Sorry but I can't resist posting a response:
If customers dealt with a construction company the way they deal with a software company:
February 3:
We decided that our business needs a new building. We called a construction company and said to them, "we need a building, please build us one."
They started asking us a bunch of ridiculous technical questions like "how many rooms do you need." We informed them that we are not a construction company, so DUH obviously we don't know the answer to stuff like that. Why would they even ask us those questions??
February 8:
The construction company asked us to write down exactly what our requires are for our new building. This is so exciting! We have identified the following requirements:
1. the building should be blue
2. we want visitors to be impressed by the size of our building
3. the building should be white
February 11:
Our first meeting with the construction company went terribly. These guys don't seem to know anything at all! They kept asking about rooms. We kept telling them that we are not a construction company. Finally, in exacerbation, we told them we needed 13 rooms.
February 25:
The construction company has produced some detailed drawings. Our building actually looks pretty nice! This is so exciting. Our business is really going to grow. Construction will begin on May 1st. We don't understand why this construction company is so lazy that they can't start building today.
March 3:
The construction company gave us an estimate of the cost of our building. It is absolutely ridiculous! Where do they get off charging that much when all they are doing is putting one brick on top of another brick. My nephew does that all the time. He builds beautiful things out of Legos.
April 1:
Someone from the construction company called to ask about a "lot." I didn't understand what they meant. I told him we only needed one building, not a lot of them. He clarified that he was talking about "property." I said that yes, our business would be storing property in our building. He then asked about "land." I told him that we didn't own any helicopters, but it would be great if the building had a place for them to land because we know that our business is growing. I suspect that this whole phone call was some kind of April Fools joke.
April 5:
I AM SO MAD! THE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY SAYS THAT IN ADDITION TO PAYING FOR THE BUILDING, WE ALSO HAVE TO BUY A PLACE TO PUT THE BUILDING. THIS IS GOING TO COST US A FORTUNE!
May 1:
Construction has finally begun. We are starting to get very frustrated with this whole process.
May 14:
We got a tour of the construction site today and saw the foundation for our building. That afternoon, we had a meeting amongst ourselves and we all decided that the building is being built too close to the street. We will email the construction company tomorrow and ask that they move it.
May 16:
Oops, I forgot to email the construction company to move the building. I called them today though but they actually laughed (very unprofessional) and told me it is too late to move it. That is ridiculous! Just because I waited one extra day, now they claim it is too late!
May 20:
They have started laying bricks for our building. In the time it has taken to make this building (not our fault, they are ones who have delayed) we have changed our mind and decided that we want glass walls. We want the entire building to be made of glass, but we also want it to be hurricane proof, and we want the glass to be self-cleaning. The construction company told us we are crazy - and that is the last straw. We fired them!
June 1:
My nephew has agreed to build our building for 1/10000th the cost of that stupid construction company. I KNEW that they were over charging us! In our first meeting, he confirmed that making a building is pretty easy. Just as I suspected, it's just putting bricks one on top of the other.
June 2:
My nephew is so smart. He came to this meeting with his legos and actually showed us what our building is going to look like! Why couldn't the other company do that.
July 10:
We haven't heard from my nephew in a while, so I called his house. His mom said he was playing with his xbox and didn't want to come to the phone.
Best posts made by tofu
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RE: If the software developers were construction workers
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Bumping Threads WTF
I signed up for a forum three years ago. I had completely forgotten about it. I just now got an email saying that someone had replied to a thread I subscribed to.
What idiot replies to a three year old thread??
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Do you have lots of pictures of yourself?
There's this chick that I've been dating and I just got to see her
apartment last night. The thing is, she has pictures of herself all
over the place. I don't mean pictures of herself and friends as a
group in the same picture. Oh no. She has framed pictures
of herself hung on walls in her house. There's one on her
TV. "is that you?" I ask. "Yeah, that's when I graduated
college." There's one on the wall about 5 feet from the TV.
"uh, is that you?" I ask. "Yeah" she says, apparently not getting
that I'm asking for a freaking explaination.
anyway, the only thing I could think was, WTF?? -
RE: If the software developers were construction workers
@asuffield said:
we pay a construction company to do the work and supply them with dubious specifications.
oh yes. Same here. I actually played little tricks on the company that built my house, though it was mostly flirting with the property manager chick. after the foundation was poured I actually told her, and pretended to be serious, that I wanted the house moved. So that's why I used that little bit in the story above. Before they poured the foundation, they marked it with wooden pegs. I picked one up that had been left out in the street and walked into her office in the house on the corner and asked if I could throw it in her garbage. She said sure, then noticed what it was and asked about it. I said, "somebody nailed those into the ground all over my lot - probably some kids playing a game - I pulled them all out of the ground so that they wouldn't get in the way of the construction crew."
They got me back for all the jokes though. I had the house prewired with cat-5 and they put a drop right next to the stove. I mean like, two inches away. I actually didn't notice that until it was too late to change it (it was supposed to be out in the dining area). So it's covered now, but it's still there. If there's ever an internet-ready oven I'm all set. Otherwise, I have a wire that I'll never possibly use. heh.
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RE: Do you have lots of pictures of yourself?
@GoatCheez said:
Has anyone ever thought that this poor girl might suffer from some form of mental retardation?
It's certainly fair to suspect this of anyone who dates the likes of me.
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Bumping Old Posts - w-t-m-f?
On this other forum that I frequent, there is this idiot who constantly
find threads that have had no activity for literally years and he bumps
them just to say, "me too" or some crap like that. Here is the
latest example:
The last post to that thread was feb. 2002! WTF?
WTMF?? I hate this guy! The mods wont do anything
either. In fact, I'll probably get yelled at for calling him an
idiot (in the most polite way possible).
It makes it really hard to keep up with the board when I have to filter
through all this old crap in order to find the new stuff.
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RE: Do you have lots of pictures of yourself?
@foxyshadis said:
Does the notion that ladies an have sexual
urges as strongly as men make you feel sick and dirty?
Can you point to any part of plazmo's post, or any of my posts, that suggest we believe that?
@foxyshadis said:Does the idea that men can love and cherish
their families and stabilty seem old-fashioned and lame?
Can you point to any part of plazmo's post, or any of my posts, that suggest we believe that?
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Example buffer overflow
I have to give a short (well, three hour) presentation on computer security issues to non-tech-guru people. I thought it'd be fun for me to have a VM on the machine where I do the presentation and demonstrate some of the things I'm discussing. I don't want to do actual hacks like, "here's something I downloaded, now I'm running it, and it's over" because I don't think that'd be interesting.
What I would like to do is to show some C code (or any language I guess) and point to it and say, "see this? this is an unchecked buffer" then I'd compile it, then overflow it. Ideally, I'd love to run this compiled program as nobody and then when I exploit it, it would dump me to a shell and when I run whois it'd say I'm nobody.
One problem here is that modern operating systems don't allow execution on the stack, right? So what do you guys think? Is this just a pipe dream? Is it more trouble than it's worth and I should just forget it? Can you recommend anything else I can do that'd be cool?
Thanks.