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Submission + - Online Activities to be Recorded by UK ISPs (official-documents.gov.uk)

SmartAboutThings writes: "The United Kingdom online monitoring law just got published showcasing some disturbing facts. The paper is 123 pages long and is actually a draft of the Communications Data Bill. You might not be so happy to find out that from now, every single thing you do online will be recorded and stored by the good old Internet Service providers (ISP). What do we mean by online activity? Well, everything. From exchanging emails, browsing history, instant messaging to the most important use of social networks."
Games

Submission + - Rockstar Creates 'Cheaters Pool' for Game Hackers (itworld.com) 1

itwbennett writes: "Rockstar Games announced yesterday in a newswire post that the company has created a 'cheater's pool' (sort of like the populating of Australia with criminals) where players who have hacked the game to give themselves advantages will only be able to play against other cheaters. Although, Ars Technica points out that players may actually prefer the 'special' world."

Submission + - Bank Robbing a terrible business (wsj.com)

isoloisti writes: "Three UK economists get access to national data on bank robberies. The conclusion is that robbing banks pays, but not very much. Average take is about $19k per person per robbery. But, there's a 20% chance of being caught per raid. To make a below average income a robber needs to do two jobs per year, and has greater than 50% chance to be in the slammer after 2 years."
Intel

Submission + - Intel dismisses 'x86 tax', sees no future for ARM (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "In an interview with ExtremeTech, Mike Bell — Intel's new mobile chief, previously of Apple and Palm — has completely dismissed the decades-old theory that x86 is less power efficient than ARM. From the story: “There is nothing in the instruction set that is more or less energy efficient than any other instruction set,” Bell says. “I see no data that supports the claims that ARM is more efficient.” The interview also covers Intel's inherent tech advantage over ARM and the foundries ("There are very few companies on Earth who have the capabilities we’ve talked about, and going forward I don’t think anyone will be able to match us," Bell says), the age-old argument that Intel can't compete on price, and whether Apple will eventually move its iOS products from ARM to x86, just like it moved its Macs from Power to x86 in 2005."

Comment Re: Spring (Score 1) 409

I don't believe in RAD. By the time anyone has developed a toolkit that can easily do something, it's not cool enough to do it anymore :)

RAD frameworks also tend to get bloated trying to do everything for everybody in my experience. At least when it comes to CRUD applications. I find myself more productive and have an easier time developing a site like that to do what I want by just using a good persistance (DAO, JDO, Hibernate, etc) framework or methodology that makes it easy to communicate with the DB.

Other stuff that i find useful are tools that build the classes you need to interact with various webservices.

Comment Re:Java is great for websites (Score 1) 409

Most sites using java don't serve JSP pages directly. They do it through some sort of MVC framework where servlets call the JSP behind the scenes. I've written sites where the url a user sees is a .html but it's actually just a call to a servlet that parses the url to server up the appropriate content and it uses a jsp for the presentation layer.

I'm pretty sure Blogger.com is written in java or at least uses java heavily.

This site I'm pretty sure uses Java because they used to use it in the past. The vendor they used is out of business and I would assume they switched to a different appserver but stuck with java. I could be wrong. An example url on their site is:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/browse/Computers-Solutions/ci/9581/N/4294542559

"/c" is the controller servlet. The rest of the url provides information like url parameters that tell the controller what to display.

Struts is a common Java web framework and by default urls for struts applications end in ".do"

I agree with what yous say. Just adding information.

Comment Stick with Java (Score 2) 409

Don't bother learning PHP it'll just slow you down learning the semantics of a new language and if you're used to dealing with Java PHP will feel like a joke. Java gets a bad wrap but I've found it to be faster than PHP in my tests.

I build most of my sites in Java using my own MVC framework. I've done some sites in PHP and have had to modify other PHP sites as well as looked into other languages. I still like Java the best and you can find a library to do almost anything you want. The only reason I'd pick something like PHP these days is if I don't want to build a site myself and want to use something prebuilt like wordpress or Joomla.

