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Comment: totally secure == powered off (Score 1) 86

by mt1955 (#43247117) Attached to: A Truckload of OAuth Issues That Would Make Any Author Quit

OAuth is ugly to implement, no argument there.

Most of the points made in the article were interesting and seemed valid to me but near the conclusion it felt like the author was reaching bit by ignoring the refresh token concept to make the final point.

The threat of a hacked browser was a bit of an eye opener for me -- never heard that one brought up as a possibility while working on an OAuth implementation for a client.

Comment: Re:Surprise Surprise (Score 1) 193

by mt1955 (#43054385) Attached to: New Java 0-Day Vulnerability Being Exploited In the Wild

It is a poor worker who blames his tools. The language is not the problem, it is what you do with it but still...

YOUR PROGRAMMING TASK: To shoot yourself in the foot.

C: You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, "That's me, over there."

Perl: You grep through a list of your body parts, shooting the bits that look like feet. On the first try, you don't shoot anything, and realize that you're matching hashrefs instead of scalars. On the second try, you shoot off your big toe instead of the whole foot (shouldn't have used greedy matching in the regex). Finally, you shoot yourself in the foot, generalize your code to allow it to shoot anyone anywhere, and post it on CPAN as SUICIDE::LITE.

Python: You want to shoot the toes off your foot. You ask your foot to tell you about all of your toes, but to please pause for a while after each one so you can shoot it. After you shoot, your foot begins where it left off.

FORTRAN: You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot anyways because you have no exception-handling capability.

Pascal: The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.

Ada: After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover you can't because your foot is of the wrong type.

COBOL: Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be re-tied.

LISP: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...

FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.

BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On large systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

Java: You find that Microsoft and Oracle have released incompatible class libraries both implementing Gun objects. You then find that although there are plenty of feet objects implemented in the past, you cannot get access to one. But seeing as Java is so cool, you don't care and go around shooting anything else you can find.

Comment: Re:Innovative? New? (Score 1) 51

by mt1955 (#42575711) Attached to: Telepresence Robot Rundown

I have disagree re: 3D printing to die out in a few more years-- we were doing it in the 90's with 10' tall machines making design prototypes. It was prohibitively expensive for anything else. Now it's much cheaper and much more widespread. It reminds me of the computer's transition from mainframe to PC's. I really think it's the future of manufacturing.

Comment: Re:OP - additional info (Score 1) 341

by mt1955 (#42308467) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Collect Payments From a Multinational Company?

It sounds like you've done the right things so far and lawsuits and name & shame are like firing off nukes, you don't want to have to resort to those as long as there are alternatives.

You know the client, your relationship with them and the future of your business better than any of us so you are ultimately always going to be in the best position to know what to do.

My nature is to be gentle but direct when confronted with excuses and would ask "Do you really intend to pay us? When?" Get it in writing or email, then when that date comes round, repeat. That has worked for me several times.

I've also paid a lawyer to just write a letter asking on my behalf about their intentions and what reasons they may have for not paying. Sometimes that's enough,.

They are behaving like weasels though. If you can avoid it, I hope you won't do any more work for them, or at least not without payment up front.

 

Comment: Happy Birthday Sinclair (Score 5, Interesting) 64

by mt1955 (#42274883) Attached to: Current Radio Rules Mean Sinclair ZX Spectrum Wouldn't Fly Today

I wrote my first real program on a Sinclair. It was for TV troubleshooting and it took you down to the section. Storage was a cassette tape and the output was composite video for black & white TV.

Then I bought the memory expansion, took it to work and made a program for it to do cost estimate calculations. It was the 2nd computer anywhere in the company. I got promoted from cost estimating to Systems Administrator all in one go. I stayed with that company almost 30 years, then I left to start my own software company.

A few years ago I was telling that story to a client. He pulled a mint condition Sinclair -- still in the original box -- out of his desk and gave it to me. He said it bought it to learn computers and never used it. It was like giving me the keys to my first car.

Comment: look for the best match (Score 1) 333

by mt1955 (#41949861) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Developer Or Software Engineer? Can It Influence Your Work?

Look online at the software engineer and developer job descriptions posted by respected companies.

Then pick the title where most of the descriptions generally match up well with what you are good at doing.

+1 if you make an algorithm that does the match ranking for you automatically and can demonstrate it during the interview.

