Help wanted: $183K plus. Tool gives lowdown on tech salaries | Bootstrap - CNET News

Help wanted: $183K plus. Tool gives lowdown on tech salaries | Bootstrap - CNET News: "interactive tool (see below) that let's you see what tech jobs pay among private firms across the country."

Code can't be stolen under federal law, court rules | Security & Privacy - CNET News

Code can't be stolen under federal law, court rules | Security & Privacy - CNET News: "The enormous profits the system yielded for Goldman depended on no one else having it," Jacobs ruled. "Because [the high-frequency trading system] was not designed to enter or pass in commerce, or to make something that does, Aleynikov's theft of source code relating to that system was not an offense under the EEA."

Is it more secure to allow the browser to save a website password or prohibit it?

Is it more secure to allow the browser to save a website password or prohibit the browser from saving the password?

Benefits of allow the browser to save the password:

1. Spoof websites are more easily detected because the username and password don't show up (this may be a mute point if the username is saved but not the password).
2. Keyloggers won't pick up the password if you don't type it. (Thanks to Thrawn)
3. People will be less likely to keep the password in an obvious place (i.e. sticky note)

Benefits of prohibiting the browser from saving the password:

1. Stops someone with access to your computer from accessing the passwords (the level of access needed can vary based on how the passwords are stored).

The value of low-level logging

All of the info in logs can be obtained through a debugger, if you can reproduce the problem. Low-level logging allows a devloper to debug a problem without the work of reproducing the problem - Q.A. or another developer can just send the debug log for review. When it is difficult to reproduce a problem, debug logs can be invaluable. Debug logs also give a wealth of information without having to choose that info beforehand. While debugging a developer may find that more information is needed and it can require re-running the test to get that information.

How Trello is different - Joel on Software

How Trello is different - Joel on Software: 'A feature that you built and tested, but didn’t deliver yet because you’re waiting for the next major release, becomes inventory. Inventory is dead weight: money you spent that’s just wasting away without earning you anything.'

Are older people better programmers? | Javalobby

Are older people better programmers? | Javalobby: "Fast programmers who produce disorganized code rely on their superior short term memory to get things done. These programmers get worse with age as their short-term memory weakens. They tend to drop out of the field.
Slow programmers who produce well-organized and readable code avoid relying on short-term memory. They tend to get faster and better with age as they accumulate in their long-term memory an ever increasing portfolio of strategies, patterns and techniques."

Ignore the customer experience, lose a billion dollars (Walmart case study) - Good Experience

Ignore the customer experience, lose a billion dollars (Walmart case study) - Good Experience: "The mistake was a lack of customer focus. I know, I know: 'They ran a survey! Customers loved the idea!' But that's exactly the problem. Walmart didn't pursue the question of what customers wanted. Instead, Walmart came up with the answer first, then asked customers to agree to it. That's exactly the wrong thing to do, because it ignores customers while attempting to fool stakeholders into thinking that the strategy is customer-centered.

Put another way, Walmart based this incredibly expensive misadventure on what customers said, rather than what they did. And the customer experience is all about what customers do. In real life. No hypotheticals. Walmart acted without considering the customer experience, and that was a big mistake."

France Outlaws Hashed Passwords - Slashdot

France Outlaws Hashed Passwords - Slashdot: "'Storing passwords as hashes instead of plain text is now illegal in France, according to a draconian new data retention law. According to the BBC, '[t]he law obliges a range of e-commerce sites, video and music services and webmail providers to keep a host of data on customers. This includes users' full names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and passwords. The data must be handed over to the authorities if demanded.'"

Can java.util.concurrent.lock.Lock detect deadlocks caused by two threads acquiring the same locks in a different order

Could java.util.concurrent.lock.Lock detect deadlocks caused by two threads acquiring the same locks in a different order?

Could it use a static list of all threads that have locks and ThreadLocal locks lists to know about all in use locks and then check for incorrect order when lock() is called.

In lock:
Check the ThreadLocal list and if there are no other locks then proceed.
Else if there are other locks then look through other threads to determine if any have any of the same locks in a different order.
Add current lock to ThreadLocal list.

In unlock:
Remove current lock from ThreadLocal list.

Format for design and requirements

Do a "requirements document" and "design document" use an outdated format? Is one monolithic document the right way to handle that information? Are there better ways to handle that information?

Consider this idea:
Keep requirements/design info in a tree structure.
Support viewing the whole tree to a specific depth so that people can ignore undesired detail.
Allow ownership to be set by branch.
Allow editing each node separately so there is less chance for conflict.

