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That said, I don't know how much functionality Foxit Reader exposes, so it could be that it's vulnerable, and it might as well be that it isn't.-f0dder (January 15, 2009, 10:23 AM)
I've found that to slow down long enough to appreciate and experience beauty -- in art, philosophy, music, in laughter, in the strangeness that is folk, in literature -- you have to arrest novelty; that is, the lure of the latest 'new thing.' There have been many songs written about this, one being Carly Simon's The Stuff that Dreams are Made of.
Tech and computer life drowns us with novelty.-zridling (January 12, 2009, 09:10 PM)
You read that right. I said override inline styles, and no, I have not been drinking. For the longest time it has bugged me that there was no way to override what someone else had done with inline styles. I understand they’re supposed to be the override, and I get why, to a certain extent, but I also think there should be an override to certain overrides when those overrides are abused. Make sense?
Today in Washington, DC, experts from more than 30 US and international cyber security organizations jointly released the consensus list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors that lead to security bugs and that enable cyber espionage and cyber crime. Shockingly, most of these errors are not well understood by programmers; their avoidance is not widely taught by computer science programs; and their presence is frequently not tested by organizations developing software for sale.
The impact of these errors is far reaching. Just two of them led to more than 1.5 million web site security breaches during 2008 - and those breaches cascaded onto the computers of people who visited those web sites, turning their computers into zombies.
People and organizations that provided substantive input to the project are listed below. They are among the most respected security experts and they come from leading organizations ranging from Symantec and Microsoft, to DHS's National Cyber Security Division and NSA's Information Assurance Division, to OWASP and the Japanese IPA, to the University of California at Davis and Purdue University. The MITRE and the SANS Institute managed the Top 25 Errors initiative, but the impetus for this project came from the National Security Agency and financial support for MITRE's project engineers came from the US Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division. The Information Assurance Division at NSA and National Cybersecurity Division at DHS have consistently been the government leaders in working to improve the security of software purchased by the government and by the critical national infrastructure.
What was remarkable about the process was how quickly all the experts came to agreement, despite some heated discussion. "There appears to be broad agreement on the programming errors," says SANS Director, Mason Brown, "Now it is time to fix them. First we need to make sure every programmer knows how to write code that is free of the Top 25 errors, and then we need to make sure every programming team has processes in place to find, fix, or avoid these problems and has the tools needed to verify their code is as free of these errors as automated tools can verify."
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence expressed its support saying, "We believe that integrity of hardware and software products is a critical element of cybersecurity. Creating more secure software is a fundamental aspect of system and network security, given that the federal government and the nation's critical infrastructure depend on commercial products for business operations. The Top 25 is an important component of an overall security initiative for our country. We applaud this effort and encourage the utility of this tool through other venues such as cyber education."
Until now, most guidance focused on the 'vulnerabilities' that result from programming errors. This is helpful. The Top 25, however, focuses on the actual programming errors, made by developers that create the vulnerabilities. As important, the Top 25 web site provides detailed and authoritative information on mitigation. "Now, with the Top 25, we can spend less time working with police after the house has been robbed and instead focus on getting locks on the doors before it happens." said Paul Kurtz, a principal author of the US National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace and executive director of the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode).
Not all API providers know how to make developers happy. In fact, although there are now over 1,100 web service APIs available, many of those API providers fail to really understand the needs and motivations of their (potential) developer community. For evidence of how developers can react to both well-run and badly-run API programs, look no further than a very insightful blog post from mashup developer Alexander Lucas on Making Your Webservice More Developer Friendly (Alex is the creator of Migratr a useful desktop mashup that uses APIs from 11 different web services in order to let you migrate photos between different online photo services).
In his detailed post he gives what’s clearly real-world, from-the-trenches feedback (and wit) from an experienced mashup developer on what works and what doesn’t:
I’ve been working on Migratr for around a year and a half now, and in that time have added support for 11 different webservices. Sometimes I’ve grabbed third party libraries designed for interacting with those API’s, other times I coded up the service-interaction layer myself, and I’ve gone through SOAP, Rest (via URL munging or XML via post), JSON and in one case, even webscraping. It’s been an immensely educational and rewarding experience, with degrees of difficulty varying from totally easy (23HQ, by copying the flickr API verbatim and changing only URL endpoints, took about an hour including testing) to ridiculously difficult (AOL Pictures might have been more popular if their API was more than lipservice).
