The best way to get real code obfuscation is to outsource VB.Net development to a third-world country. Seeing indexed property calls and casting in lambda expressions in VB.Net is already unsettling, but when the variable names are in a foreign language (or event better: foreign language in all uppercase) it is a treat, especially with random patches of On-Error-Gotos and line numbering.
Oh, yeah, Agile. I was taught by a guy who was a certified SCRUM master and he informed us all about the joy of agile development.
He shit his pants when I called him on Dijkstra's algorithm and he didn't know, so I had to go to the whiteboard and draw it out to the class because he couldn't.
It was a software engineering class, and I was the only one who turned in an actual project, and not some Microsoft Paint mockup.
Could you post a link to your resume? I'd like to make sure that you are put on that "VIP list" they have in HR, where the resume of people who are better than the rest of the class and make teachers shit their pants receive a special treatment. My company is very mature and we know exactly what is the value of such candidates.
I think there is a bright future for you in IT; after a few false starts in companies having a suboptimal hiring process, the BestBuy branch where you'll end up working will be lucky to have you.
Also, running telecom packages on Windows server is a joke. I work in telecom. Every last piece of telecom server software that I've come across that is available for Windows only was made by someone who has (or had at the time the decision was made) no clue how the telecom business works.
Here is an example: I've been working in large volume call centers for a while, and most of the voicemail detection software (for outbound automated dialers) I've seen is available only on Windows. Those products are proprietary, niche solutions and they usually come as a single application that includes the GUI and the "service". Not only do they run only on Windows, very frequently they require a specific hardware and a specific firmware version, and the drivers are available only for Windows.
I'm not taking a position for or against Windows here, I'm just saying that it's not because Microsoft can move forward that the vendors will be quick to adapt.
They've matured enough to now acknowledge they don't need a GUI.
Microsoft maybe, but not all vendors. There is an ungodly amount of multi-user software out there that actually requires a Windows session on the server because the core "service" is a Windows GUI application. And I'm not just talking downloaddotcom kind of software, but also pricey specialized stuff, like finance or telecom packages.
Hopefully having a GUI-less Windows Server will force those companies to evolve their products.. but there will be a long, painful road until then that will lead to extended support contracts for "old" Windows and to all kinds of evil.
First the Microsoft stores, emulating (Badly) the Apple stores.
Now jumping into the phone business.
At least it is entertaining to watch.
Nah Microsoft wants to be everything, not just Apple. It became clear to me once I saw that in SharePoint there is a button "I Like It". (And as usual it's big, annoyingly friendly and takes a lot of screen real estate).
No; but freedom of speech is not a right which suddenly disappears when you cross the Mexican border. This is a fundamental and ancient right which nobody has the right to take away from you no matter what.
Of course freedom of speech allows you to say something that is so blatantly wrong, but it also allows me to correct you... In some countries there is some degree of freedom of speech but nothing like in the USA.
As an example, in France making a sexist or racist joke can lead to jail time. And France is not Myanmar. Canada has also strong laws regarding "hate propaganda" and antisemitism.
When you say that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, you remind me of a child that does not understand that their poor neighbor can't afford a Xbox like they do.
1) the big hardware vendors already made their money 2) the contractors who installed and configured the hardware already made their money 3) the corrupt purchasing officials have already made their money from the bribes they got from the hardware vendors and the contractors 4) the software vendors will keep racking up software maintenance fees since all those physical servers will become VMs
Average length of job: Half a day Average pay of job: $12
Yeah it's like those people in Extreme Couponing on tv, they get 500$ worth of grocery for 25$, but they spend 45 hours finding, cutting and sorting coupons to get that. Working full time would bring at least that much money and possibly give more growth opportunity than sorting coupons in a big Excel file.
What is new? Not so long ago Microsoft and Red Hat fought hard on that kind of thing.
But it's not always that bad. Just look at the Gacaca project in Rwanda, Microsoft spent a lot of money to showcase.Net and this allowed a better funding. Could this have been done (better) with another technology? Probably, but a bill had to be paid and expecting companies to do charity is not a prudent gamble.
