The Cowgirl Coder

There’s a tendency among those who don’t work with computers in any real capacity to fail to understand the complexity of the work we do. I encapsulate that concept in the phrase: the ‘just’ syndrome.’

“Can’t you just…”
“I don’t see why you can’t just…”
“But if you just…”
“All you have to to is just…”
“All I want is for you to just…”

You usually hear this when a person doesn’t comprehend the intricacies of their request. I often hear this when someone wants a div moved a few pixels and overlaid with another, with no real understanding of the notion of an inline-block layout. I’ve also heard it from people who don’t comprehend the difference between flat HTML and a backend or dashboard like WordPress or Drupal. Here’s the difference: MySQL. If you want control over your content, you need a database…but you’d be surprised at how many people can’t see the difference between a flat site and multi-tiered architecture.

I’m given to understand that this is endemic in any relationship where one party doesn’t understand the skill involved in performing a task that seems simple.

“I just want a 1040…”
“I just want the house painted really quick…”
“I just want the carburetor replaced…”
“Can’t you just take a quick look at this mole…”

These seem like simple tasks, but have complicated components that require a deep understanding of the field each of these professionals are in to even answer a ‘simple’ question.

The moral of the story: respect the skills of the professional you’re talking to, and don’t request a ‘simple’ anything that will only take up ‘just a bit’ of their time.

Hello! This is my first post over here, so hopefully you all will be kind, and allow me to run my legal mouth off just a touch. ^.^

In honor of the Hallmark Holiday that is the fourteenth of February, I thought I’d revisit an oldie but goodie from the annals of “Seriously? It’s just a game!”

I used to play a number of MMORPGs, and the one that held my attention for the longest was a Korean-based free-to-play one called MapleStory. It was fun and cute and you could play through most of the quests without actually having to interact with too many people, at least in the States. Where things started getting a little sticky for players and the company, however, was when they introduced the ability to “marry” other players. You got special items and could go on special quests as a couple, and apparently you could have problems in real life as well.

After being dumped by her online husband in 2008, a Japanese woman hacked into his account, and deleted his character. After being interviewed by the police and admitting that she was responsible, she faced up to years  in prison or a $5000 fine. But wait a minute, I hear you saying, can you really “kill” an online character? Should that be punished the same way as “real” crimes?

It’s not clear from the various news stories who focused on the jilted lover aspect of the story, but it’s likely that the crime for which she was punished was the “hacking into his account” and not so much the “deleting his character.” In the States, we have the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) which makes it unlawful to use someone else’s login information to do illegal things, and Japan probably has similar provisions. Technically, even if she’d had his information for legitimate reasons, she still could have been prosecuted, because there is a provision about “exceeding the authority” to use that account or computer.

Even if she had been within the law in how she accessed his character, did she break the law by deleting his character? Is an avatar “human” such that it can be “killed” under the law? Well, probably not. The worst charge would probably be one of theft or conversion, or malicious mischief at the lowest end. And online games have an additional layer of complexity about who owns pixels, because with “free-to-play” and online games there isn’t a physical transfer of ownership which would constitute a “sale” in the legal sense.

Even if you pay money to use premium content (like if you want to get married in MapleStory…) the Terms of Service makes it clear that players lease the game from the developer, and don’t actually “own” any of it. So the spurned woman may have caused problems for her erstwhile lover, but the property she “destroyed” didn’t even belong to him. He was just using it under a license for as long as he followed the rules.

But “Woman Arrested for Hacking Lover’s Computer” doesn’t have the same sense of absurdity, does it?

Google Docs Gets A Dose Of Gmail Features

At least Google Docs is getting some love and integration with more useful features. Given the inherent nature of shared documents, and now that Google Wave has waved bye-bye, we all need a document collaboration tool that is more efficient than attaching text to emails and losing track of them in the process.

I use Unfuddle to track version control for project notebooks and store repositories for various code trunks, and I cheerfully pay for those features. $9 is ridiculously tiny for the level of configuration and service provided by those kind folks, but on an every day level, we all have a document (a contract, a business letter, a memo, or a price estimate) that needs to be passed back and forth between a small group of people for changes and editing about five or six times until it’s ready. Google Wave was the absolute best way to get that done; without it, the new Google Docs–which I’ve been lovingly poring over–is the new best way to share and edit a document so that people aren’t waiting for their ‘turn’ in the email chain.

