datacrush.info

It’s the beginning of the end as I see it.

Every year there are new employees whom are retarded without excuse in their programming skills, but nevertheless hired as programmers.

The problem is their resume says one thing while their intellect is a whole different case. How did these people manage to graduate? Most universities must be retarded in their computing lessons.

I get it. Most programmers are merely users. They have no clue why they exists, can’t write codes from scratch despite a colorful resume, and when they write a piece of code it usually goes into infinite loop. They yearn for a better job and a higher pay simply based on experience, even if that experience is minimal in improvement, and then procreate, deliberately spawning more defective genes on this planet.

Maybe the smarts of this world got it wrong when they decided on idiot-proof concepts, because now even monkeys can become programmers without sufficient gray matter.

Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning.

-Anonymous

It used to be that I’d whine about how unreasonable users are, but at the rate that incompetent people had procreated, they’ve infiltrated the realm of IT too. It used to be easy to tell who’s really a techie and who’s stupid in a smart way.

What’s worse is that, when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. Even the smart ones would appear foolish now that they’re stuck in the company of fools.

I see the problem. It’s like somebody who wants to become an American but refuses to learn English. That kind of somebody is likely to think if everyone else is just like him and if they all apply for citizenship, then his chances of being justified is higher. This is not a racist remark, this is reality. If the shoes fit, you’re it. The scary thing is that the world is beginning to accept it.

People compare themselves with masses. If everyone else is equally stupid, then they think it’s not that bad and they get on with their lives without improving themselves. RPG yesterday, RPG today, and still one-language-only programmer tomorrow.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

-Albert Einstein

Users are users because they don’t want to understand what’s happening underneath the visual shell. Programmers should want to understand how things work.

Don’t argue with me why the program scans for X’03′, and don’t tell me you end it with X’03′ just because SWIFT says so. You mutated troll. Go back to school. Hex 03 is a text termination character in ASCII. Just because you don’t use it the way it should be used, doesn’t mean nobody should.

And what’s this sorry complaint that you can’t do what you want to do because you changed your program and my program is causing it to break? If it worked before, and you changed it, and I changed nothing, logic implies that you must find out what you did. And for me to point out that you did not give it a whirl in development before promoting it to production, can you say that it’s not true? Get a grip on logic before you question the old school you whippersnappers!

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

-Flannery O’Connor

There are three categories of truth: Right, wrong, and not even wrong. When you’re in the first two categories you’re redeemable, but once you’ve crossed the line expect to receive honest sarcasm before your salvation is offered.

I know I’m not facing this problem alone because there are many famous quotes to describe it. So I’m not hallucinating, this is happening. No, I don’t expect one to know everything, but if one has been a programmer for 7 years, I’d expect him or her to know never to set a job priority higher than that of QCONSOLE on iSeries. At minimum, I’d expect that person to know that 1024 KB equals 1 MB. Even 6 years old baby could tell that. It’s degrading for all programmers to have that person on the team, especially if that person is the team leader.

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

-Sam Brown

What about FTP? What kind of software engineer doesn’t know how to use FTP? Or how about converting hex values to characters? Can you setup your own home network?

And really, if you don’t know how to convert binary to octets you’re not qualified to do encryption and hashing. Just give it up and do something more productive with your time. Just because you’re working a lot it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re working at all. That may just be a lot of activity minus tangible end results.

You may say, “… but I get my work done”. Sure, at 300% the possible time and money and bugging the few persons whom actually knows. Given enough time, money, and a large group of people with similar cluelessness things would work out.

Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in very large groups.

-Anonymous

Even a blind hog could find an acorn once in a while, and even a blind monkey could find a banana sometimes. And you really can’t teach a person who refuses to learn. You cannot learn what you think you already know.

This example is in EBCDIC. I’ve been pointing out that hex 0E is shift-out and hex 0F is shift-in, but some programmers I worked with claimed it’s the other way round without reading IBM documents. Had they stayed personal to their stupidity I would have had them forgiven. Problem is, they challenged my correctness and evangelize their err. How could someone who never reads IBM document be so cocksure?

I’ve seen smarter dogs, and they were humble too.

The road to wisdom?
Well its plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again,
but less and less and less.

-Piet Hein

Programmers ought to have the desire to learn something new in their own time. Sadly, in the past six years, over five countries and countless projects, I’ve only met a few whom are interested in writing better software.

I’m sure the IT industry is not the only place plagued by this dispassionate unambitious group of people, and that is why it’s the beginning of the end. Someday a smart computer program, written by the remnants of appreciable genes spawn, would decide that we humans cannot look after ourselves. For goodness sake, we even need a printed label to tell us the coffee is hot!

That’s when Terminator’s Skynet will become a reality. That’s when The Matrix will come alive. That’s when God better return and reclaim humanity.

The Six Phases of a Project:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise for non-participants

-Anonymous

All is not lost, and even in the darkest night there is a gleaming light. I see much promise in someone who says “I’ll debug it and figure it out” as opposed to asking irrelevant questions. There is a hint of wisdom in someone who says “I want to see your source code” as opposed to blind copy and paste.