Well it's not very surprising considering that at least a Diebold I saw was running Windows 2k and seemingly without ECC-RAM since it kept blue-screening with the same tell-tale message over and over, ran through BIOS, booted up, tried loading it's user interface and eventuelly the cycle began anew...
I'm astonished they manage to keep the things from blowing up all by themselves
Your [tax money|banking fees|retailer premium] at work!
I always thought that when the balance was not available meant that the ATM was out of paper. It's the only time I don't get a receipt. I have my profile set to automatically generate a receipt.
It depends on your local ATM I guess, but just for fun, next time you can't get a balance before withdrawing, try to take out more money than you have (if the ATM limit is high enough) and you'll have the answer. They will put a negative balance in your bank account and call you to complain a few days later.
This happened to a friend of mine who was sure the ATM was broken so he kept taking money out. Tsk tsk. Beating the bank - not possible!
Well you are probably right... also the skill set to setup a reliable network is usually not available for a small business where there is a policy to give only one napkin per customer to save money (those napkins add up!)
Who said that they stole ATMs to get customer data? It was a "happy" side effect since the money and the data were stored in the same container. It's like a pickpocket that wants the money in your wallet but also ends up with your swingers club membership card and the pictures of your children.
Are you so sure it actually runs that way, even in Brazil? I've never seen an ATM without a network connection of some sort.
I seriously doubt there is any customer date in the ATM. Refreshing that daily would be a nightmare.
Best case scenario yes, the network is up. But what if the network is down? Do you lock out the customer? Nah, you make sure that the card is valid (simple algorithm or the chip) and you log the transactions so you can consolidate them later (and track down the people who withdrew too much money).
Sometimes when you see a message saying that the account balance is not available, you can bet that you are dealing with a node that is disconnected from the mothership and will stack up transactions until it can upload the details for later consolidation.
People think that ATM are very very high tech but in fact, it's just a tad more optimal than good ol' checks. There is always a consolidation that will occur downstream.
Option 3: Use option #1, but get a backup 1) phone line for slow verification and 2) GPRS/3G USB radio for internet access, and make sure communication over the network is entirely TLS/SSL.
Chances of both your 3G USB internet card and your DSL/cable going down simultaneously is quite low. Throw in a good old landline and modem to the mix and then there's super high availability.
If all these internet options don't work, chances are some massive disaster prevents your business from operating anyway, eh?
I've been working for a major retailer and that kind of setup was just impossible to get in some regions. It works well in the city, but then in the city you usually can get two ISP or telcos.
So the retailer POS was a lousy standalone client with frequently interrupted data consolidation jobs. And so far nobody came up with a better solution. Yes, there is encryption, landmines, etc that one can use to protect the POS but still.
Option 2: you have decentralized ATM/POS, with partially cached information on the end points. That way when the network is down, people can still perform transactions and there is a consolidation that occurs once the network is back. But if people come in your store at night with a big John Deere while the cops are busy playing with their tasers on homeless guys, then data gets stolen.
You could have your data stored encrypted on non-volatile ram, but the encryption key in volatile ram that gets wiped whenever the access door is opened or the ATM is removed from its site.
A list of valid encryption keys would be kept at headquarters for maintenance purposes and reinstatement if a stolen ATM is recovered.
This is a remediation for option 2. The VM thing is remediation for option 1. Still no winner!
Option 1: you have a centralized ATM/POS software, no data on the end points. Great security. But your network connection becomes a liability - no network, no transactions, even if the client and the money are in the same physical location.
Option 2: you have decentralized ATM/POS, with partially cached information on the end points. That way when the network is down, people can still perform transactions and there is a consolidation that occurs once the network is back. But if people come in your store at night with a big John Deere while the cops are busy playing with their tasers on homeless guys, then data gets stolen.
No, not unless it is completely transparent. They wouldn't even allow review of their source code. Not to mention that all election results would presumably end up under the control of one company. Not a good idea, sorry.
