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Comment Re:Programming is not about rote memorization (Score 1) 627

by alostpacket (#46329331) Attached to: Does Relying On an IDE Make You a Bad Programmer?

Not sure if trolling but that's not really what trivial means in this context.

adjective: trivial
1. of little value or importance.
synonyms: unimportant, banal, trite, commonplace, insignificant, inconsequential,

Think "the average airspeed of an unladen swallow". "The atomic weight of cobalt"
Programming

Does Relying On an IDE Make You a Bad Programmer? 627

Posted by samzenpus from the speak-up dept.
itwbennett writes "Writing about his career decisions, programming language choices, and regrets, Rob Conery says that as a .NET developer he became more reliant on an IDE than he would have with PHP. Blogger, and .NET developer, Matthew Mombrea picks up the thread, coming to the defense of IDEs (Visual Studio in particular). Mombrea argues that 'being a good developer isn't about memorizing the language specific calls, it's about knowing the available ways to solve a problem and solving it using the best technique or tools as you can.' Does using an IDE make you lazy with the language? Would you be better off programming with Notepad?"

Comment Re:If Comcast were Exxon (Score 2) 520

by alostpacket (#46319465) Attached to: Netflix Blinks, Will Pay Comcast For Network Access

ISPs are not peers though, they are endpoints. The "equal data" argument only works between two backbone/transit providers. ISPs are requesting that data be sent to them. they don't get to request the data be sent to them and request that they also be paid to receive it.

Also what makes you think you only pay for upload? That makes no sense. Though I agree in that bandwidth caps are bad -- though mostly because they are generally misleading advertising.

Comment Re:Maybe Netflix is too big for peering agreements (Score 1) 520

by alostpacket (#46319409) Attached to: Netflix Blinks, Will Pay Comcast For Network Access

1) it's the ISP's users requesting 30% of the internet traffic, not Netflix. The ISPs aren't peering at all, they are the termination point. They aren't providing a service to Netflix, or to anyone else on the internet for that matter, except their customers.
2) It's the ISPs responsibility to provide enough network infrastructure to their customers. They don't get to hold hostage their users as a product to be bought by Netflix or other content providers.
3) Netflix offers Open Connect CDN

ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network.

https://signup.netflix.com/ope...

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how peering arrangements are supposed to work that is being exploited by the PR departments of ISPs.
Security

Ask Slashdot: How Do You Manage Your Passwords? 445

Posted by Soulskill from the alternate-between-12345-and-54321 dept.
Albus Dumb Door writes "As an IT professional, I've got a problem common to many of you: dealing with a lot of passwords. Memorizing them all becomes harder with age and and an increasing number of passwords. I will forget them eventually. I am obviously unable to use something online, like Last Pass and 1Password. Using a single password for all the systems is also obviously out of the question. I know that there are a few apps for cell phones for managing passwords (like Phone Genie and mSecure), but a cell phone, unless it's kept in offline mode (and even then), is still a security risk and I'm pretty sure my employers wouldn't like me having their passwords on my cell phone. I've also taken a look at things like the YubiKey, but changing the authentication scheme of most of the systems is not an option. The only interesting option I've seen so far is the Pitbull Wallet, but they just started taking pre-orders on IndieGoGo and are not expected to deliver until August. Amazon has some hardware password managers as well, like the RecZone and Logio, but either the price or their reviews scared me away. So how do you guys prefer to manage your passwords and what do you recommend?"
Media

