Unfortunately, most people just bring up Google/Bing and type in (or, worse, just type into the address bar) what they are looking for. Even Google-ing for "amazon.com" -- I cringe every time.
Yeah, I just ordered a T-shirt from a Canadian company, paid with PayPal... and my bank charged me an "International Charge fee" because it went through PayPal Canada. I ordered last year from a company that is in Europe (I think Czech Republic, but I can't remember right now); the shirt was a good price, but international shipping was more than I expected -- but the total was still very reasonable.
So, I've taken advantage of the new worldwide economy, although I try to buy things locally when I can.
False. The sales tax laws are very specifically worded, anything collected (even if in excess of what you were supposed to collect) is required to go to the states. Unless the rules are different since Amazon is out-of-state? I have looked into Florida laws, and even if I were to collect double what I was supposed to, I couldn't keep a penny (legally).
I have done both (daily push, and now once-a-week). The real problem is not CYA versus agile; my current company is publicly traded, and trying to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley means they have to have MULTIPLE meetings about what is going out, what it is going to impact, how to roll it back, etc. The SOX compliance just introduces tons of "process" meaning that there is absolutely ZERO chance of daily changes.
The best way around this is to make as much as possible data-driven, with screens to update the data -- that way you don't "push to production," just go through an interface.
+1. AVG was too much up-selling and "don't you think you need to upgrade?" Having said that, Avast does that sometimes, but they haven't been as intrusive... yet.
Wait, you have people that actually accept the Windows Updates? Everyone I know just closes the pop-up, and when I show up (virus / malware, or running really slowly) I see "926923798257 updates to install" (yes, I'm exaggerating).
I also loved Takeshi's Castle -- even the Americanized, somewhat watered-down, full-of-corny-jokes version. If they replaced all the reality shows with Japanese knock-offs, TV would be 100% more entertaining. At least I might watch a few more shows than I do now. Now I just get ill flipping past the shows, let alone trying to watch them.
I *completely* agree. Human-interest stories are what make me want to tape everything, so I have a way to fast-forward through the BS.
Secondly, the so-called challenges from WO are just impossible. Not impossible like Sasuke, where people get better and can actually do them (rolling thingy comes to mind), but what is up with the punching wall from WO? There is no way to really get past it, you might as well just dive into the muck to start with.
I liked the reality show set in Japan, something like "I'm on a Japanese Game Show!", but I shudder to think what the Americans would do with it if it got really popular. I understand it wasn't really a Japanese game show, but the challenges were at least somewhat believable that someone could do them if they had some skills or learned how it worked.
Ooh, Wolfenstein -- and, since you may not have good arrow keys, you could use the phone orientation for turning / movement? Turn right/left to actually turn right/left? Tilt forward, backward to move... a little for slow movement, tilt 45 degrees for fast movement?
You are only "guaranteed" what you are getting. However, I have been in that boat, and there was a physical problem. Just call your provider, explaining what is happening. If they have 24/7 support, wait until it starts happening, then call them -- so when they test it, they will see the problem.
Unfortunately, for me it took three different calls. The first call the technician came out and just swapped out some hardware. Elapsed time for him: Maybe half an hour. The second time they checked the wires from the house to the modem, and gave me different hardware ("that other one has problems with some old wiring").
Finally, with the third guy to come out, he traced it to some intermittent problem with wires. He swapped pairs from the house to the box (or the box to the DSLAM, can't remember exactly), and from then on my downloads quickly went up near the maximum and stayed there.
If you have already called the ISP and you got one of the responses above, you can always call back and complain again. They do seem to track that you called before, and will try something different. I was with BellSouth / ATT, so your mileage may vary. (I keep using past tense; I upgraded to U-Verse when it became available, and the speeds are great).
Standard machine builds with an Admin / root password? When the machine flakes out and cannot connect to a domain controller, you need a local account.
Databases with "sa" account? There are some things that the database will not let an "admin" do, only the DB owner.
