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OriginalGriff5-May-14 5:55

5-May-14 5:55

Time to learn.[^]

Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

Ranjan.D5-May-14 6:00

Ranjan.D

5-May-14 6:00

It's really amazing Griff. You made my day Smile | :)

Thanks for sharing.

JimmyRopes5-May-14 4:55

JimmyRopes

5-May-14 4:55

Why should you care how many times someone logs in. Restrict their actions when they try to do something that is not allowed. D'Oh! | :doh:

The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain

Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs

I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes

Stefan_Lang7-May-14 4:20

Stefan_Lang

7-May-14 4:20

I suspect it might be more of a requirement turning into a different one due to the limitations of the existing application. E. g. if the user is not allowed to do X more often than once a day, but the app only keeps track of that while he's logged in...

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)

Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]

JimmyRopes7-May-14 5:30

JimmyRopes

7-May-14 5:30

Stefan_Lang wrote:
I suspect it might be more of a requirement turning into a different one due to the limitations of the existing application. E. g. if the user is not allowed to do X more often than once a day, but the app only keeps track of that while he's logged in...

I read this twice because I didn't understand what you were saying the first time. I still don't understand what you re trying to say.

Are you saying that when a person is logged out they can do something. Otherwise if they are logged in then you have control over how many times they perform an operation in a given period of time regardless of how many times they log in during that time period.

The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain

Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs

I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes

Stefan_Lang7-May-14 20:17

Stefan_Lang

7-May-14 20:17

Sorry, I suspect german grammar doesn't translate well Blush | :O

I meant to say that there might have been an existing application, and the original application didn't support (well) the new requirement. So the developers decided to morph that requirement into a different one that would fulfil the original requirement, even though it would also prohibit legitimate use in some cases.

In this case, hypothetically speaking, the application might have supported tracking a user status, but not beyond a login session. Rather than change the tracking, the developers might have decided to add a rule to log in.

I was just trying to find a possible explanation for the odd requirement to only log in once a day. Wink | ;)

JimmyRopes7-May-14 23:14

JimmyRopes

7-May-14 23:14

Now I understand what you are trying to say, that they don't track user activity and may want to put in a quick and dirty hack into the login procedure to bar someone from performing an operation more than once in a day.

I don't think that will work because I could log in and not perform the operation, then log in a second time so I can perform the operation that I am allowed to perform once a day.

Login does not necessarily equate to performing the operation. The user must be tracked when they try to perform the operation, and either let to perform it or get rejected if they have performed it within the specified time period.

The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain

Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs

I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes

dandy725-May-14 4:57

dandy72

5-May-14 4:57

OriginalGriff wrote:
And I am soooooo tempted to tell him "When a user logs in, change his password. Then email him the new one 24 hours later."

The sad reality is that if you do that, one day you'll probably log into some large/popular web site that'll do exactly that...and it'll be your own damned fault.

OriginalGriff5-May-14 5:05

5-May-14 5:05

Ooo! Please? Can we get him to work for FarceBook and Twatter? Pretty please with sugar on? Laugh | :laugh:

Corporal Agarn5-May-14 5:13

Corporal Agarn

5-May-14 5:13

By the number of people texting and driving I thought people already stayed logged on 24x7. Smile | :)

OriginalGriff5-May-14 5:19

5-May-14 5:19

Not if we get him to add Carlo's (CPallini) additional modification...:EvilLaughSmiley:

dandy725-May-14 5:19

dandy72

5-May-14 5:19

I see. Destroy from within. I like the way you think. Smile | :)

Roger Wright5-May-14 6:27

Roger Wright

5-May-14 6:27

Go for it, Griff. You know you want to... give in to it. Embrace your inner evil twin.

Will Rogers never met me.

