It is nice to see some big companies still aren't ran by lawyers

I went to Google docs earlier in Safari and I got this message. This isn't all of it but it is by far the most entertaining portion of it. I just couldn't help break the "law" though.

Not sure why other big companies can't do this for their beta products. Of course it would be nice for some companies to even recognize that certain other browsers exist.

What to do?

Recently I have switched career areas from programming/development to application security. Maybe it is because I am new to the field or something else but I feel like maybe I should go back to doing development work.

So, this post is for me to try and get my thoughts together on the two careers and my hope is to come back in 6 months to see how/if my thoughts have changed.

Why do I like security work?
Security work is fun I get to break shit :). You also learn very low-level technical information and it is more focused on researching and finding as many holes as possible. You still do development work.

Why do I not like security work?
The pace!!!! It is so slow..... granted this could be because of the place I work. You still do development work at times but you don't get paid for knowing two skill sets. You don't get paid as well as I would have expected.

Why I like development
I get to create stuff, sometimes it is cool, other times no so much :). I can see the impact of my work on a business' bottom line. If coding is done right security work is not really needed :P. Something just appeals to me about creating a product and having other people use it.

Why I do not like development
Everyone thinks they are good at it* and there is a large stagnation of knowledge. Business people don't understand the development process, granted this is an issue with coders not being good at communicating the issue. You have to deal with crappy code some time.

* = I am not saying I am good at coding and I know not everyone thinks they are good at it. But it sure seems like a lot of people think they are really good :P.

Bluetooth fun

As the two people who read this blog know I have a rather large addiction to caffeine. So, as I write this I just finished my first cup of chai in one of the local coffee shops in the Seattle area. The great thing about these places is they all have free wireless which means a lot of computers gather in a fairly small area. A lot of these computers are macs which usually means they have bluetooth enabled by default :). I did a very quick scan of the area with just my phone, meaning it won't get all the computers in the building, but in my limited area I hit three computers and one phone. What does that mean? It means more than likely wth a little social engineering or luck I could start f'ing with their computers. But since I have work to do I can't today but it is now on my things to seriously do in the next month.

This is just a friendly reminder turn off your bluetooth or at least don't broadcast in public places. There are a lot of smarter people working on hacking bluetooth and they can get your signal from a very long ways off (say 1.5 miles!!!!).

Checkboxes & Internet Explorer

For some reason by default checkboxes in Internet Explorer(IE) have padding on them. This happens in both IE 7 & IE 6 and with IE 7 you can specify a style for a specific attribute (i.e. input[type = checkbox]) but not in IE6 so that solution just doesn't work with my web coding ideas.

One way I found with a little bit of tweaking works great and in all browsers.


<span style="width:13px;height:13px;"><input type="checkbox" name="f00" value="Y" style="margin:0;width:13px;height:13px;overflow:hidden" /></span>


If anyone else comes across this problem there you go :). Just a note, I do not use inline styles in my code, I am just being lazy when posting here.