like storing passwords in plaintext. That's just fucking stupid

not as stupid as you think. Sure, encrypting your passwords is another layer of security but really, if an attacker gets your password database, then they can (and will) crack them quite easily today. Given that all you're doing is slowing the attacker down, it can be better to store them in plaintext.

Because - if you know your passwords are precious and need to be looked after, you will take many more steps to ensure the attacker doesn't get them in the first place. Too many websites think that if the passwords are encrypted then they're all secure. They don't think the (small) effort to properly put the DB behind a middle tier layer and not allow any web application to directly access the tables is worth doing, and so they get hacked and the passwords get cracked.

I blame the web development frameworks, if your idea if security is running it all inside the webserver that's public internet-connected, then you're going to get hacked.

I think this shows the education of modern programmers.

Take a string, append 1 byte. Repeat a million times. Say "why is it so slow?".

Its probably because every time you write to most strings classes, you're making a copy and re-allocating the whole lot, and then deallocating the original.

If you knew C, you'd know what was happening here. This is why we need to teach C to programming students and not Java. Once they know C they can learn Java or whatever takes their fancy on their own time.

(although even Java and .NET programmers should understand what a stringbuilder is and why you'd use it)

Brokeback mountain was not a better movie by any standard despite being love interests.

FWIW, my current project fails since we only have one woman on the team.

right, Julie you can ignore this, but HR has said we have targets to meet so the rest of you have to nominate someone who's gong to have to wear a dress. Wayne, or should I say Waynetta, its probably going to be you.

Not douche, but an insighhtful person who thinks that such positive discrimination and gender bias such as the Bechel test can be so trivially circumvented.

In this case, 2 women talking to each other about.. well, women. Passes the test completely even though its not exactly feminist material (or is, depending).

The rest of us think that if women want to be programmers they will be. Same as if men want to be hairdressers, childcare workers or nurses.

The discrimination and supposedly anti-female culture in IT is really nothing of the sort - its equally pathetic when viewed from a male viewpoint. Me for example, I hate the industry because I am focussed on producing quality deliverables that fit the user's needs, and I can;t stand the so-called 'alpha geek' who thinks he's the best because he's googled the latest cool technology that will be obsolete in a week. That kind of bullshit affects me just as much as female workers.

But it is a very pertinent question - of all the things released, a huge amount of them are written with a win32 API and then wrapped with the WinRT API (or at least, it used to be that way).

For example, I'm looking at code to search through Word documents in .NET, and it appears Microsoft has catered for my needs - there's an IFilter API that is designed for exactly this, and yet its a native COM interface (and no .NET wrapper!!). I found the same for the transcription APIs and a few others. It seems the Windows team doesn't like .NET and only releases their features in native formats.

So, has this changed and the Windows team been kicked into developing WinRT only APIs, or will I still see native ones coming out with wrappers developed by the developer team?

I'm not convinced universal apps will create excitement - not if this is the 3rd API that devs have have to learn, you get bored with learning stuff that becomes quickly obsolete only so many times, and many users will still be developing for Windows 7, for many years to come. Universal apps are meaningless if Win7 still has to be supported.

But the offices you mention are all running windows 7 (with a fair few running XP).

None but a very few will be running Windows 10 for about 5 years.

such as restricting advertisers from working with rival search engines

Maybe there is no counter-argument here, and that they are guilty as sin. Just the cost of lawyering up is the only thing stopping them being brought to book. You make it sound like the allegations are just rumour and trivia.

Its pretty reasonable to suggest that justice is not being done at all here - despite what could easily be plain anti-competitive practices. That no-one will take it to court to test it means there is no justice for anyone, an allegation hanging over Google and whatever bad practices they perpetrate continue.

We'll just have to do it ourselves then, we need a massive internet campaign that reveals Google's new branding : "We do evil".

Well, it depends - which country, and who you owe to. If you owe the council for local taxes, you can (and people have) been sent to jail for a short time to name one, popularised case.

Similarly you can (in the UK) be sent down for not paying child maintenance payments.

your citation sir
http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/b...

But still, my point is about the inequity of life - if you''re a big player things are applied differently to you.

I think the issue here is you don't know if the company you're buying services or materials from is owned by the same people who own the original company or isa real, 3rd party supplier.

eg. Google UK buys IP from Google Holdings Ltd Ireland, if you could somehow figure out that these 2 companies were related by ownership chains, then you could simply say that the IP licenced doesn't count as a business expense and so instead of making profit of 20p they'd make profit on the full sales (minus legitimate expenses).

I guess we could go with names, but that's not good enough, what we really need is transparency in ownership, so you can see that Google UK, Google Ireland are both owned by Google USA. You'd also be able to see all the holding and shell companies criminals use to hide their activities (eg Prenda Law).

Same policy happens in the US too - if you fail to repay $1000 the debt collectors come for you, your credit history is wiped and you could even go to jail. If you fail to repay $1bn the government gives you more money.

Anyway, I wonder if the Chinese can start selling their newly-legitimised copies of Windows 10 on ebay?

Its an imitation VMS of course - though I think Dave Cutler did learn some lessons about OS design that were improved when NT was made.

That they then gave it to the rest of the Microsoft dev team and said "write all manner of shitty UI and ill-conceived services on top of this new, well designed and thought out kernel" is another matter.

All we need now is for Facebook to release initial access to this app to users via CD distribution methods and the old internet will be new all over again!

I agree dynamic real time pricing would be 'teh win' if combined with smart plugs to use electricity when its cheap, so you'd put your washing in and the meter will run the washing machine when electricity is at its cheapest during the day, much like how we run storage heaters during the night when the price of electricity drops to the 'economy 7' rate.

Getting people to understand this is important, econony 7 is easy to understand, dynamic pricing needs good monitoring and reporting to make it work for the majority.