Happy New Year, everyone! As for my new resolution, I’m gonna code and write until those keys start flying off the board!
2015, here I come!
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Monthly Archives: December 2014
Leaked: Original Ending to ‘Blackhat’ Movie
Here, I present a leaked copy of the upcoming Blackhat movie (i.e., Hackers 2: The Next Crappy Movie about Hackers). Please don’t ask me where I got it. It’s a secret.
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EXT. BUILDING TOP – DUSK
[ On the top of a condo highrise on the Tsing Lung Tau Ferry Pier in Hong Kong, a masked man screams in agony with an arrow in his leg. Our hunky, hacker hero Nicholas Hathaway slowly approaches him with the empty crossbow that has wounded our villain. ]
NICHOLAS: You didn’t think that you would get away with it, did you? I was able to reverse-engineer your code, and I found the coordinates for your secret hideout buried in the comments. So, just tell me…why? I hacked for fun and mischief…where things are a little grey! But you, with your nuclear reactor shutdown and siphoning people’s money…that’s definitely much darker than anything I’ve done. Now I see the ‘white’, and I’ll never become anything like you…black hat!
MASKED VILLAIN: Ha ha ha! You’re just like me, Nicholas…you just don’t have the guts to face it! I issued the flag on the compiler, to put those comments in the binary executable…on purpose! Because I wanted you to find me…to find out who I really am…
[ The villain removes his mask to show his true identity. ]
NICHOLAS: Mark Zuckerberg!
ZUCKERBERG: That’s right! It’s me, Mark Zuckerberg. After the “Social Network” and how it mocked me, I became bitter at the world, despite my billions of dollars. I used my elite hacker skills for evil, like exposing Jennifer Lawrence’s breasts for the world to see. And to rob people of money and to make nuclear reactors fail…all in order to make the world pay for how they’ve treated me!
NICHOLAS: Of course…only you would know how to inject SQL into a database and give it a virus…
[ Mark Zuckerberg hobbles to his feet, so that he stands before Nicholas. ]
ZUCKERBERG: Exactly! Clearly, though, you won’t join me…so, in that case, you must die!
[ Mark Zuckerberg extracts a hidden gun from his shirt, and he points it maniacally at Nicholas. Bracing for the bullet, Nicholas shields himself with his arms just as the gun explodes in Zuckerberg’s hands. The explosion from his hands causes Zuckerberg to be propelled over the edge of the building, and Zuckerberg falls stories to his death on the street below. ]
FEMALE VOICE: I thought that you could use a little help.
[ Nicholas turns around to face his Asian love interest. ]
NICHOLAS: How did you…?
HOT ASIAN CHICK: You’re not the only one with elite hacking skills. I hacked into the biometric unit that controls access to the gun, and then I used a stack overflow to cause the gun’s bullet to implode upon ignition.
NICHOLAS: Hey, maybe girls can code, too.
HOT ASIAN CHICK: I’ll teach you what other things girls can do.
[ She and Nicholas Hathaway embrace and just begin to kiss when a maintenance man walks onto the roof from the stairwell. They turn to face him after being interrupted, and showing a face of embarrassment, he tries to leave them alone. He cannot, though, since the door to the stairwell is now locked and will not budge. He pats his pockets for the access card, and he shakes his head in frustration.]
MAINTENANCE MAN: Oh, no, I forgot my access card! Hey…do either of you know anything about hacking a door?
[ They turn to face each other and laugh. ]
THE END
Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story
A Developer’s Wish List for Christmas
Dear Santa,
I’ve beeen a fairly good boy this year. Please give me at least one of the following:
- Enough goddamn tablespace on the goddamn database schema so that it doesn’t run out every five goddamn minutes.
- An environment where there’s less than 3 homegrown libraries that have different implementations of the same functionality.
- Good will and peace on Earth…in other words, a calm, rational discussion about systemd that doesn’t involve remarks about physical assaults of family members or accusations about genital size.
- An obedient monkey of my size who can wear a suit and quietly attend meetings in my place. (Trust me, they won’t be able to tell the difference, as long as he throws any poop at the trashcan instead of the other attendees. My aim is normally perfect.)
- A development platform that was chosen because it makes sense, not because a slick salesman bought dinner for one of the company suits.
- An Etch-A-Sketch for each stakeholder, since they’re so fond of drawing up vague specification requests and then erasing them quickly with a flash.
- Less irony in the workplace (like when a new project is more complicated and expensive than the legacy system that it was intended to replace).
- A fellow developer who doesn’t interpret ‘add more wrappers’ to mean that he should add more Wendy’s and McDonald’s wrappers to the existing layer on his desk.
- Not hearing another unimaginative technical interview that starts with “So, you have a list of numbers that you have to sort…”
- An intelligent workplace Internet filter that blocks porn sites and allows access to StackOverflow, not vice versa.
Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story
Bad Programmer Pickup Lines, Part Deux
The original list is found here.
- Call me a retro AI programmer, but I like my women as I like my logic: fuzzy. Can I get a peek of your implementation?
- Dear God, I haven’t seen a stack like that in ages. It’s enough to make me overflow.
- If things get a little hot and heavy later, I’ll make sure to call ‘join()’ so that we finish together.
- You look a little compressed in those pants. Let me make you more comfortable by running ‘gunzip’ on them.
- My, my, my…your mother allocated quite a buffer on you. Mind if I address it with my pointer?
- When using my web services or spending some time in my bedroom, it’s recommended in both cases that you get plenty of REST.
- Now that we’ve gotten to know each other, it’s about time for production…and I’ve got my branch all ready for deployment.
- I just ran a ‘netstat -a’ on your luscious body, and fortunately for us, it reported back that all ports are open.
- Girl, let’s ditch this party and head back to your place for a code review on memory usage. I’m sure that we’ll find a few leaks which you’ll want me to address.
- How about we start a process together and get right to forking?
Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story
Private Sessions
Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story
Bad Programmer Pickup Lines
- How about we improve our performance by wrapping your O() around my logn?
- I couldn’t help but notice that we’re ethnically diverse…and I’m all about fast and heavy race conditions.
- Girl, you’re so fine…as much as I’d try to hold my lock with you, I couldn’t stop releasing early.
- I’ve lost something, and I think that I might find it on you. Mind if I opt for a depth-first search?
- Care to swing by my office for a quick examination? I’m designing a new architecture, and I just found the perfect domain model.
- With an angelic rackspace like that, you must have just fallen out of the cloud.
- I suggest that we go home and remove these masks, so that we can finally see all the bits underneath.
- What’s your favorite configuration? Mine is where you’re the master, and I’m your slave.
- I can tell you one thing, sweetheart: there isn’t anything generic about your container.
- Are you a developer as well as beautiful? Because I’d love to push my code into your repo.
Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story
I Hate the Sounds around Me 