Month: January 2008

Categories
Business Rants Technology

Crack My App

What do you do if someone asks you to do something illegal?

Of course (and i do sincerely mean and hope, “of course”) the first response is to just say “No”. But does it end there? Maybe it depends, maybe it doesn’t?

Well, I was asked by a company to crack some software. Everything was totally illegal and i declined, of course. But as i sit here thinking about it, revising my study module on business ethics, i wonder if just declining is enough? Should i actually report it to the authorities?

If someone asked me to go steal a car, i would definitely report that to the police, after carefully and probably politely removing myself from the company of the requestor.
If someone asked me to steal some money, even if it was money owed to them, i think i would also probably alert “someone”. But if someone asked me to crack software (because i can since i’m a programmer- or at least, that is the assumption), whom do i tell? Do i even need to? Nothing illegal has happened.. but just where does the line end?

Grrrr. Why do idiots want to crack stuff anyway? Just play by the book and it’ll be easier for all of us 🙂

Categories
Life

The Line Between Games and Lies

We often jest (or at least i do) with scenarios that, technically, can be considered lies. For example (really arb):
My wife wants to know where the car keys are, and i’m hiding them in my jeans pocket.

Wife: “Have you seen the keys?”
Me: “Keys? Car keys? Nope. Haven’t seen them.” (Sneaky smile optional depending on how far i want to take the “joke” 🙂

Technically, i lied. But, yet, in context, i didn’t. The tricky bit is, how do you teach a child the difference?
‘Cos i can see that being quite confusing. And they catch on sooner or later and play the same game right back at ya, but then there’s lieing.

It’s almost like you don’t need to worry about it, they learn, but… is teaching that “lieing” is ok as long as it’s a game, ok?
Or do you call it something else, but then what’s the difference between a lie and not telling the truth for the sake of a prank?

Categories
Technology

Ruby Nuby Catch

I was reading up quite a bit and getting a project on the go with Ruby and Streamlined. Perfect for an admin console and mass data capture application. But in my zeal and learning curve, i kept bumping my head against habtm relationships not really working. It was acting weird, and depending on when you pick up on the glitch, you’d explain it a dozen different ways.

Short story long, i scoured- found folk with similar issues and put it down to “bug”- but not convincingly.

And then i was reminded: habtm tables don’t need a surrogate primary key for ActiveRecord development! Doh! changed my associative table scripts to include :id => false and it all works like a charm!

Now if i can only find those threads again and post the “solution” there… Arrrrgg..

But here’s a fantastic post/tutorial on the issue by Sam Aaron.