Posts by Daniel B.

The zillion Spanish dialects

Spanish is another example, the fact that it is used in more than half of an entire continent (America) makes it a multi-language in a language, depending on which country you are in, there are loanwords from the original native dialects, incorporated sounds (like sh) and sometimes, words mean different things in different countries. That brings some things like "Xola" (shola), "Tlapaleria" (hardware store in Mexican Spanish), and a couple of Mayan loanwords in the Yucatan peninsula.

Spanish variations have deviated so much that some words have different writing rules, like membership (Membresia, Membrecia), pineapple (Piña over here, some weird word in South America), Apricot (Chabacano, again something else in South America). Also, America-side Spanish is less wary of incorporating English-based words into Spanish, hence computers actually being called "computadora" instead of "sorting machines" (ordenador), files called "archivos" instead of "index cards" (fichero) and such.

O RLY?

I expect a ton of bullies and snot-nosed kids who hack into their schoolmates' emails to serve 366 days in federal prison, by your logic.

Oh, did you install a keylogger to check your kid's email, because you want to know who he's been talking to? FEDERAL CRIME! GO TO JAIL!

What you fail to realize is that the only reason this kid's getting hard prison time is because it was Palin. I doubt that you'll get the same treatment if someone breaks into your e-mail. Probably Yahoo will tell you "geeze, too bad, but it's a free service!" and that's all you'll get.

Finally, there was no work-related sensitive information ... if there had been something like that, it would be Palin's crime to use Yahoo for official stuff.

Prepared Statements FTW

Which actually solve the issue and no crazy "parameter sanitiation" is required. John G Imrie has just posted the PHP-centric solution, Java has PreparedStatements as well. Don't know about .NET though...

Apple killed the smartbook star

The iPad killed the not-yet-born ARM-based netbook market. Of course, it is an ARM-based tablet, but it isn't quite a netbook either.

Re: to-mah-to

Erm, Latin Americans, at least those from Mexico can manage English pretty well; the problem is that they will be used to American English, not British. However, the "to-mah-to" pronunciation wouldn't be a problem, as it is actually similar to the Spanish word for tomato: tomate sounds like "to-mah-teh".

Anyway, I learned about the to-mah-to pronounciation thanks to the "Attack of the Killer Tomatos" cartoon from the early 90's. One of the episodes involved a war on how to say "tomato".

PageMaker!

That was the Mac's Killer App back in the 80's and early 90's!

At least it was for us...

We the Postgres People

There are a lot of us that consider PostgreSQL as a main DBMS. I have done so since 1998. While I did initially jump to the MySQL craze, MySQL's disregard on transactions put me off, especially when the 3.x documentation insisted on telling me that transactions were not needed.

MySQL did get the spotlight for most of the Noughties, but thanks to Oracle, Postgres may finally come back and replace MySQL as the preferred open-source DBMS.

So...

This is going to be something akin to the Sony's PSN "fix" then. Their "fix" with "Feb 29, 2010" was to sit their asses all day and claim it was "fixed" when Mar. 2, 2010 00:00 GMT came by.

Don't forget Starship Troopers

I remember distinctly that for all the high tech shown everywhere else (including the nuclear RPGs), the future troops still used regular ammunition. The only appropiate weaponry is shown at the end of the movie, where we see rifles causing explosions in the last "Federal Network" broadcast.

Collateral Damage

That movie was made *before* 9/11, yet it already featured a Nextel-detonated bomb. Twice. I somehow believe that the cellphone-triggered bombs were already a well-thought idea before the Madrid bombings!

Re: Geeks?? Where??

Same thing over here. When I mentioned that I had bought a used Cisco Catalyst 2950 switch, a lot of former college friends asked me why would I want something like that. I responded that it was so I could separate my home network into 3 VLANs. It brought another ton of "why?" questions.

It really, really seems that "because I want to tinker with this stuff" is no longer accepted even withing CompSci grads. :(

Identity theft

"If it was a file containing your person details that was downloaded, you'd be first in line to call it theft."

That particular crime is "Identity theft" or "False Impersonation" depending on your jurisdiction; the data can't be "stolen" by itself, it is the use of said information for fraudulent activities the one that is punished by law.

And as everyone has mentioned before, "copyright infringement != theft". It's been proven every single frickin' time that copied stuff does not translate to lost sales. It isn't harmless either, but it is definitely *not* threat.

Looks like both

IIRC, it acts more like a "social worm" as it sends itself, or tricks its victims to send the worm via wall post, and then infects the target OS.

There was one actual virus for OSX though; the Leap/Oompa-Loompa virus would spread over a local network using the Bonjour protocol. That was back in 2006, not sure if that one would work these days.

Hm...

It would be white and shiny, renamed as the iPlaystation or the iPippin, would lock out third-party accessories like the Xbox (PS3 currently accepts third-party stuff), the USB ports would go, and it would no longer support 1080p or Blu-Rays. Games would be censored at levels not seen since the NES/SNES heydays, and would be banned just because Jobs didn't like it.

It would then proceed to crash and burn, like the original Pippin.

But that isn't everything that Apple would damage ... Blu-Ray would probably disappear overnight. Um... I think I'll pass on this.

UAC is at fault

On newer systems, this is annoying because it requires UAC privilege escalation. But that one's a MS blooper, not Sun/Oracle's.

I find it curious that MS is bringing out the "alarm" ... they are directly competing with Java with their .NET thingy, which isn't that much safer. I'd like to see a report like this being put out by a proper security researcher, one that isn't biased on the MS or Java side.