Thoughts on a way to fix this sort of thing generally:

The government should define a minimum support window for software, say 5 years or so. From the point where you purchase a software product at retail (not resold), you are entitled to support for critical security flaws (ie: exploitable risks which you cannot mitigate with normal usage) during that period. At the vendor's option, that support can be either free software patches (with no degradation of functionality or additional licensing requirements/terms), full version upgrades (under the same conditions), or the release of the complete source for the product into the public domain (BSD-style). The last option would be the legally-mandated requirement if the vendor was unwilling or unable to supply one of the first alternatives. Companies could, of course, adjust pricing of their software as appropriate to comply with the mandate.

It's not a very clean solution, but it would do wonders to curtail the "forced paid upgrade" trend in software. Plus, companies with "good" support policies in place (both large and small) would benefit.

(Note: Developer, small dev shop, higher-priced software, same situation.)

If you distribute an "unlimited" version, this will be what is pirated; there's no value in having different versions. Also, if you have a key which allows "unlimited" access without secondary verification, this is what will be distributed on pirate sites.

In our experience, it took about a week from changing the key format to a new crack key being distributed. Obviously, this is for software which is "in-demand", but don't expect that implementing a new scheme with the same underlying characteristics will buy you much time.

For "good" protection, you basically need secondary verification which is "hard" to fake. Currently, that is hardware dongles or an online verification loop. Both of these can be pains for the users, costly for you, and/or prohibitive in some environments (online, in particular, doesn't play nice with classified government envs).

Keep in mind also: most people who pirate are not potential customers, at least at anything close to full price, but their experience using the tool may turn into a sale at a company later.

My suggestion: do what you can to track usage, but don't be overly obtrusive and/or try to prevent all piracy usage. Being able to watch and track, and act when appropriate, is much better than trying to prevent all piracy.

I'd upvote this more if I could. As someone who both codes for a living and hires engineers to do the same, what you are describing is exactly what I look for in an engineer. You can become familiar with more tools and methods, but at the end of the day, you [just] need to be able to solve problems well. The only additional challenge in the "real world" is breaking down larger problems, and solving them in "better" ways (ie: fits better with the rest of the system, is maintainable, is flexible, etc.).

Also, to add to this, the tools for creating eBooks (at least Kindle books) are pretty awful. For example, the "recommended" method uses a two-stage conversion, with a third-party app which isn't even supported any more. All the conversion paths mangle any custom formatting, in different (and seemingly unpredictable) ways, and generate "messy" HTML for everything. Alternatively, you can hand-edit HTML, and manually create any extra parts (eg: the TOC), because there are no automatic mechanisms to support features that office apps have had for literally decades.

As someone who has published an eBook on Kindle, I can tell you that it looks "bare bones". It looks better in google docs where I wrote it, but it was a PITA to just get it into Kindle format, and the tooling to "make it nice" without lots of additional effort was just not there. If Amazon et all could address that problem, it might go a long way toward getting nicer looking eBooks.

As someone who interviews and hires developers...

I think the brain teaser has a place, but mainly to gauge how someone approaches and thinks through a problem, not for any specific answer. I agree with the OP, though: real code and big picture thinking is the best indicator of longer-term success. On the other hand, you can be a good coder without big picture thinking too, especially in a larger organization with good engineering management.

Personally, I look for people who know how to code (ie: can answer intermediate questions), understand what the code is doing (eg: in C++, why you normally use virtual destructors, but in what conditions you may not want to), and can think through problems (ie: here's an arbitrary hypothetical problem, tell me how you solve it). If you can do those things, you can be a productive developer; the rest (eg: specific knowledge, familiarity with tools/paradigms, coding trivia, etc.) is gravy.

I do think this is valuable information, but it doesn't go far enough. You should be able to filter apps by permissions as well, on platforms which support per-operation permissions for applications.

You know what would be even better, though? If the per-operation permissions were settable on a per-application basis, and then spoofed/failed if the app can't work without it. There are plenty of apps that I want to use, but require extraneous permissions for things I don't care about, and/or don't want the app to access. If someone could build a platform which put the permission usage into the user's hands (even as an Android variant, for example), that would be awesome.

Not just local law enforcement. Any government entity, law enforcement or otherwise, without the bothersome inconvenience of probably cause, warrants, or any of that other pre-telematics nonsense. Hope you're not engaging in any activities which the government might think are supportive of terrorists (like, say, talking about seditious thoughts).

The fact that people buy cars equipped with OnStar is either a sign that we deserve our oppressive government, or is a testimony to the ignorance of the voting public...

I don't think the marketing is anything more than typical marketing optimism/BS, but to be fair...

