus (by definition) had local access. If you're talking about network attacks, wouldn't that would be a worm?
Yes, excuse my laziness and see another reply I just made for further explanation.
2. Windows-based antivirus programs usually work based on a database of signatures. If there are no viruses out there to put in the database, wouldn't the AV program be pointless?
In my understanding the database of signatures is mostly a "guaranteed hit" kind of thing. The most important part however is the ability to detect as yet unknown things which works by detecting "malware like activity" (also a kind of signature, but not specific to individual bits of malware). That's what would be implemented in a situation where there's "as yet no known specific viruses"
There's no need for privilege escalation.
Technically correct, but any malware that runs purely with user privileges is going to be pretty tame - especially as it should be DEAD easy to find and kill (admittedly therefore some kind of "antivirus" software would actually be needed, but nowhere near the complex scale of current things)
Granted, that would protect system files from infection (which is good) and perhaps make the virus less dangerous; then again, infecting docs (e.g. macro viruses) and executables in your home directory would still suck
Maybe most users treat their systems differently, but I really don't have anything in my home folder that I couldn't stand to lose and regain. All important documents that don't get modified every day (especially my media files, as I'm a movie/music junkie) are stored in a directory that is read only, and on the rare occasions I need to write there, I'll enter my admin password (MacOS X makes this kind of setup trivial for even the average to dumb user, which is one of the reasons I like it as a home OS). The stuff in my home folder is mostly config files, temp stuff I haven't sorted yet (that's what my Desktop tends to get used for) and that sort of thing. I'd be annoyed at losing config settings, but not much else in there.
since viruses and worms are often conflated
Yep, I was being lazy in my wording... what I was describing was a worm with a viral payload, which is pretty much how any truly problematic viruses propagate in the real world at present.
Come on...having a Unix pedigree is indeed a large improvement but lets not forget where the "root" in "rootkit" comes from.
Absolutely, hence the qualifiers in my sentences... I wasn't saying, "impossible", just "much harder" and "none right now (AFAIK)"
Why would it need privilege escalation? If there's a hole in some commonly enabled service that runs as root, that would take care of it.
True... I was sort of lazily accepting that as an unspoken obvious point, but you're right I should've mentioned it also. I'd consider this to also be extremely rare though, as it'd first require that there's something running as root listening on the network (only very few services do so), and then that it's exploitable (again the "well tested" part comes in to play here for these kinds of services).
Also, why couldn't a spambot just run in user space? Most people only ever use one account anyway.
Hmmm... I had to really think about this. I GUESS it's possible that code could be executed by a user's process that then causes some more code to be auto-executed at the user login with the privileges of that user only... Would be VERY noticeable to the system though, and killing it would be trivial, so I guess some kind of "very light" antivirus may be employed to guard against this kind of thing if anyone considers it to be a potential threat.
Giving risky loans to people less likely to be able to repay them is what caused the crisis.
Yep, and sorry to sound harsh and I know it's unfair on everyone else who is financially responsible, but they (both the stupid lenders and the bad borrowers) DESERVE hardship and suffering for their behaviour.
Personally, I live with a minimum of possessions and am NEVER in debt (if I can't afford something, I don't buy it... that includes things such as houses (never owned one, probably never will) and cars (I buy it outright)). As I also happen to earn way more than I need (about 210% of what I need based on what's left in my bank by the time the next pay cheque rolls in), it probably is a little harsh of me to make statements about people "deserving" it since I'm in one of the groups that is likely to be least affected by times of financial trouble, but as it's mostly of my own doing rather than "being lucky" (such as people born in to ultra-rich families), I feel at least somewhat justified.
Maybe the Mac has starting to reach that point where virus writers and security aficionados have enough a base to target their efforts?