Have you seen the documentary where the guy finds out that the "secure database" where they collate votes is a simple Access file?
Who the hell steals an ATM out of the wall to get customer data? You just send out a phishing email and you'll probably get 100x the return without having to blow a bloody wall to pieces and steal what amounts to a large cube of metal.
Who said that they stole ATMs to get customer data? It was a "happy" side effect since the money and the data were stored in the same container. It's like a pickpocket that wants the money in your wallet but also ends up with your swingers club membership card and the pictures of your children.
And now, even the next version of Windows Server will contain integrated data deduplication technology! [...] The most interesting thing is that Microsoft Research says it doesn't affect performance almost at all.
Well ask anyone who lost documents on DoubleSpace volumes or got corrupted media files on Windows Home Server and they will tell you that even if Microsoft Research says so, it's not something I would put on my production servers any time soon.
I can't imagine how the past president of PayPal, a company known for screwing its customers, could possibly be a good thing for Yahoo.
Yahoo has been in discussions about selling off its Asian assets for some weeks.
Great, all you hear from Yahoo lately is "let's sell things off." When was the last time you heard them talk about creating a new product? These are signs of death.
If companies were always keeping their course and never got rid of any business, EMC would still sell computer desks and Berkshire-Hathaway would still be in the textile business instead of printing money in Omaha...
Slashdot Mirror
The best way to get real code obfuscation is to outsource VB.Net development to a third-world country. Seeing indexed property calls and casting in lambda expressions in VB.Net is already unsettling, but when the variable names are in a foreign language (or event better: foreign language in all uppercase) it is a treat, especially with random patches of On-Error-Gotos and line numbering.
No Perl is. Real scientist use the Python programming language with Numpy and MatPlotLib :D
In my experience, scientists tend to use Excel VBA and incredibly convoluted batch files.
Disclaimer: I mostly met mad scientists.
Oh, yeah, Agile. I was taught by a guy who was a certified SCRUM master and he informed us all about the joy of agile development.
He shit his pants when I called him on Dijkstra's algorithm and he didn't know, so I had to go to the whiteboard and draw it out to the class because he couldn't.
It was a software engineering class, and I was the only one who turned in an actual project, and not some Microsoft Paint mockup.
Could you post a link to your resume? I'd like to make sure that you are put on that "VIP list" they have in HR, where the resume of people who are better than the rest of the class and make teachers shit their pants receive a special treatment. My company is very mature and we know exactly what is the value of such candidates.
I think there is a bright future for you in IT; after a few false starts in companies having a suboptimal hiring process, the BestBuy branch where you'll end up working will be lucky to have you.
Also, running telecom packages on Windows server is a joke. I work in telecom. Every last piece of telecom server software that I've come across that is available for Windows only was made by someone who has (or had at the time the decision was made) no clue how the telecom business works.
Here is an example: I've been working in large volume call centers for a while, and most of the voicemail detection software (for outbound automated dialers) I've seen is available only on Windows. Those products are proprietary, niche solutions and they usually come as a single application that includes the GUI and the "service". Not only do they run only on Windows, very frequently they require a specific hardware and a specific firmware version, and the drivers are available only for Windows.
I'm not taking a position for or against Windows here, I'm just saying that it's not because Microsoft can move forward that the vendors will be quick to adapt.
They've matured enough to now acknowledge they don't need a GUI.
Microsoft maybe, but not all vendors. There is an ungodly amount of multi-user software out there that actually requires a Windows session on the server because the core "service" is a Windows GUI application. And I'm not just talking downloaddotcom kind of software, but also pricey specialized stuff, like finance or telecom packages.
Hopefully having a GUI-less Windows Server will force those companies to evolve their products.. but there will be a long, painful road until then that will lead to extended support contracts for "old" Windows and to all kinds of evil.
They really do want to be Apple don't they. :)
First the Microsoft stores, emulating (Badly) the Apple stores.
Now jumping into the phone business.
At least it is entertaining to watch.