It also means that the last person on the email chain doesn’t unwittingly delete or re-add elements to a document which have been carefully excised or composed for reasons they can’t see at the moment. Google Docs isn’t Wave yet, but it’ll do for now.

And in the meantime, I’m planning on creating a VPS and hosting my own Wave server. Cuz it’s fun. And nostalgic.

Enjoy. This is a mashup of various images I picked up on teh webz.

I’m tired of having my edits on Wikipedia immediately rolled back without so much as a by-your-leave. The purpose is so that those who have set themselves up as monitors on a range of pages within their area of expertise can read and review my changes to approve them before permitting them on the page.

Why is it perfectly fine for people to squat on pages, roll back any changes made by anyone other than themselves, and only re-enter the information themselves if it seems truthy or can be easily Googled? The purpose of Wikipedia is a democratic approach to the concept of shared knowledge; it’s being hijacked by people who have so much time on their hands that they can’t POSSIBLY be gainfully employed in the area in which they claim to be experts.

The backlash has been against paid editors who monitor content to ensure a ‘pro’ slant on any page they’re paid to manage; I think the real danger comes from those who monitor pages to roll back any changes they didn’t approve.

RAGE!

Most of you know that it’s simple to get around the password-protection in almost any OS. I startled the heck out of my brother two days ago when I popped a Meerkat disk into his machine, booted up, mounted his data partition, and pwned his WoW folder, all without breaking a sweat or needing any password. He simply didn’t realize how easy it is.

Here’s the steps:

(1) Make a Live CD from any *Buntu distro. I heart Kubuntu, and 10.10 works just fine.

(2) Insert the disk into a target computer, and reboot into the “Try Kubuntu Without Installing” option.

(3) Open a terminal. Navigate to the top level of the file system. Navigate into the device directory. Look for all the devices listed:


cd ..
cd ..
cd /dev/
ls


Is something like sda1 there? Usually, the hard drive will be named sda or hda. The first partition, sda1 or hda1, will be the data partition, especially if there are no more partitions. If you see sdb or hdb, that means there’s likely a second hard drive; check those partitions as well.

(4) Now that you’ve found what is likely to be the data partition, create a working folder and mount the partition to it:


sudo mkdir /home/pwnage
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /home/pwnage
cd /home/pwnage
ls


Do you see the files?

You’re welcome. Questions, anyone?

Comcast may have rebranded itself as Xfinity, and claimed that their customer service has improved, but someone should have told their drones.

After finally reaching a “customer service” associate to switch my service from my old apartment to this one, I was told that a Comcast technician needed to enter my house to “install the internet.” On informing that troglodyte that they didn’t need to touch my computer to turn on service, I was told that the technician had to get online to enter my account information. When I inquired as courteously as I could manage if any Comcast technician was even remotely familiar with a custom Linux build, I was greeted with the inevitable “Huh?”, I sighed, told the operator that no one, but NO one from Comcast was touching my computer.

Inevitably, the Comcast tech who showed was helpful, but utterly clueless. After I showed him what Linux was (trying to be a good little OSS evangelist), he looked thrilled while I did his job for him, cycling the modem, etc.

I am tired of companies rebranding to help their image instead of actually improving their service. I am not allowed to change my name to escape my obligations and financial reputation. Why can a major corporation do so? Especially one that holds a functional monopoly on a service I require in order to make my living?

Who will hold this corporation responsible for the Comcastical, Comcastuous, and Comcastible experiences they visit upon the helpless people they “serve”?

I have a T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream. It just died. About 4 months ago, it started choking in the faintest stirrings of its coming death throes.

4 months ago, I still had insurance on it. I canceled my insurance (you know, the 6.95/mo T-Mobile charges to ‘insure’ your phone), since I discovered that the deductible for that insurance was close to $200.

That’s right, the phone I got from T-Mobile for $199 and insured at $7/mo for two years (total: $166.80) is replaceable–for $200.

Why the devil didn’t I realize that this is a MOBILE PHONE company, and as such, will find a way to screw me?

As a result, and most certainly the saddest part of this situation: I just bought another G1 on Ebay for $116, shipping included. I could have saved more than $50 even WITH buying a new phone…simply by ASSUMING that all cell phone providers will find a way to screw their customers.

Lesson learned.

PS: I’ll have a phone again in two or three days. Through T-Mobile’s insurance plan, it would have been 4-6 weeks to have mine replaced.