I can only speak to Photo-related web services, as that would be the area where I have the most experience. But I think most web services “get it” with regards to an API- By publishing an API, and enabling and encouraging developers to interact with your webservice, you’ve effectively given yourself a dev team larger than you could ever hope to afford. Users passionate about your services, with ideas on how to extend and improve it, and the know-how to implement those great ideas. More applications related to your website means more ways for users to interact with it, which means more chance of a “killer feature” written by a user of your service that ends up driving thousands of new users to you, any one of which can be a developer that continues the cycle. It’s an upward spiral.
But it takes more than just publishing an API. You have to make your developers WANT to write stuff for your service. Make it easy and enjoyable for them, and remove as many roadblocks and speedbumps as you possibly can so that they can complete their brilliant idea before throwing up their hands in frustration, or slowly, quietly losing motivation amidst a sea of vicious bugs, counter-intuitive behavior and documentation that either looks like it was written by Hemingway or run through babelfish.
He then goes on to provide an on-the-money “checklist for being developer-friendly”:
Maybe you could add a Queue List (with HotKey and rightclickmenu entry to add tracks )?
Possible ways to realize it:
- separate window with 1,2,3... track's in a list in the playing order.
> additional option: auto remove last played track from Queue, if Checkbox is set to.(<-prefer this solution)-apfel (January 12, 2009, 12:10 PM)
Hmmm...I never listen to music like this. I usually just load up an album or two and play them. Is there another player out that does this?-skwire (January 12, 2009, 04:24 PM)
). My chatroom has been down for a long time, we need a whole brand new site, and I'd love it if something VERY similar to what Martin made could be the first new release when we officially "reboot" the group. (it's a nostalgia thing)This is an excellent application! But one thing is missing that I think will help a lot of people…
How about launching any thing with a specified position and size? This would be very helpful to those who wants to set a working environment…-usemyname (January 09, 2009, 04:59 PM)
Call it hints 2.0.
Nintendo is working on a gameplay system meant to ease the pain of completing a difficult game, without watering it down so much that it turns hardcore gamers off.
The new system, described in a patent filed by Nintendo Creative Director Shigeru Miyamoto on June 30, 2008, but made public today, looks to solve the issue of casual gamers losing interest in a game before they complete it, while still maintaining the interest of hardcore gamers.
The solution would turn a game into a full-length cut scene of sorts, allowing players to jump into and out of the action whenever they wanted. But when played this way, gamers would not be able to save their progress, maintaining the challenge of completing a game without skipping or cheating. It would also allow players to bring up in-game hint videos and skip directly to particular scenes in games.
Today a Nintendo patent came to light for a hint system which would allow gamers to essentially let games play themselves. We reached out to game developers for their opinion on the patent.
The patent, filed by Nintendo Creative Director Shigeru Miyamoto on June 30, 2008, outlines a gaming system more akin to DVD playback, where the game can either be played normally, or watched in the form of an end-to-end video of gameplay, during which players can jump back in at any time by simply pushing a button.
Seeing as an idea like this could easily shift the way games are created, we talked to four of today's top developers, representing games such as Fallout 3, Prince of Persia, Braid, and Maw, to get their take on Nintendo's idea.
Just lacks transparency and there are none of the magic preview-thumbnails in the taskbar.-Carol Haynes (January 11, 2009, 12:33 PM)
- Explorer shell integration. I actually have this (mostly) working. It works fine if you select only one file (or one folder) and choose the context menu entry. The interesting thing is that my code does handle multiple files/folders when dropped onto the playlist and/or the application shortcut. However, when called from the context menu, the list is out of order and seems to come in randomly. I need to do some more research into this to learn how to handle it.-skwire (January 06, 2009, 06:39 PM)