Perhaps, but I am still waiting to see a real "virus" that hits MacOS. There's been a few trojans (such as the one mentioned in TFA), but nothing that qualifies as a virus yet as far as I know. It is likely much harder to write a real virus (rather than a trojan) for MacOS than Windows as you'll need to find a privilege escalation exploit (need I say, without local access) in one of the standard services first, all of which tend to be pretty robust and having a core that comes from the open source and Unix worlds... as far as I know, there aren't any such exploits known right now.
Trojans can of course still be fairly nasty, as there's a lot of stupid users in the world (of any OS)
Disclosure: I do use MacOS X as my primary OS at home, but I'm definitely not a "fanboy" (I also have Linux systems at home and use primarily Windows at work - I consider myself "OS agnostic").
I wonder why that is...
Because they can control/own/dominate the car, so they're in control of this "angry/arrogant/mean" thing. If it was a guy rather than a car, they wouldn't feel so superior...
the common user want to switch the computer on, check their hotmail account, check facebook, and then talk to their friends on live messenger... THATS IT....
Unfortunately, that's not it. If it was, I could build a Linux distro that does these things (and ONLY these things) quite easily and it would be an enormous success. The common user wants to do these things plus "a few other things" that are generally very nebulously defined. Every distribution struggles with trying to meet all these requirements (when they do even try - some prefer to specialise to specific user types and just say "screw everyone else", which actually may not be a bad thing).
Fair enough... since I was born there and grew up there though, I'm a citizen, so it's not so relevant to me... I was aware of the points system, but wasn't aware that a degree is worth so many points. I'll keep that in mind next time someone asks me about moving there (really, people seem to ask me at least twice a week)
if you want/need to move to another country and that country requires a degree for immigration purposes
Out of interest, can you name any such countries? I've spend a lot of time moving around the world, and haven't needed a degree yet...
(not arguing with you by saying they don't exist, just that I haven't encountered them yet, and am genuinely interested in which ones they are)
Potentially... but there are also those of us who TELL the HR department to hand over all CVs (resumes) that come in instead of pre-filtering them. The first time I asked them to do this, they were a bit unhappy, but then I simply explained that they don't have the technical knowledge of software development to make an informed decision (keywords don't cut it!), just as it would be a very bad idea for me to try and vet CVs for a new position in finance for example. While I was expecting that conversation to turn in to a rather nasty fight, they pretty much said, "Okay, that sounds fair enough", and handed over all CVs from that time on.
Some clients (like financial firms and governments) have strict InfoSec policies that frown upon Easter Eggs and other intentionally "unknown" bits of code. To them, Easter Eggs demonstrate the vendor's lack of control against unauthorized and malicious changes to the product.
The last time a piece of my software got sold to a government agency, they asked for a list of all functions that the application could perform. After getting an NDA from them, we happily provided a document explaining each and every function the application performed. One such function was of course the easter egg, and they were fine with it. As long as they know it's there, they generally are quite happy - if I DIDN'T mention it and they had found it themselves, that's when the shit would hit the fan.
Repeat after me: IT DEPENDS ON THE PROJECT.
You've been posting a lot of comments on this article and repeating yourself for most of them. It's coming pretty close to trolling really.
You're not wrong, when you're talking about your own domain - as you've said, you work on mission critical stuff where any screw-ups are VERY VERY bad. In that case, absolutely, you're right that any untested extra code is really not good. However, most programmers do NOT work in that domain.
Let me give you an example from my own code:
I write a lot of Windows programs at work. Generally, they need to run as services, so I'll write two separate programs - one Windows service and one "configuration tool" that does nothing other than write settings to the config for the service to read.
The config tools of my apps often contain an easter egg. And why not? The chances of such a trivial app (generally takes about 3 hours to write from scratch if I know what all the config entries actually need to be) having critical bugs that aren't picked up in QA is pretty much nil (the service is another story, as it might be pretty complex). Even in the amazingly improbable event that I could somehow code an easter egg that would cause it to crash (and I don't see how unless I'm really TRYING to do so, which of course I wouldn't be), then it would take out just the config tool, while the service merrily chugged along.
Please tell me how there is anything wrong with that?