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User: SQLGuru

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  1. Re:Very legitimate reason for this on Mobile Devs Making the Same Security Mistakes Web Devs Made in the Early 2000s (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    The article didn't indicate that they attacked the APIs.....they merely looked at the signatures. Just because the API looks like it can be hacked, doesn't mean it doesn't perform the necessary validations server-side ALSO.

  2. Re:Marketing? on Go Programming Language Gets A New Logo and Branding (golang.org) · · Score: 1

    Time to start wrapping code in if(false){} blocks instead of comment blocks.

  3. Re:Anyway on Patent 'Death Squad' System Upheld by US Supreme Court (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    What about something along the lines of having to actually use the patent (either by creating a product or licensing it), say within the first 5 years of being granted. Otherwise, you lose the rights.

    Also, what about getting back to patenting implementations of ideas and not ideas themselves? My biggest gripe about software patents is that they are all granted at the "a method to do some vague concept" instead of the "a specific method for doing some specific task" level. It would be the equivalent of patenting "a method of ordering a list of numbers" instead of the bubble sort or insertion sort or selection sort algorithms. This, to me, is what has lead to patent trolls. They buy some vaguely worded patent and look for as many ways as possible that it can be applied.

  4. Re: Comp Sci on Ask Slashdot: Should Coding Exams Be Given on Paper? · · Score: 2

    What is the exam actually testing? Your knowledge of a CS concept or your knowledge of the syntax of a specific language? If my course is "Data Structures", then I need to understand Arrays, Lists, Dictionaries, Heaps, B-Trees, etc. If my course is "Introduction to C++", then obviously, I need to know how to use a for loop and how to declare a class.

    The English department is obviously testing your knowledge of the English language, therefore pseudo-English is not appropriate.

  5. Re:Comp Sci on Ask Slashdot: Should Coding Exams Be Given on Paper? · · Score: 2

    As long as the professor isn't grading on syntax (i.e. use pseudo-code), I'm all for coding on paper. I do it all the time, even today. As a senior-level developer, I spend way more time "coding in Word" than I'd like.....writing specs to give to junior developers, drawing pictures in Visio, etc. As long as you understand what it's doing, it doesn't matter what the syntax is --- syntax can be checked easily in any good IDE or with a quick search.

  6. Re: PIN on Secret Service Warns of Chip Card Scheme (krebsonsecurity.com) · · Score: 1

    I've had the option. I could set it myself or I could have them send me one. And of course, even if sent one, you can always go in and change it (sometimes you can even change it via the phone, but I would go it).

    Even back in the early 90s, I was doing a co-op in California and opened an account with Wells Fargo. I got to set my own pin, so I had set it to a 10 digit number. It was super secure, but it made it a pain to use it out in public because most terminals expect a four digit pin.

  7. No, it just means the bugs are easier to find and exploit.......

  8. Re:Not getting the point. on Microsoft Releases New Tool To Get More Distros on Windows (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    A lot of people are moving over to the lighter weight Visual Studio Code (not to be confused with Visual Studio). VS Code already works on Linux (and Mac and Windows). It's actually a nice IDE regardless of the language you code in or the platform you code on.

  9. Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course) on Jack In the Box CEO Says 'It Just Makes Sense' To Replace Workers With Robots (grubstreet.com) · · Score: 1

    So, then, why do you allow certain gifts to be tax free? You did nothing to earn that gift. You should pay taxes on it. It can go to pay for roads and schools and what have you.

  10. Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course) on Jack In the Box CEO Says 'It Just Makes Sense' To Replace Workers With Robots (grubstreet.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, say Person A has $1M after paying any and all taxes that were owed. They die and Person B inherits that money. So you want to now tax Person B just because they inherited money. And if they immediately die and Person C inherits the remaining portion of that money, you want them to be taxed, too. And if Person C dies, then Person D would also be taxed. Even though nothing has changed about the fact that the money in question had ALREADY been taxed, you'd like to see that money all go to the government?

    This would be equivalent to you being taxed on both your income and your net-worth every year. Even if you only make $50k per year, if you are a great saver and have $500k in the bank, you'd want that $500k taxed just because it exists.

  11. Re:Is Yelp still a thing? on Yelp Accused Of Hiding Positive Reviews For Non-Advertiser (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 2

    I'm a big fan of the Chrome plugin called Video Speed Controller. You can bump the playback speed of HTML5 video all the way up to 10x. Just be warned that sound cuts out around 4x. But for those videos that you want to breeze through to find the meat, it's really handy to jump up to a multiple and then back off that speed when you find what you want. [There are hotkeys for jumping around speeds.....as long as the video player widget has focus.]

    It's also handy for speeding up commercials in your online streaming, too.

  12. Re:$$S on Apple Investigated By France For 'Planned Obsolescence' (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't the fix have been to reduce the instances where it would surge but not slow it down otherwise? Instead, they applied the throttle to everything.

  13. Re:Interpreter flaws, not language flaws! on Did Programming Language Flaws Create Insecure Apps? (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    If you're using an interpreted language, you've already made the decision that you don't really give the slightest shit about speed. Interpreted languages as a rule run 10-50x slower than compiled and also require a runtime be installed. Nobody who is doing any serious programming cares about this.

    Most code written today doesn't need to be 10-50x faster, so interpreted code is perfectly acceptable. For those few routines that need to be blazingly fast, feel free to optimize them in whatever fashion is appropriate -- whether that's writing them as libraries in real languages or even implementing them in hardware.