Stephen Colebourne's: Oracle, Google and the politics of money

Stephen Colebourne's Weblog: "On the specifics of the lawsuit I have little to say. Google undoubtably have sailed close to the wind. But did they cross the line? Well, thats for lawyers now. The problem I have is not that there was something to discuss, but that Oracle thinks that this approach will improve their position. For me it shows how out of touch they are with how community and sentiment works outside CxO level politics.

The lawsuit is likely to shine a bright light on the OpenJDK too. Anyone who has contributed to the project known as 'OpenJDK 7' should now be concerned about whether their work will ever be freely available as open source."

BatchGeo - Make google maps using many addresses / coordinates

BatchGeo - Make google maps using many addresses / coordinates: "Is your data is in a spreadsheet? Well try this free and unique tool to...
Map it using Google Maps"

Looks quite useful!

IBM rethinks industry-standard servers | Business Tech - CNET News

IBM rethinks industry-standard servers | Business Tech - CNET News: "Big Blue's new family of servers, dubbed the eX5 portfolio, features architecture tweaks that allow the customer to add more memory without buying an entirely new server."

Am I misunderstanding, or is IBM just now adding a feature that PC's have had for decades?

A Little Less Conversation

A Little Less Conversation: "In 2006, Moishe Lettvin, a former programmer at Microsoft, wrote a blog post describing the year he spent coordinating the list of items that would be featured on one menu in Windows Vista -- the menu you use to turn off your computer. (See The Windows Shutdown Crapfest.) Lettvin figured that 43 people all had a voice in designing this one menu. Forty-three! By Brooks's formula, that means managing 903 connections. Lettvin says he spent so much time on coordination tasks that, in 12 months, he produced fewer than 200 lines of code."

Official Google Blog: Browser Size: a tool to see how others view your website

Official Google Blog: Browser Size: a tool to see how others view your website: "Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it. If you're a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience."

TLS (SSL) compromised!

extendedsubset.com: "There are three general attacks against HTTPS discussed here, each with slightly different characteristics, all of which yield the same result: the attacker is able to execute an HTTP transaction of his choice, authenticated by a legitimate user (the victim of the MITM attack). Some attacks result in the attacker-supplied request generating a response document which is then presented to the client without any certificate warning or other indication to the user. Other techniques allow the attacker to forward or re-purpose client certificate authentication credentials."

Open source as an antitrust strategy | The Open Road - CNET News

Open source as an antitrust strategy | The Open Road - CNET News: "IBM, Intel, Red Hat, and others aren't investing in Linux because they're all chums at the country club together, but rather because they're looking for ways to reduce Microsoft's hold on their own businesses through its control of personal computer and server operating systems.
As an added benefit, it's a great way for companies to collaborate without running afoul of antitrust laws. It's collusion without the collusion."

Google Public Policy Blog: Vint Cerf on the importance of keeping the Internet open

Google Public Policy Blog: Vint Cerf on the importance of keeping the Internet open: "Earlier this week, Vint Cerf, one of the original architects of the Internet and our Chief Internet Evangelist, joined other pioneers in a letter to the FCC expressing support for the Commission's consideration of safeguards that would preserve the open Internet."

Government regulation will mean that it isn't open! Once the government takes control it will only increase its control and the regulation will limit good experimentation.

[JavaSpecialists 177] - Logging Part 3 of 3

[JavaSpecialists 177] - Logging Part 3 of 3: "For example, here is a Layout for Log4J that can be used to collapse lines with '|>>' instead of a newline character. For readability, it is trivial to then replace those characters with \n again."

import org.apache.log4j.*; import org.apache.log4j.spi.*;  import java.io.*;  public class MultipleLineLayout extends Layout {   public String format(LoggingEvent event) {     Object o = event.getMessage();     if (o instanceof Throwable) {       return format((Throwable) o);     }     return format(String.valueOf(event.getMessage()));   }    private String format(Throwable t) {     StringWriter out = new StringWriter();     PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(out);     t.printStackTrace(pw);     pw.close();     return format(out.toString());   }    private String format(String s) {     return s.         replaceAll("\r", ""). // remove Windows carriage returns         replaceAll("\n*$", ""). // remove trailing newline chars         replaceAll("\n", " |>> ") // replace newline with |>>         + "\n";   }    public boolean ignoresThrowable() {     return false;   }    public void activateOptions() {     // not necessary   } }

Microsoft bashes Google's Chrome-in-IE plan | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Microsoft bashes Google's Chrome-in-IE plan | Beyond Binary - CNET News: "'Given the security issues with plug-ins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plug-in has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.'
However, some took Microsoft to task for criticizing plug-ins, noting that Redmond itself has more than a few.
'Microsoft scared of security of plug-ins. Uninstall Silverlight now,' Mozilla's Dion Almaer wrote in a Twitter posting."

It's not like MS or IE has a stellar security record.