... and I love the password generation capability. Especially options like "exclude lookalike characters" for when I have to look up the password on my phone.
I had to "find" a password for an Excel spreadsheet from a previous employee, and it took 1 download and a few minutes to crack the password. NOT good password encryption from the boys in Redmond. Or, perhaps they were forward-thinking and were trying to give the gummit an easy back door....
Or the IT department gets a new shipment in, and replaces yours during the night? You'll come in and none of your passwords work. "I keep typing Vizio and it doesn't work!"
When our last SysAdmin left, he left us an unencrypted Excel file of passwords. Since he used it as his central repository of passwords, not just for our local group that he was supporting, that gave us several passwords that were outside of our control. It actually has come in handy; previously we had to request some changes from IT (e.g. a DNS change for a staging website), and now we are able to do that ourselves.
Of course, an Excel file on a shared drive would not be my suggested solution! And if you think Excel's password capability is useful, I'd suggest doing a Google search -- there are a LOT of programs that can crack that. I've had to use one, on a spreadsheet that was read-only without a password that a previous employee left us. It took all of a few minutes for the program to come up with a solution. Passwords that only keep the good guys out are not worth it.
I use KeePass personally. It has the capability to open multiple databases of passwords, each with their own passwords. I put my wife's logins into one, and mine into the other one.
I thought about how to use it at work (other than just putting my work ones into my personal database), and the synchronization is pretty awesome. You keep a local copy, and periodically you can sync it (it even remembers recent DBs you have sync'd with), so the shared one is still updateable. I'd suggest that over the multi-user model, only because then you have a local copy if the network goes down. Someone else suggested rotating the passwords; you can open the database and change the master password, and it re-encrypts with that one. You won't be able to sync with older DBs at that point, so you'd want to do it after you were sure everyone had their changes in (sort of like a lenient version control system).
As a previous poster noted, it even has ports for some smartphones. I copy my DB to my phone periodically; all of my userids and passwords are available from my phone (after typing the master password, of course).
My biggest draw for using it personally was the Firefox integration. It detects the form, and stores the userid/password in a format that can be auto-typed for you. No worry about keyloggers! If it doesn't detect the form (some weird, non-form-based sites, like AT&T), you still have the option to copy the userid or password to the clipboard with a menu click, so you are not just using your eyeballs to copy-and-paste (and worry about a keylogger).
It doesn't do the integration on my phone (not running Firefox there), but once you "open" a site, you have notification options for "copy userid to clipboard" or "copy password to clipboard". And, the Android version clears the clipboard and locks the database after a minute (configurable) automatically.
First, the last time I got hit with an exploit I was fully patched (Java, Windows, etc.). See response to commenter up above if interested. So that's not really the real issue.
Second, Windows has the same "feature", and every time I get asked to help people with their computer problems, the first thing I notice is all of the various "New version available" messages: windows updates, java, flash, etc. Regular users are aware of these things, they just don't click on them. Why?
Third, enough users have upgraded some seemingly small piece of their system, and the entire computer stops working. I upgraded Kaspersky (back when I used it) once, and my entire Internet connection went down. Something weird with the firewall and it blocked everything. Of course, from a perverse standpoint, their firewall did its job -- I wasn't going to download any viruses! Once bitten, twice shy.
I know exactly when the last time I ran a Java applet. I was browsing a comic site, and his ad server really served me well... a virus / trojan. This called for a multi-step response:
Step 1: Notify artist (who changed ad providers)
Step 2: Turn AdBlock on (I had disabled for his site)
Step 3: Send him $10 for a beer or two
Step 4: Uninstall Java
Problem solved!
Was I fully patched? You bet; current version of Java, mainly to eliminate that annoying popup, current Windows updates, etc.
I believe that was sarcasm: :: clean, elegant - um, not so much. :: consistent, well-thought out syntax - again, nope. :: easy to debug - he gave a great example of how the error messages are complete garbage :: secure by default - see how he keeps escalating the humor?