Comment: Be careful out there (Score 2) 285

by mt1955 (#41720555) Attached to: Smartphone Mugging More Popular Than Ever

Atlanta, GA 1998 and I was walking around outside the hotel in the early afternoon.

Not a bad neighborhood mostly office buildings, hotels and a few restaurants.

A little car pulls up beside me and stops, then from the passenger side a guy opens the window few inches and asks for directions to some place, kind of mumbling. I said sorry I don't where anything is I'm not from around here. (yes, dumb answer, now I know better) and so I keep walking.

I hear the car door open and turn around. There's this young black kid pointing a gun at my chest. Probably a .22 but looking down the barrel it seemed really big, cannon big. His hand was shaking. I couldn't take my eyes off the gun barrel.

He said "give me 'yo flip phone" It was on my belt (yes, dumb, now I know better) and I handed it over... then he wanted my wallet, handed it over. He told me to "turn around" then "get down"

So there I was kneeling on the pavement and I thought he was going execute me so I said "can I say my prayers?" All I was thinking was who is going to take care of my daughters after I die.

He said 'go on an pray you honkey mutha f##ka" and fired.

I think he must have been heading back to the car as he pulled the trigger because it hit me in the foot. I thought "I'm supposed to be dead" and laid down on the pavement. I heard the car peel out and I could see it tear around corner.

The bullet only grazed me and after I just had to use a cane for a few weeks (yup, luckiest man on earth)

+ - Running Cars on Liquid Nitrogen

Submitted by
mt1955
mt1955 writes "This would be really cool (pun intended) Using a difference engine to run cars with liquid nitrogen. IO9 reports: With all the hype surrounding electric cars and hydrogen-powered fuel-cells, it's easy to think hydrogen is the future of automobiles. But as people start developing and popularizing these enviro-friendly cars, some problems are becoming apparent. And meanwhile, there's a new kid on the block that is threatening to overturn our assumptions about electric cars — and its name is liquid nitrogen. What do you think slashdotters? Could a liquid nitrogen difference engine be the next big thing since the horseless carriage?"
News

+ - Looks like the The Pirate Bay has been Sunk!->

Submitted by X!0mbarg
X!0mbarg writes "Not long ago, there was a story posted here, on SlashDot itself, that mentioned a batch of ISPs being raided, and an assortment of BitTorrent sites going down. Within minutes, an internet favourite, The Pirate Bay seems to have disappeared. Over at http://www.theregister.co.uk/ a Story pops up covering just such a noteworthy event.
-
[quote]
"Rumors are flying after the Pirate Bay's website took a dive on Monday just as news broke of a raid by Swedish police on its hosting company PRQ – but the group says the two facts are not related.

"Dear internet. We have not been raided. We are not shutting down. We like turtles, waffles and you," the group said on its Facebook page. "Sorry for not fulfilling your pirate needs tonight. It's ok if you cheat on us with another site, just once. We know that you still love us, deep down in your cursed pirate heart."
[/quote]

There is, however, something more suspicious here:

Where's the Original SlashDot story that covered the Raid and Fall of the Torrent Sites? It also seems to have disappeared from the Stories list in the last few moments.

Are these two events linked in some way? Has SlashDot been censored somehow? Was the story Too Hot for SlashDot?

Let's all watch and see what happens next!"

Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:I'll believe it when I see... (Score 1) 867

by mt1955 (#41370339) Attached to: Warp Drive Might Be Less Impossible Than Previously Thought

My personal take is that Gene Roddenberry was an alien whose goal was to nudge us in the generally correct direction without apparently doing so. To do this, he (it?) created a TV series called 'Star Trek' in which all advances we'd need were demonstrated to agile minds. Once it has been conceptualized, if it is possible, someone somewhere will eventually do it...

Best thinking I've seen on /. in ages -- had I mod points you'd be +5 right now

+ - New Official Worlds Hottest Temperature-> 5

Submitted by tomhath
tomhath writes "After an in-depth investigation by a team of meteorologists working for the World Meteorological Organization, the official hottest temperature ever recorded (134 F or 56.7 C) has been declared to have occurred in Death Valley...in 1913. The previous record (136.4 F or 58 C) that was recorded in Libya in 1922 was found to be erroneous."
Link to Original Source

+ - Gentle robotic tentacles->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "George Whitesides and colleagues at Harvard University have been developing a series of "soft" robots with a lighter touch. Their latest creation is a robotic tentacle that can twist around a flower without damaging it."
Link to Original Source

What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.

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