The only downside is that your servlet container (ie tomcat) is persistent and will take up a bit of memory. Not a huge amount but it makes it difficult to find cheap webhosting because providers can't throw thousands of websites on a server like they can with plain HTML and PHP. Try and find a good cheap VPS it's more secure and you won't have to worry about your site getting defaced because some other idiot didn't update their PHP software. That's happened to me.

Don't go with new frameworks. Go with popular ones that have been around for a while. I've been bitten in the ass when I built a website for a client and the framework I used was no longer around.

Spring is a good choice. I like to use NetBeans as my IDE. I've found it to work the best for me.

Comment Java is great for websites (Score 4, Insightful) 409

Almost all the sites I've built are written in Java. Stick with Java. I've written sites in PHP and I've also had to work on updates to some PHP sites. If you're already familiar with Java dealing with PHP will feel like a joke. PHP is great when you don't want to write your own software since there are so many publicly available stuff out there in PHP. Don't worry, you won't find a lack of Java libraries that will do anything you want to do.

Don't bother trying to learn a new language because you'll just slow yourself down trying to learn the semantics of the language instead of the details of the new libraries you'll be using. I know java gets a bad wrap in terms of performance but I've always found that Java kicks PHP's ass in terms of performance in the tests I've done.

The main issue with java is that when you're using a servlet container like Tomcat, the process runs constantly and takes up memory. It's not that much but it's hard to find Java hosting because the memory issues makes it hard for a webhost to put thousands of websites on the same server.

Your best bet is going to be to find a cheap VPN when you get started but check the big webhosts to. I remember LunarPages used to offer JSP support in the past.

There are a bunch of different frameworks. Stick to ones that are popular because you'd rather have some limited functionality now rather than an unsupported framework in the future. Which has happened to me.

I believe right now that's Spring but Struts is still pretty popular too.

I've found NetBeans to be a great IDE and it supports Spring.

Comment Re:Distrust (Score 1) 233

It seems that Google+ will be connected with many systems and a Google+ account will be a very important if you put content online that you want to promote.

Want to get more clicks from google searches? Set up your site so it connects to your Google+ account so your picture can be included in the search pages.

I'm not saying if it's good or bad but it's different.

Comment Re:slight flaw (Score 2) 55

I'm imagining an internet where trade groups disallow trade-group TLDs to any business that doesn't pay them dues. Not subscribed to the RIAA? No .singer, .artist, .music, .whatever for you. Not in the BSA? No .software...

Yes throw in two industry groups that everyone on here hates to make this sound like a bad idea.

The interenet already has restricted TLDs so this concept isn't new. When you visit a .gov site you know you're dealing with a government website. Starting in 2001 .edu domains also were restricted to accredited schools.

Who controls access to these TLDs is important but it makes sense to have it be some sort of industry group that can fairly manage it. .singer, .artist, .music, .software aren't being discussed and the reason for .bank and .insurance are very different. Millions, maybe billions of dollars are lost annually to phishing schemes in this sector and having restricted TLDs can help reduce that number.

Comment Re:slight flaw (Score 2) 55

Considering the #1 most repeated rule for general PC users is "if it doesn't contain just your bank's website and end in .com, it's fake," I'm not sure they're doing themselves any favors. A year from now if I can an e-mail from MyBanksName.bank, even I'd assume it's a fake and not click it.

The flaw is that anyone can get a .com domain name so I could go and by a domain name like Citi-Bank-Secure-For-Realz.com and some people would fall for it. I mean it does say it's for realz!

If the .bank and .insurance TLDs were restricted by an industry group that assured only legitimate banks and insurers could purchase domains in that space, I can see how it would increase trust as long as consumers are made aware of the new changes. If it does happen there would be a big push to raise awareness through direct contact with their customers and the media.

I think this makes a lot of sense.

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