Pure comedy genius. Right up there with Craig Ferguson!
While I have seen my share of bad foreign code, there have also been excellent foreign coders.
The difference, I think, is who is "selling" of the coding services. Think of the most slimy American used car salesman (sorry to my friends that are in car sales! Not talking about you!!), and imagine he is selling programming "talent" in another country. He knows that he just has to get his foot in the door and make a sale, and he makes his commission. So, he gets some mediocre (at best) talent, promises the world, all for a vastly lower bid than any American company. Unfortunately, by the time you realize how bad it is (software takes a while to specify and begin to see results, unfortunately), he is already at the next place selling the same bad programmers.
If this was in fact a natural trend and it was harmful, we should still act and/or adapt in precisely the same ways for precisely the same reasons.
Sorry, that doesn't make any sense. We should act one way whether it makes any difference? If there is nothing we have done to make the temperature go up or down, why should we change our behavior -- our behavior did not make the temperature / climate change, so why would it reverse it?
If you are in the middle of a long tunnel and a train is coming at you at 14,000km/h (the rocket sled record, give or take), and you can run at 12km/h... does it matter which way you run? You aren't going to outrun it, and either it is going to hit you or it is not.
Huh? Christians were what STARTED this great country, to get away from the Church of England and the marriage of state and church. Here are the results of a few minutes of research:
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." - George Washington
"In circumstances dark as these, it becomes us, as Men and Christians, to reflect that, whilst every prudent Measure should be taken to ward off the impending Judgements....All confidence must be withheld from the Means we use; and reposed only on that GOD who rules in the Armies of Heaven, and without whose Blessing the best human Counsels are but Foolishness--and all created Power Vanity..." - John Hancock
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, most people just bring up Google/Bing and type in (or, worse, just type into the address bar) what they are looking for. Even Google-ing for "amazon.com" -- I cringe every time.
Ouch ("both"). So, after Blag gets out, we should see him getting elected soon after??
Yeah, I just ordered a T-shirt from a Canadian company, paid with PayPal ... and my bank charged me an "International Charge fee" because it went through PayPal Canada. I ordered last year from a company that is in Europe (I think Czech Republic, but I can't remember right now); the shirt was a good price, but international shipping was more than I expected -- but the total was still very reasonable.
So, I've taken advantage of the new worldwide economy, although I try to buy things locally when I can.
<snip>Also, many of my former governors are in prison. yes, Illinois. screw 'em, they waste the money they do get.
And the ones that aren't in prison got sent to Washington? ;-)
False. The sales tax laws are very specifically worded, anything collected (even if in excess of what you were supposed to collect) is required to go to the states. Unless the rules are different since Amazon is out-of-state? I have looked into Florida laws, and even if I were to collect double what I was supposed to, I couldn't keep a penny (legally).
I have done both (daily push, and now once-a-week). The real problem is not CYA versus agile; my current company is publicly traded, and trying to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley means they have to have MULTIPLE meetings about what is going out, what it is going to impact, how to roll it back, etc. The SOX compliance just introduces tons of "process" meaning that there is absolutely ZERO chance of daily changes.
The best way around this is to make as much as possible data-driven, with screens to update the data -- that way you don't "push to production," just go through an interface.
+1. AVG was too much up-selling and "don't you think you need to upgrade?" Having said that, Avast does that sometimes, but they haven't been as intrusive ... yet.
Wait, you have people that actually accept the Windows Updates? Everyone I know just closes the pop-up, and when I show up (virus / malware, or running really slowly) I see "926923798257 updates to install" (yes, I'm exaggerating).
I also loved Takeshi's Castle -- even the Americanized, somewhat watered-down, full-of-corny-jokes version. If they replaced all the reality shows with Japanese knock-offs, TV would be 100% more entertaining. At least I might watch a few more shows than I do now. Now I just get ill flipping past the shows, let alone trying to watch them.