If someone could make a smartphone that:
- Had a smooth ease-of-use of an iPhone
- Didn't require you to root it to fully customize it
- Didn't pack it with carrier bloatware
- Had good battery life and talk quality without building/flashing your own custom ROM
- Had lots of free and/or nearly free apps to cover common usage scenarios
- Guaranteed to respect your privacy (no CarrierIQ, tracking, logging, etc.) ... you could probably sell it pretty well. There's not a snowball's chance in hell that Microsoft/Nokia will produce such a phone, but it's true to say that there is a large-ish market which is being largely under-served by the current smart-phone offerings.

(Disclosure: I have a relationship with Lieberman Software, although I was not involved in this survey.)

Just because the company initiating the survey has a business interest related to the subject material doesn't mean the results are inherently BS. Sure, you should be skeptical, but to call BS purely due to bias seems... misguided.

For example, you readily state that you have access to shared passwords; thus, you would be included in the affirmative for the first question quoted. Presumably you wouldn't know if other co-workers thought you or other admins had misused access, but if so, then perhaps the second as well. You sound fairly security-conscious, so I'll assume your organization would not be included in the third... unless perhaps other admins are not as diligent as you (which, I realize, never happens in large organizations, but consider the hypothetical). Are the results of the survey really that hard to believe?

Sure, Lieberman Software is selling stuff, but it's not like they are trying to hide it, or hide behind proxy "unbiased" survey organizations. Read the info with a critical eye as appropriate, but calling BS due to non-obfuscated bias is as bad as believing the info on face value.

There's some humor on the page for browser features, if you're using a browser without Flash installed/enabled. The #1 "bad" item is Dangerous Downloads, just to the left of the prompt to download/install Flash. I lol-ed.

+1 for this (if I could). G+ was a good idea, right up until the point that google decided it wanted to create something more privacy-repugnant than even FB. I think a lot of people liked the idea before they clarified their intentions, but afterward it became clear that all the paradigm changes in the world could not overcome the basic design choice to be evil.

The study was just concerned with links which prompt you to DL/install something malicious. Of course IE wins: it's the only browser with a built-in link check which validates the links you're going to with MS's servers.

Or, alternatively, you could just not install malware, that would work too. The study is kinda valid, though; if you're too dumb to not install/run random junk from suspicious sites online, you should probably be using something which blocks them for you, IE SmartScreen, anti-"virus" app, or otherwise.

It doesn't seem like this to me, but rather just an attempt to get people to pay more attention to the version they are running, and not update as frequently or automatically. If you don't know what's going to be affected/broken by an update (with a rough approximation of this being version number changes), you want to play it "safe", and not update. This change will just encourage users not to apply changes/patches until they go to an entirely new system, or switch to a more stable browser.

Of course, that's just my take... if that's not actually the intent, I'd say the developers are drooling morons. They make a decent product, though, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean to have people just not update.

Personally, I find the point very interesting (although perhaps not in the same way as the original commentator). If you account for all potential usage of your product without purchasing it new as conceptual lost revenue, then it's probably fairly accurate: used game sales "steals" more revenue from the company than piracy. However, you could easily extend the argument; for example, if only 3% of customers purchase DLC (a figure recently quoted by EA), then customer failure to purchase all the DLC probably "steals" even more revenue from the company.

I think the game companies are missing an opportunity to lobby Congress here. If you can outlaw "stealing" by not purchasing all of the DLC, no matter how worthless you might perceive it to be, game companies could make tons more money. I'm sure the total "lost revenue" from people not purchasing all the DLC is an impressive number, and if you could translate that into hypothetical "created or preserved" jobs, you could probably get the idiots in Congress to go for it. A decade ago, I might have said the idea was ludicrous, but in today's world, where government mandates to purchase things are justified, and people can just make up whatever figures they want to justify ludicrous policies, it just might work...

If anyone believes that the government needs to install a special chip in all cell phones so they can send you alert messages, I've got some prime beach-front real-estate which is totally immune from all housing bubbles you can invest in.

On the other hand, I have to at least acknowledge that the US government is getting out ahead of any potential anti-government organizing using cell phones and other mass communication devices which bypass traditional media outlets (which can be tightly controlled as necessary). If Egypt had a chip in every phone, Mubarak would still be running the country: he could just have tracked the leaders organizing the resistance, used their phones to pinpoint their locations, and have had them executed. Not that I think the US would stoop to executions to quiet dissidents, but making key people "go away" would do wonders for any regime, and what regime wouldn't jump at the chance to monitor and track all the people they ruled?

It's really a natural extension of other systems already in place (eg: telematics as standard, non-removable features of cars coming out of Government Motors, with well-documented third-party listening and tracking capabilities). After all, if you have nothing to hide, why would you object?