Nah Microsoft wants to be everything, not just Apple. It became clear to me once I saw that in SharePoint there is a button "I Like It". (And as usual it's big, annoyingly friendly and takes a lot of screen real estate).
He's not in the USA.
No; but freedom of speech is not a right which suddenly disappears when you cross the Mexican border. This is a fundamental and ancient right which nobody has the right to take away from you no matter what.
Of course freedom of speech allows you to say something that is so blatantly wrong, but it also allows me to correct you... In some countries there is some degree of freedom of speech but nothing like in the USA.
As an example, in France making a sexist or racist joke can lead to jail time. And France is not Myanmar. Canada has also strong laws regarding "hate propaganda" and antisemitism.
When you say that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, you remind me of a child that does not understand that their poor neighbor can't afford a Xbox like they do.
Sure: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=documentary+election+diebold+access
See first hit
They are not needed anymore because:
1) the big hardware vendors already made their money
2) the contractors who installed and configured the hardware already made their money
3) the corrupt purchasing officials have already made their money from the bribes they got from the hardware vendors and the contractors
4) the software vendors will keep racking up software maintenance fees since all those physical servers will become VMs
It's called "greed computing".
I think he meant does the guy who buys the C$ pay the 15% or does the guy cashing out the C% pay it? And I'll bet the answer is: both.
From now on use a remote to start you car because unknowingly you just revealed the Amazon and Apple Store business models!
Average length of job: Half a day
Average pay of job: $12
Yeah it's like those people in Extreme Couponing on tv, they get 500$ worth of grocery for 25$, but they spend 45 hours finding, cutting and sorting coupons to get that. Working full time would bring at least that much money and possibly give more growth opportunity than sorting coupons in a big Excel file.
What is new? Not so long ago Microsoft and Red Hat fought hard on that kind of thing.
But it's not always that bad. Just look at the Gacaca project in Rwanda, Microsoft spent a lot of money to showcase .Net and this allowed a better funding. Could this have been done (better) with another technology? Probably, but a bill had to be paid and expecting companies to do charity is not a prudent gamble.
Well it's not very surprising considering that at least a Diebold I saw was running Windows 2k and seemingly without ECC-RAM since it kept blue-screening with the same tell-tale message over and over, ran through BIOS, booted up, tried loading it's user interface and eventuelly the cycle began anew...
I'm astonished they manage to keep the things from blowing up all by themselves
Your [tax money|banking fees|retailer premium] at work!
I always thought that when the balance was not available meant that the ATM was out of paper. It's the only time I don't get a receipt. I have my profile set to automatically generate a receipt.
It depends on your local ATM I guess, but just for fun, next time you can't get a balance before withdrawing, try to take out more money than you have (if the ATM limit is high enough) and you'll have the answer. They will put a negative balance in your bank account and call you to complain a few days later.
This happened to a friend of mine who was sure the ATM was broken so he kept taking money out. Tsk tsk. Beating the bank - not possible!
Well you are probably right... also the skill set to setup a reliable network is usually not available for a small business where there is a policy to give only one napkin per customer to save money (those napkins add up!)
If you are a business owner that will lose money when the shitty DSL modem is blinking, you might have to reconsider.
Who said that they stole ATMs to get customer data? It was a "happy" side effect since the money and the data were stored in the same container. It's like a pickpocket that wants the money in your wallet but also ends up with your swingers club membership card and the pictures of your children.
Are you so sure it actually runs that way, even in Brazil? I've never seen an ATM without a network connection of some sort.
I seriously doubt there is any customer date in the ATM. Refreshing that daily would be a nightmare.
Best case scenario yes, the network is up. But what if the network is down? Do you lock out the customer? Nah, you make sure that the card is valid (simple algorithm or the chip) and you log the transactions so you can consolidate them later (and track down the people who withdrew too much money).
Sometimes when you see a message saying that the account balance is not available, you can bet that you are dealing with a node that is disconnected from the mothership and will stack up transactions until it can upload the details for later consolidation.