I *completely* agree. Human-interest stories are what make me want to tape everything, so I have a way to fast-forward through the BS.
Secondly, the so-called challenges from WO are just impossible. Not impossible like Sasuke, where people get better and can actually do them (rolling thingy comes to mind), but what is up with the punching wall from WO? There is no way to really get past it, you might as well just dive into the muck to start with.
I liked the reality show set in Japan, something like "I'm on a Japanese Game Show!", but I shudder to think what the Americans would do with it if it got really popular. I understand it wasn't really a Japanese game show, but the challenges were at least somewhat believable that someone could do them if they had some skills or learned how it worked.
Ooh, Wolfenstein -- and, since you may not have good arrow keys, you could use the phone orientation for turning / movement? Turn right/left to actually turn right/left? Tilt forward, backward to move ... a little for slow movement, tilt 45 degrees for fast movement?
Sounds like a great use of my phone!
Oh, was that humor? I was expecting you to go in a different direction, and then you put Yahoo, HP, RIM, MySpace.
I was expecting AltaVista, AskJeeves, InfoSeek, Overture.
But, yes, I agree with your premise -- does Bing have a shopping search yet?
You are only "guaranteed" what you are getting. However, I have been in that boat, and there was a physical problem. Just call your provider, explaining what is happening. If they have 24/7 support, wait until it starts happening, then call them -- so when they test it, they will see the problem.
Unfortunately, for me it took three different calls. The first call the technician came out and just swapped out some hardware. Elapsed time for him: Maybe half an hour. The second time they checked the wires from the house to the modem, and gave me different hardware ("that other one has problems with some old wiring").
Finally, with the third guy to come out, he traced it to some intermittent problem with wires. He swapped pairs from the house to the box (or the box to the DSLAM, can't remember exactly), and from then on my downloads quickly went up near the maximum and stayed there.
If you have already called the ISP and you got one of the responses above, you can always call back and complain again. They do seem to track that you called before, and will try something different. I was with BellSouth / ATT, so your mileage may vary. (I keep using past tense; I upgraded to U-Verse when it became available, and the speeds are great).
Standard machine builds with an Admin / root password? When the machine flakes out and cannot connect to a domain controller, you need a local account.
Databases with "sa" account? There are some things that the database will not let an "admin" do, only the DB owner.
... and I love the password generation capability. Especially options like "exclude lookalike characters" for when I have to look up the password on my phone.
+1
I had to "find" a password for an Excel spreadsheet from a previous employee, and it took 1 download and a few minutes to crack the password. NOT good password encryption from the boys in Redmond. Or, perhaps they were forward-thinking and were trying to give the gummit an easy back door....
Or the IT department gets a new shipment in, and replaces yours during the night? You'll come in and none of your passwords work. "I keep typing Vizio and it doesn't work!"
When our last SysAdmin left, he left us an unencrypted Excel file of passwords. Since he used it as his central repository of passwords, not just for our local group that he was supporting, that gave us several passwords that were outside of our control. It actually has come in handy; previously we had to request some changes from IT (e.g. a DNS change for a staging website), and now we are able to do that ourselves.
Of course, an Excel file on a shared drive would not be my suggested solution! And if you think Excel's password capability is useful, I'd suggest doing a Google search -- there are a LOT of programs that can crack that. I've had to use one, on a spreadsheet that was read-only without a password that a previous employee left us. It took all of a few minutes for the program to come up with a solution. Passwords that only keep the good guys out are not worth it.
I use KeePass personally. It has the capability to open multiple databases of passwords, each with their own passwords. I put my wife's logins into one, and mine into the other one.
I thought about how to use it at work (other than just putting my work ones into my personal database), and the synchronization is pretty awesome. You keep a local copy, and periodically you can sync it (it even remembers recent DBs you have sync'd with), so the shared one is still updateable. I'd suggest that over the multi-user model, only because then you have a local copy if the network goes down. Someone else suggested rotating the passwords; you can open the database and change the master password, and it re-encrypts with that one. You won't be able to sync with older DBs at that point, so you'd want to do it after you were sure everyone had their changes in (sort of like a lenient version control system).