ISP Fights Causing Netflix Packet Drops 289

Posted by Soulskill from the never-attribute-to-malice... dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing more and more reports of ISPs throttling Netflix and other high-bandwidth services lately. The ISPs have denied it, and even Netflix itself seems to believe them. If that's the case, what's going on? Well, according to this article, the blame still lies with the ISPs. While they may not be explicitly throttling connection speeds, they're refusing to upgrade network connections as they demand more money from content distributors. For example, Netflix pays Cogent to distribute their internet traffic. Cogent has an agreement with Verizon to exchange traffic — which works fine until the massive amount of traffic from Netflix makes it a lopsided arrangement. Verizon wants more money from Cogent, and one of their negotiating tactics is simply to stop upgrading their infrastructure so that service degrades. 'There are about 11 Cogent/Verizon peering connections in major cities around the country. When peering partners aren't fighting, they typically upgrade the connections (or "ports") when they're about 50 percent full, Cogent says. ... With Cogent and Verizon fighting, the upgrades are happening at a glacial pace, according to Schaeffer. "Once a port hits about 85 percent throughput, you're going to begin to start to drop packets," he said. "Clearly when a port is at 120 or 130 percent [as the Cogent/Verizon ones are] the packet loss is material."'"

Comment Re:Oh Good (Score 1) 199

by alostpacket (#46301313) Attached to: Facebook To Buy WhatsApp

Well, there aren't really any apps that satisfy all of that. Open-source, secure, video and mobile. Thought the post I was replying to did not specify mobile (although that's WhatsApp's main platform I guess). But the Point I was trying to make is that WhatsApp didn't satisfy those requirements either. It wasn't open, nor secure.

Anyways. there is Xabber for Android -- but I don't think that has video. Also many Android users use Google Hangouts / Talk etc for chat and video, but that is not open-source. There seem to be a number of other XMPP clients for Android but I don't know enough about them.

Also, FYI that Wikipedia link covers lots of apps -- both desktop and mobile (including WhatsApp).

Comment Re:If I understand TFA (Score 1) 120

by alostpacket (#46301197) Attached to: Drive-by Android Malware Exploits Unpatchable Vulnerability

Scratch that, looking through the links, even one of the AOSP browsers is affected.

Some distributions of the Android Browser app have an addJavascriptInterface call tacked on, and thus are vulnerable to RCE. The Browser app in the Google APIs 4.1.2 release of Android is known to be vulnerable. A secondary attack vector involves the WebViews embedded inside a large number of Android applications. Ad integrations are perhaps the worst offender here. If you can MITM the WebView's HTTP connection, or if you can get a persistent XSS into the page displayed in the WebView, then you can inject the html/js served by this module and get a shell.

Comment Re:Oh Good (Score 3, Informative) 199

by alostpacket (#46292541) Attached to: Facebook To Buy WhatsApp

Was WhatsApp ever secure or open? Wasn't it just a proprietary wrapper for xmpp?

There are other jabber/xmpp/jingle clients out there. I'm not sure what is the best client but pidgin works well for most things IIRC. Miranda IM may also be worth a look, or Adium. All three are a GPL or similar license I think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Businesses

Good Engineering Managers Just "Don't Exist" 312

Posted by timothy from the oh-you-wanted-good-too dept.
hype7 writes "Here's a provocative article; the VP of engineering of a Sequoia-backed startup in Silicon Valley makes the case that good engineering managers aren't just hard to find — that they basically don't exist. The crux of his argument? The best engineers get all the benefits of being leaders, but without needing to take on the rather painful duties of management. So they choose not to move up. Compare this to the engineers who aren't as strong, and use the opportunity to move up as a way to get their voice heard."
Worms

Linksys Routers Exploited By "TheMoon" 134

Posted by timothy from the do-you-want-to-connect-automatically? dept.
UnderAttack writes "A vulnerability in many Linksys routers, allowing for unauthenticated code execution, is being used to mass-exploit various Linksys routers right now. Infected routers will start scanning for vulnerable systems themselves, leading to a very fast spread of this 'worm.'"
Google

Google Apps License Forbids Forking, Promotes Google Services 163

Posted by timothy from the also-requires-you-bow-to-satan-and-eat-twinkies dept.
Sockatume writes "If you want to ship a phone with Google's apps on it, you need to license them. A copy of the OEM licensing agreement from 2011 was recently leaked, and Ars Technica provides a summary. Amongst the rules: a company licensing Google Apps can't act in a way that would fragment Android, but must also maintain the platform's open-ness; most of Google's services must be included; Google apps must be defaults, and placed within a couple of clicks of the default home screen. No surprises, but it's interesting to see the details laid out."

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