    It's all a matter of economics. I can hire as many developers as I want at $30 to $50/hr that can code in the interpreted languages and then hire only one or two experts at $100 to $150/hr that know real languages. The interpreted language devs and work on things like data validation and pushing data in and out of a database while the lower level devs work on key proprietary routines.

  14. Re:Data on Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    If your system won't let you plan, get a new system.....or build one ground up if your process is that different from industry standards.

    I've been in IT for years (early 90s) and have seen plenty of projects who's goal was to eliminate all of these smaller custom technology processes managed by the business and create or implement more robust tools to replace them. Sometimes those were planning tools, sometimes those were data management tools. But in the end, it was an improvement to their process (at a minimum, centralizing the data so that multiple people could work on it at once) and usually, they got a more robust process. Many of these projects were to "get rid of Excel".

    Adobe is plenty big enough for an IT department to take on those exact same projects.

  15. Re:Talk about phoning it in. on Why Apple's HomePod Is Three Years Behind Amazon's Echo (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    Urban legend......

    https://www.wired.com/story/al...

    This could not have happened as described. Amazonâ(TM)s Echo requires a "wake word" to activate; the default is âoeAlexa,â but you can also customize it to âoeEcho,â âoeAmazon,â or âoeComputer.â And while they can make calls, an Alexa-powered device can only call another Alexa-powered device. Not only that, but it can only call other Alexa devices that have enabled calling, and have been added to your contact list. Most importantly, these exchanges don't take place over the public switched telephone network, the worldwide network that allows wireless or land phones to actually make calls.

  16. Re:Because Apple is a follower, not a leader. on Why Apple's HomePod Is Three Years Behind Amazon's Echo (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    Rolling your own doesn't come with all of the ecosystem that the existing products have. Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD. You'd be hard pressed to build something half as good as the Echo Dot or the Google Home Mini for the same price --- not even counting your time.

  17. Re:Talk about phoning it in. on Why Apple's HomePod Is Three Years Behind Amazon's Echo (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 3

    The biggest reasons?

    The Echo/Google Home work for anyone in the room --- even your parents or guests.

    The Echo/Google Home doesn't need to be unlocked or swiped or long-pressed or what have you. I don't want my phone in a normally unlocked state -- even when I'm at home or any other "convenient" location. And "OK, Google" doesn't work unless your phone is unlocked.

    Those are the two main reasons that I'm interested in one of those devices vs using my phone.

  18. With Visual Studio Enterprise, you can easily build .NET Core apps with a nice web framework (Angular? React? etc.) in front of it. Of course, January 18th isn't very long......

    But really with Community Edition or Visual Studio Code (both free), you can build a nice .NET Core app with a web framework (Angular, React, etc.) in front of it.......and you don't have to worry about your environment expiring.

  19. Re:It would be great.... on Google Is Latest Company To Ditch Headphone Jack In Its Newest Smartphones (cultofmac.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, the good news is I have the LG V20 which has a nice DAC in it.....

  20. Re:bluetooth headphones on Google Is Latest Company To Ditch Headphone Jack In Its Newest Smartphones (cultofmac.com) · · Score: 2

    I'm listening to podcasts more or less all day while I work. Most bluetooth headphones can't last a full day (a few will). The ones that do, I don't find comfortable.

  21. It would be great.... on Google Is Latest Company To Ditch Headphone Jack In Its Newest Smartphones (cultofmac.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It would be great if in conjunction with removing the headphone jack they were also releasing a bunch of affordable USB-C headphones. My current phone still supports regular headphones, but it also has USB-C. So every once in a while, I look to see if there are any USB-C headphones I can grab --- because I assume the audio quality will be better. But there's hardly anything on Amazon and what is there is more expensive than similar or better headphones that have the traditional plug.

    And it's not much better in the Apple space, either.

  22. Re:Not a big deal. on Critical EFI Code in Millions of Macs Isn't Getting Apple's Updates (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    You'd be surprised at how many computers you can get physical access to without much effort........some of which control or can get access to more things than you realize.

  23. Re:I hope not on Ask Slashdot: Whatever Happened To the 'Year of Linux on Desktop'? · · Score: 2

    And yet, it's that very "choice" that prevent Linux from ever winning "the desktop". I've been asking for many years for a good resource for me to refer people looking to play with Linux so they can walk through some sort of "wizard" to help them decide which choices are best for their personal needs. It's yet to exist.

    Which distro is best for:
    Developers
    Video Editing
    Games
    etc.

    And then, which window manager is best for:
    etc.

    Sure, I could just recommend Ubuntu because it's the easy choice, but maybe Mint or Slack are better for a particular person. Should I point them to Gnome, KDE, or something else? Choice is great when you know how or why to make a certain choice, but when you're bringing someone into the fold at the very beginning, making the wrong choice will run them off making it worse than having never brought them over to begin with.

  24. Re:And make sure it is an actual button on Refresh Is Sacred (tbray.org) · · Score: 1

    But if it's a responsive design, they use CSS media queries to set magic screen size breakpoints. So even if you get the desktop version, the CSS hides elements such that they aren't available.....even if you get the desktop version. So if the hidden elements are useful controls, there's no easy way to get to them.....

  25. Re:And make sure it is an actual button on Refresh Is Sacred (tbray.org) · · Score: 1

    The biggest problem isn't that things resize or move around. It's when things are hidden on smaller screens. It's usually not clear how to get that functionality back in the smaller footprint.

    For instance in Bootstrap, hidden-xs on an info box with a short-cut, but that short-cut doesn't appear on a menu. The only way to get to it might be three clicks through "Item" screens to get to the same stuff. The designers do ok with the VISUAL aspects of responsive design, but they do a poor job of the FUNCTIONAL aspects of responsive design.