As a previous poster noted, it even has ports for some smartphones. I copy my DB to my phone periodically; all of my userids and passwords are available from my phone (after typing the master password, of course).
My biggest draw for using it personally was the Firefox integration. It detects the form, and stores the userid/password in a format that can be auto-typed for you. No worry about keyloggers! If it doesn't detect the form (some weird, non-form-based sites, like AT&T), you still have the option to copy the userid or password to the clipboard with a menu click, so you are not just using your eyeballs to copy-and-paste (and worry about a keylogger).
It doesn't do the integration on my phone (not running Firefox there), but once you "open" a site, you have notification options for "copy userid to clipboard" or "copy password to clipboard". And, the Android version clears the clipboard and locks the database after a minute (configurable) automatically.
First, the last time I got hit with an exploit I was fully patched (Java, Windows, etc.). See response to commenter up above if interested. So that's not really the real issue.
Second, Windows has the same "feature", and every time I get asked to help people with their computer problems, the first thing I notice is all of the various "New version available" messages: windows updates, java, flash, etc. Regular users are aware of these things, they just don't click on them. Why?
Third, enough users have upgraded some seemingly small piece of their system, and the entire computer stops working. I upgraded Kaspersky (back when I used it) once, and my entire Internet connection went down. Something weird with the firewall and it blocked everything. Of course, from a perverse standpoint, their firewall did its job -- I wasn't going to download any viruses! Once bitten, twice shy.
I know exactly when the last time I ran a Java applet. I was browsing a comic site, and his ad server really served me well ... a virus / trojan. This called for a multi-step response:
Problem solved!
Was I fully patched? You bet; current version of Java, mainly to eliminate that annoying popup, current Windows updates, etc.
I believe that was sarcasm:
:: clean, elegant - um, not so much.
:: consistent, well-thought out syntax - again, nope.
:: easy to debug - he gave a great example of how the error messages are complete garbage
:: secure by default - see how he keeps escalating the humor?
Pure comedy genius. Right up there with Craig Ferguson!
I would have to disagree.
While I have seen my share of bad foreign code, there have also been excellent foreign coders.
The difference, I think, is who is "selling" of the coding services. Think of the most slimy American used car salesman (sorry to my friends that are in car sales! Not talking about you!!), and imagine he is selling programming "talent" in another country. He knows that he just has to get his foot in the door and make a sale, and he makes his commission. So, he gets some mediocre (at best) talent, promises the world, all for a vastly lower bid than any American company. Unfortunately, by the time you realize how bad it is (software takes a while to specify and begin to see results, unfortunately), he is already at the next place selling the same bad programmers.
If this was in fact a natural trend and it was harmful, we should still act and/or adapt in precisely the same ways for precisely the same reasons.
Sorry, that doesn't make any sense. We should act one way whether it makes any difference? If there is nothing we have done to make the temperature go up or down, why should we change our behavior -- our behavior did not make the temperature / climate change, so why would it reverse it?
If you are in the middle of a long tunnel and a train is coming at you at 14,000km/h (the rocket sled record, give or take), and you can run at 12km/h ... does it matter which way you run? You aren't going to outrun it, and either it is going to hit you or it is not.
Huh? Christians were what STARTED this great country, to get away from the Church of England and the marriage of state and church. Here are the results of a few minutes of research:
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." - George Washington
"In circumstances dark as these, it becomes us, as Men and Christians, to reflect that, whilst every prudent Measure should be taken to ward off the impending Judgements....All confidence must be withheld from the Means we use; and reposed only on that GOD who rules in the Armies of Heaven, and without whose Blessing the best human Counsels are but Foolishness--and all created Power Vanity ..." - John Hancock