And if an evil demon spawn 1950s techno brain system administrator doesn’t have anything to do with it, some might had even learned faster and better by not having their authority so tightly restricted on a non-secure internally owned machine.

This post is not meant to smack any single individual, so quit guessing if you’re in the know. I’ve seen enough ignorance all around to write this arbitrary fodder and I think it’s time for any programmer that feels like he or she had been mentioned to consider.

I may regret this post later, but only because I’m human.

On Internet, nothing is without a trace. Things you posted on some website few years ago may still be there on Google cache, long after the original page is taken down.

Today, I’m going to share how you can verify the origin of a suspicious e-mail.

Most e-mail clients filters out the technical portion of an e-mail header by default. This can easily be displayed by selecting an option from the menu bar, usually labeled as message source or message header. In Mozilla Thunderbird, click on an e-mail then press Ctrl+U to bring up the raw message content.

Received: from web50204.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.38.45])
	by mx11.singnet.com.sg (8.13.8/8.13.6)
	with SMTP id kBH52QBv001595
	for <xxxxxxxx@singnet.com.sg>;
	Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:02:38 +0800

Received: from [209.240.32.165]
	by web30311.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP;
	Sat, 16 Dec 2006 21:02:17 PST

From: Alice <yyyyyyyyyyy@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Merry Xmas
To: Bob <xxxxxxxx@singnet.com.sg>

Bob,
Merry Christmas from down under!
			- Alice

In the example above, Bob receives an e-mail from Alice who claims to be in Australia, but is she? The first thing Bob does is to run trace route from his console.

> tracert 209.240.32.165

Tracing route to transact.bm [209.240.32.165]
over a maximum of 30 hops.

The trace reveals immediately that the message Alice sent originated from Bermuda (ccTLD), over 10,000 miles away from Australia. Maybe someone else is disguising as Alice and faked the sender address then?

Using web based tools to perform IPWHOIS lookup, Bob knows she had logged on to Yahoo Web Mail server in United States (206.190.38.45) to compose and send the e-mail. The e-mail was certainly handled by Yahoo, and unless Alice’s Yahoo credentials had been stolen, there isn’t any evidence of spoofing involved here.

There are two possibilities at this point:

1. Alice is lying and she’s really in Bermuda; Or
2. Alice is behind a NAT in Australia and connected to a VPN based in Bermuda.

Assuming Bob knows Alice very well, Bob can find out whether the VPN service belongs to the company which Alice is working for. Under normal circumstances, Bob can use Internic WHOIS to lookup for the owner of the domain, but Bermuda doesn’t have a WHOIS server. That’s why it’s good to know that the good government of Bermuda has its own NIC website. Scientia est potentia!

A little disclaimer: All the IP address listed in this post are random and public, meant to serve only as an example for educational purposes. It’s nothing more than what one could gather from an e-mail header and simple network trace, so don’t get cocky.

And hey, taking example of Bob’s e-mail trace, you can also apply the same method to trace blog’s comment!

A couple of years ago I bought a Nokia 6610i and I told myself it couldn’t get any better than this. I thought that was it! I wasn’t looking forward to another cell phone upgrade for at least 5 years.

Besides, what is a cell phone use beyond talking and sending text message?

Technology can progress at an unpredictable pace. 20 years ago I had an IBM PC/XT that ran slower than a tortoise could count rabbits. It ain’t the same world today. Like computers, cell phone technology needs more maturing before the novelty fades away.

My new cell phone comes with quad band EDGE/GSM, and WCDMA mode support. It also does Infrared, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Unlike it predecessor, Nokia puts these connectivity to good use. For example, I can connect to an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and use it to navigate my phone; like text message, e-mail, and Internet browsing. Also, using Wi-Fi I can easily connect to a locally available Internet access point that would costs nothing as compared to using GPRS or EDGE which normally charges by the packet size.

And it really impressed me that it handles WEP and WPA/WPA2 encryption so darn good! It also has POP3 and IMAP e-mail support configurable with TLS/SSL and APOP encryption protocol.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is a PDA with a built-in phone, and it would probably be darn close. This is a sweet gadget with Symbian OS that’s just crying out for my own J2ME software development. It even comes with an anti-virus application. Now, what does that tell you?

The feature that I like best about this phone so far is that, it can pronounce the caller’s name if the caller’s contact information is stored on the phone. I can have this phone across the room while lying on my bed, and know who’s calling before deciding to get up and answer it. It never fails to amaze me how far lazy people would go to keep themselves lazy. Now, if only I can reject the call (thus silencing the phone) by yelling at it. Why not? I’d yell like a hillbilly if I have to as long as the phone would quit ringing! That could be a nifty feature.

Nokia N80 is a keeper. It may inch a little deep into your pockets, but it’s worth it. At least until Nokia N95 gets released next year.