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Comment Re:It's kinda sad... (Score 1) 213

Actually, I usually insert an R into that. I'll leave it to you to figure out where.

What is ASCAPR? :P

On a serious note, Khan Academy is wonderful. I only wish the content could be organized in a prerequisite manner across different topics (e.g. basic algebra before calculus, etc.). I guess I'll check the issue tracker, and maybe even send a patch or two :)

Comment Re:this is anything but new (Score 1) 321

He reported it and attempted to negotiate a 60 day patch release. When those negotiations failed, he released the information to allow end users to disable the hcp handler in order to protect themselves

Two problems with this postmortem explanation:

a) He didn't have to be such a d*ck about it on the mailing list when he was asked why did he do this. His response was basically "If you are asking me then you're uninformed and you should know better."

b) How about calling Microsoft and saying: "Ok, I'm trying to negotiate 60 days for a patch to no avail. You have 30 days now instead of 60, and if you do not patch this I'm posting it on full-disclosure." Then he could have blogged about it and made MS look like $hit.

If MS was this horrible repeat offender that sits on patches forever like he implied in his follow up posts, why did he contact them to begin with? He could have just went to full-disclosure and said "MS sucks, they never listen to me, here's the vulnerability, good luck MS".

There are so many scenarios that he could have taken to avoid all this heat. It's unfortunate that he chose to do what he did.

Comment Re:but I thought HTML was supposed to fix all that (Score 1) 347

Just because you're familiar with hammers doesn't make them the best tool for all possible jobs. Sometimes you would be better served by a saw.

The poster said he's fairly new to web applications development, so I wouldn't even say he's familiar with hammers.

Printing on the web is not really that bad, unless you need pixel perfect accuracy.

To the poster, if you need that kind of control and "CSS accuracy" then you're SOL as all browsers have their own CSS/printing quirks and you'll be in a world of hurt going down this path.

I think your best bet is to do this on the server side and serve something more appropriate like say a PDF. There are libraries out there that generate PDFs from HTML/CSS (dompdf in PHP for example).

They have their own shortcomings (e.g. dompdf doesn't respect vertical-align on table cells and even crashes when you have a table element that spans more than one page), but at least you'll know that the output will be consistent across all browsers/platforms and will be printed as such.

You could of course go gung-ho with postscript and create PDFs without the HTML/CSS translation mess. Your data and application logic are separate from presentation, aren't they?

Comment Re:About time! (Score 1) 213

I think consumers are starting to realize that it never is cost effective to purchase a film. At least at the release prices of about $18.

Finances are a factor, but they are not the only factor. At least for me.

When I do my monthly budget, I leave about $300 for misc. purchases (outside of the entertainment line item). $20 on a movie is not really going to make or break my world.

But, $20 on a crappy movie (that its previews looked so good) that will take storage space in my house is something I look at and feel strongly against. I hate the ripped-off feeling that ensues.

As I have stated in my post before, I buy movies that I have already watched just to have them. It's not convenience, it's really about "having" that epic movie in my collection and maybe even passing them on to my grandchildren (if you're reading this my grandchildren, good luck finding a DVD player ;) ).

The movie industry really mastered the art of previews. They show you the best bits of a movie and string them together creating a false sense of a very intriguing plot.

They really shoot themselves in the foot when they do that, and I hope that they start to put less emphasis on the previews and more in the direction and story-line/character development.

I'm obviously not disagreeing with anything you said (aside from the 100% convenience), I just wanted to rant some more about it :)

Comment Re:this is anything but new (Score 4, Interesting) 321

Where in the world except for microsoft the languages is relevant for fixing up bugs or securing the CODE?

The world where you have to deal with RTL languages like Arabic and Hebrew where no matter how simple the patch is, something is bound to get broken.

That's not even considering that the bug was in the hcp:// protocol that's directly related to help/remote assistance and the control panel. How will the patch affect hcp://[slashdot ate my UTF-8 Arabic characters that spelled help]?

That said, I do not have access to the code and I do not know for sure if there are any il8n issues to consider, but make no mistake about it, Windows is not your freaking weekend project that you can fix/QA and push live in five days.

Look, I dislike Microsoft as much as the next guy, but Google's security researcher really didn't give them any chance here.

Had he reported it and it went unfixed for 3 months then I'd be rooting for him and bashing MS like there's no tomorrow. But any bug in a code base as complicated as windows cannot be humanly fixed in the time-frame he gave them.

Comment Re:this is anything but new (Score 4, Interesting) 321

Microsoft in the meantime has gotten much more agile and serious about fixing bugs when they're reported all the while bitching if someone dares go public too quickly for their taste ala Google.

Too quickly for their taste?

I don't know what world you live in where you can patch something as complicated as windows in five days.

Do you know how many versions and language combination of windows there are? Testing and QA that goes into it? Documentation?