BillWoodruff5-May-14 8:29

BillWoodruff

5-May-14 8:29

I think you've earned the right to be a bit evil !

cheers, Bill

“I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.” Jorge Luis Borges

BrainiacV6-May-14 5:43

BrainiacV

6-May-14 5:43

OriginalGriff wrote:
There's a QA question, wanting to know how he prevents his users from logging in more than once a day.

How much control do you have over the login process?

For they systems I maintain, I'd just add a column to the table where we keep the user name and password (encrypted of course) to hold the last date of login and when validating the login request add a check to see if the last date is not the current date.

Sorry for not following the other posts by giving you a serious answer. Sigh | :sigh:

Psychosis at 10
Film at 11

Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

OriginalGriff6-May-14 5:51

6-May-14 5:51

It's not very evil - except for the encrypted passwords of course, that is indeed the work of Cthulhu. Encrypted passwords are a major security risk - they should be hashed instead. Big Grin | :-D

BrainiacV6-May-14 6:04

BrainiacV

6-May-14 6:04

OriginalGriff wrote:
Encrypted passwords are a major security risk - they should be hashed instead.

Poor choice of words, they are hashed. I just wrote encrypted to note that they weren't in clear text.

It's always an amusing e-mail when clients ask to be reminded of their passwords and we come back with, here's your temporary new password, be sure to change it after you login with it. (And you know they won't)

I've had other fires to put out, so I've never gotten around to adding a password is temporary flag to the login table, although it has long been on my list of things to do, but convincing the sales office that the time should be taken has been a lost cause. They like to hit that big red panic button over every little thing. It doesn't help that the original system was developed by amateurs who barely knew what they were doing and so I find myself fixing problems that have been there since time began in an urgent manner since someone finally noticed the problem ysterday and will fixate on it until they see it changed.

It won't be an issue until some idiot leaves their temporary password in an e-mail for all to see without changing it and then of course it will be the programmer's fault that it was misused.

Psychosis at 10
Film at 11

Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

OriginalGriff6-May-14 6:08

6-May-14 6:08

BrainiacV wrote:
here's your temporary new password, be sure to change it after you login with it. (And you know they won't)

My solution to that is simple: All temporary passwords are GUIDs...most people change it immediately after they log in for the first time... Laugh | :laugh:

BrainiacV6-May-14 7:05

BrainiacV

6-May-14 7:05

OriginalGriff wrote:
All temporary passwords are GUIDs

Now THAT is evil! Laugh | :laugh:

I'd give that a try, but our passwords would not support that as a valid entry. Sigh | :sigh:

Psychosis at 10
Film at 11

Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

ununseptium

V.4-May-14 23:20

4-May-14 23:20

Can anyone explain what defines an element?
I mean, this new one, just discovered breaks down in a few tenths of a second and is, thus, unstable. What's the use in taking it up in the periodic table?

Can you "build" something with it? Can you form new substances?

V.

(MQOTD rules and previous solutions)

OriginalGriff4-May-14 23:52

4-May-14 23:52

Yes - but you've got to be really, really quick. Wink | ;)

Marco Bertschi4-May-14 23:55

Marco Bertschi

4-May-14 23:55

Maybe MS is going to use it for a new technology which is then deprecated and abandoned by them.

I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.

How to ask a question

OriginalGriff5-May-14 0:29

5-May-14 0:29

I dunno - 18~40 milliseconds is quite a good life for Microsoft technology!

harold aptroot5-May-14 0:28

harold aptroot

5-May-14 0:28

Elements are a classification of matter. Each element has chemical properties that all atoms of that element share (modulo minute differences between isotopes caused be the mass difference). There's no rule that says that an element has to be useful, even the rule that such a class of matter has to have at least one confirmed member in it is a little tenuous - though an element has to be confirmed to "exist for real" to be put on "The Periodic Table", the extended table[^] doesn't care about such trivialities and contains a lot of elements that no one has ever seen and perhaps some that no humans will ever see - and yet some properties of those elements can be predicted, which is exactly the point of the periodic table.