People think that ATM are very very high tech but in fact, it's just a tad more optimal than good ol' checks. There is always a consolidation that will occur downstream.
Option 3: Use option #1, but get a backup 1) phone line for slow verification and 2) GPRS/3G USB radio for internet access, and make sure communication over the network is entirely TLS/SSL.
Chances of both your 3G USB internet card and your DSL/cable going down simultaneously is quite low. Throw in a good old landline and modem to the mix and then there's super high availability.
If all these internet options don't work, chances are some massive disaster prevents your business from operating anyway, eh?
I've been working for a major retailer and that kind of setup was just impossible to get in some regions. It works well in the city, but then in the city you usually can get two ISP or telcos.
So the retailer POS was a lousy standalone client with frequently interrupted data consolidation jobs. And so far nobody came up with a better solution. Yes, there is encryption, landmines, etc that one can use to protect the POS but still.
Option 2: you have decentralized ATM/POS, with partially cached information on the end points. That way when the network is down, people can still perform transactions and there is a consolidation that occurs once the network is back. But if people come in your store at night with a big John Deere while the cops are busy playing with their tasers on homeless guys, then data gets stolen.
You could have your data stored encrypted on non-volatile ram, but the encryption key in volatile ram that gets wiped whenever the access door is opened or the ATM is removed from its site.
A list of valid encryption keys would be kept at headquarters for maintenance purposes and reinstatement if a stolen ATM is recovered.
This is a remediation for option 2. The VM thing is remediation for option 1. Still no winner!
Option 1: you have a centralized ATM/POS software, no data on the end points. Great security. But your network connection becomes a liability - no network, no transactions, even if the client and the money are in the same physical location.
Option 2: you have decentralized ATM/POS, with partially cached information on the end points. That way when the network is down, people can still perform transactions and there is a consolidation that occurs once the network is back. But if people come in your store at night with a big John Deere while the cops are busy playing with their tasers on homeless guys, then data gets stolen.
Pick one.
No, not unless it is completely transparent. They wouldn't even allow review of their source code. Not to mention that all election results would presumably end up under the control of one company. Not a good idea, sorry.
Have you seen the documentary where the guy finds out that the "secure database" where they collate votes is a simple Access file?
Who the hell steals an ATM out of the wall to get customer data? You just send out a phishing email and you'll probably get 100x the return without having to blow a bloody wall to pieces and steal what amounts to a large cube of metal.
Who said that they stole ATMs to get customer data? It was a "happy" side effect since the money and the data were stored in the same container. It's like a pickpocket that wants the money in your wallet but also ends up with your swingers club membership card and the pictures of your children.
And now, even the next version of Windows Server will contain integrated data deduplication technology! [...] The most interesting thing is that Microsoft Research says it doesn't affect performance almost at all.
Well ask anyone who lost documents on DoubleSpace volumes or got corrupted media files on Windows Home Server and they will tell you that even if Microsoft Research says so, it's not something I would put on my production servers any time soon.
Thompson, who was previously president of PayPal
I can't imagine how the past president of PayPal, a company known for screwing its customers, could possibly be a good thing for Yahoo.
Yahoo has been in discussions about selling off its Asian assets for some weeks.
Great, all you hear from Yahoo lately is "let's sell things off." When was the last time you heard them talk about creating a new product? These are signs of death.
If companies were always keeping their course and never got rid of any business, EMC would still sell computer desks and Berkshire-Hathaway would still be in the textile business instead of printing money in Omaha...
So I provide a valid opinion and reasons why it's good to do web development with and it gets modded to -1? WTF Slashdot?
You aren't a subscriber, and your five-paragraph comment was submitted within a minute -- and I'm being generous -- of the article being published.
You are clearly being paid to post here, so "your" "opinions" are worth less than nothing.
("Redundant" would be a better moderation than "Troll".)
This baseless accusation is worth +5 and the original answer to the actual question is -1?
Posting something about the benefits of a Microsoft technology is even better than the Voight-Kampff test to get an emotional response.