It's not like your small little project where you fix a couple of lines and call it done you know.

And also, it wasn't "Google" per se, one of their security researchers did it, and according to his tweets he claims that this was done on his own time.

But sure, let's ignore the facts and label this as a clash of the titans.

Comment Re:I wanna see Sin-duh-weh-wuh (Score 1) 213

Their kid will sit in front of the TV watch Cars or some Disney cartoon over and over and over. Every time I am at their house, the kid will be watching the same movie. Is this really healthy for a child?

I think my son's TV/movie watching habits are healthy. He doesn't watch Cars back to back, but every once in a while he'll ask to watch it again and I let him.

He's been recently asking to watch old cartoons that he used to watch a year ago (Blues Clues, etc.).

I sit down and watch it with him, and I'm noticing that he wants to watch it again because he has a better command of the language now and he "gets" what Blues means now. It's fun to watch him get excited and his face lighting up/laughing because he is that much more better at communicating.

Children also have a very short attention span. I notice that he misses a lot of the movie when he gets bored 20 minutes into it and starts playing with his actual cars or going for another activity. Which can explain why re-watching movies aren't that big of a deal to kids.

They demand it. They will not behave if you don't let them watch it. This is a parenting problem. How about interacting with your children instead of letting them set the rules?

I agree that this is a parenting problem. And believe you me, if my son is not on his best behavior and have not been impressing me recently (be it toilet training, learning how to spell new words, or counting past a certain number) then he gets no TV whatsoever, let alone demanding a show/movie and throwing a tantrum for it (that's grounds for timeout in my place).

Comment Re:I wanna see Sin-duh-weh-wuh (Score 1) 213

Over the 20-year life of a home video format, I'll re-watch a film three, four, five times, maybe. But not 20, which is the number of times I would have to re-watch to break even with Redbox.

Well then I guess I'm one of the weird people who thinks of classic works as collectibles that I like to own even if the underlying technology becomes obsolete.

You don't need a ROI plan with dollar amount and break-even analysis on every little thing you purchase you know :)

Comment Re:Hahaha (Score 1) 179

An unmodified, unrestricted Android OS phone would be a selling point in and of itself.

To you, me and a lot of people here. The masses in general only care about how shiny a phone is.

Over half of the people I see with smart phones do not use them beyond basic call/text and maybe some web browsing.

Now, if I was HTC, which of the two groups (techies/non-techies) will affect my bottom line?

Comment Re:I wanna see Sin-duh-weh-wuh (Score 1) 213

Most movies aren't worth re-watching

True, most movies aren't made with single-digit-year-olds in mind. But when little Staisy wants Cinderella, she wants Cinderella. And she wants it once a week or more often. I should know: I was six once, and I was that way with The Care Bears Movie.

Are you telling me you have never re-watched a movie past the age of 6? Ever go back and watch a classic that you have seen before but it's so good that you want to see it again?

I happen to forget movies and even plots sometimes, and re-watching a good movie (not weekly obviously) can be a fun experience where you notice the subtle hints you may have missed before (sixth sense, beautiful mind, butterfly effect, etc.).

I would take a good movie that I watched before any day over a crappy shiny new movie.

Comment Re:About time! (Score 1) 213

You're missing the point of buying DVDs: start a co-op with 19 of your friends.

19 friends?? I can count my friends that I still interact with on one hand with a few missing fingers!

I pay about $8 a month for Netflix and I watch anywhere between 1-3 movies a month. In addition to that, I watch a lot of movies/shows on my Wii or my Blu-ray player. It's insanely cheap compared to any other method (including socializing with 19 people and exchanging DVDs).

To each their own though :)

Comment About time! (Score 3, Insightful) 213

It's about time movie studios started realizing that. I'm a rental-convert and have been renting my movies for almost 2 years now.

I have a shelve full of DVDs and VHS tapes that are collecting dust. Most movies aren't worth re-watching and it seems ridiculous to purchase things you're only going to watch once.

I still buy DVDs, but I only buy movies that I know I will watch again (e.g. The Matrix, God Father trilogy, etc.).

Everything else is on the Netflix queue, and if it takes 10 months for me to finally see it, oh well, so be it.

Case in point, I was looking forward to watching Ninja Assassin because the previews looked good and it has the "Wachowski brothers" stamp on it.

When it finally reached Netflix and my mailbox, I was extremely excited... extremely excited that I didn't go out of my way and buy it. The movie was a piece of junk in my opinion, and it would not even be on my shelve collecting dust with other DVDs.

tl;dr: Renting Movies "FTW".

Comment Re:Wasn't this already though of a while ago.. (Score 1) 45

I seem to remember this whole idea from a while back, It comes to mind that microsoft was trying to market a product for use between [manufacturers distributors retailers] that allowed everybody access to information of what was going on with the whole chain.

Were you referring to BizTalk? It seems to be alive still (2010 beta).

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