I am pretty much sure that if you look carefully at any friend's timeline profile you can easily predict what going on in his/her life, Even you can write his/her entire life, you can also find out the hidden fact which he/she never told or updated directly but indirectly he/she shared n liked related thing which will help you to analyze his/her activity. Is it anyway possible to build an automated system which can read n analyze friends entire facebook profile, his/her shared stuff, likes, comments etc. and create a report which will expose his/her entire life facts including hidden one, using some AI or Machine learning concepts?
There's no system that will automatically be able to give content and understanding like you're looking for automatically. The human mind is able to infer a lot that computers simply can't understand. Also, you (generally) know some things about the people outside of Facebook (since you are friends with them) that fills in a lot of detail that the analysis system won't have.
The best thing you can do is to clearly define your problem and question that you're asking. There was a 'gaydar' project at MIT that was able to look at networks of students and generally correlate which ones are gay. For large groups you'll find it works overall, but for an individual person you're not going to be able to have great certainty.
Yet, to just ask the computer to 'find hidden information' won't work. You need to have a pretty solid model to work with. Overall, you're probably going to need a lot of data with confirmed facts to get started on testing that model as well (thousands of points needed). Also, with any social network you'll find that there is a lot of inaccurate/fake data on any given social network. People mis-list things all the time for various reasons (humor, etc) and this is going to throw off your models.
I have a website where people do simple cognitive psychology experiments. Currently, people volunteer. To increase numbers of responses, I would like to offer micropayments in a manner similar to Mechanical Turk*.
My question is, What would would be the best system to use to make these payments? I would guess that both paypal and flattr would be options. Has anyone with experience with setting up a micropayment system like this be able to offer advice?
cheers,
Mark
*I am not thinking about using mechanical turk itself, just because I do not think I would be able to control the web based studies exactly I would need.
Flattr would work in your scenario:
Each person doing the test would need a Flattr account.
They’d need to login with their Flattr account on your site (like on fundd.de) or connect your site with their Flattr (easy with OAuth).
Once they’ve taken the test you manually Flattr them and by controlling your monthly budget you control how much each click is worth.
Our API makes setting this up fairly easy and straightforward http://developers.flattr.net/
Downsides:
Required to sign up with an additional service.
Flattr currently caps monthly spending at €100 so if you have lots and lots of testers you’d run into problems of making the payment high enough. We are reconsidering this, at least for users in good standing.
Monetary incentives for testers bring in a different crowd and can influence the results of their tests but you probably already know that.
Cheers,
Teller
PS. I work at Flattr.
Before submitting to the App Store, it is a good idea to test the App once again precisely. I tend to install my App on a device and give it a friend for a while. Then I take the feedback and start changing my app accordingly.
I'd like to know what your testing strategies are.
Write a test plan. If you don't have experience with doing that, start with a list of every feature and UI control in the application.
Write down a simple set of steps that could be followed to determine whether or not each feature is working correctly.
Two major points:
Use unit testing. You can use Google Toolbox for Mac for that or just roll your own.
User testing, well, it's user testing. A colleague of mine designed a 50-point walkthrough/questionnaire of the app and had some 10-20 people do it -- and then repeated certain parts when we made changes to certain sections.
You are talking about two different things:
Defect testing and usability testing.
Or I think you may be. The other answers are about defect testing, your approach sounds like usability testing - or a mix of both.
Defect testing is about finding errors in your code. Other people have responded about this:
Have unit tests but don't rely on them
User testing - firstly by you. Think about your code and what might break it. Throck on controls, paste a zillion lines of text into your editos
Have other people who are not familiar with the code use the app
use tools like ObjectAlloc and clang to find non-functional defects
In my mind testing is not about tools but the attitude. How hard you look for defects and how honest you are about reporting your own defects.
You should also have a good defect tracking system to keep a handle on them.
Usability testing is more difficult. People do not understand their own thought process when interacting with software.
A good (cheap) approach is to give the softwar eto your friend and then ask him to speak outloud what he is thinking. Then you get statments like "I see this screen but I don't know what to press (you need to add help or cues). I'm not sure if deleted this worked (you need to add feedback). Etc.
You can buy very sophisticated tools to help with user testing but this approach gets a long way there.
At first, I do a functional testing to check if the function of every features work fine. Then, I execute a system testing to check the interaction between functions and perform exploratory testing.
At the end, I make a focus group, which represent the users, to get feedback on its usability. Actually, a focus group will be great if it is held at the beginning of development and the end of development. The first event aims to get feedback on the user interface design and the second one is to get feedback on the real application.
For a serious professional app that you plan on making money with -- first you do in-house "white box" alpha testing with Instruments, etc., then you hire a professional quality assurance testing company to do "black box" functional beta testing, and then you hire a professional usability testing company to do user testing on live guinea pigs with video surveillance.
In terms of unit testing, I have found that GHUnit and OCMock are two very good tools. Especially GHUnit because it comes with it's own test runner which will run on the device or simulator.
I would first install Crashlytics. So that anyone you give the app that has issues, you can see exactly what is going on. Then another thing you could do is install Hockeykit, so you can push new updates just to the beta users. Those are my suggestions.
https://www.crashlytics.com/
https://github.com/TheRealKerni/HockeyKit
I dont know what to say. About 3 days ago I released a script to the public. Today I realised, after searching on google that someone had already nulled (removed my protection) and pirated the script.
How do I stop users from pirating the script? It is written in PHP.
Please help or suggest some solutions.
Thank you for your time.
UPDATE By releasing to the public means that I have started selling it to users.
UPDATE My program is priced at only $49. Very reasonable for the functionality it offers. I do not understand how I should stop pirates from pirating my code. The replies which most people have given are rather sarcastic. I was hoping for some good advice. I know there is no silver-bullet. But some techniques which you have used in your PHP programs.
The only real way to prevent piracy is to not give the user the program at all! What I mean by this is have the logic you want to protect remain server side and offer a client interface.
There are a few companies that offer protection services, but these are expensive and can sometimes still be overcome.
If you're worried about this happening again, try obfuscating your code. Here is a free program to do just that on PHP code.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic here: forget about them. Here's my rationale:
You can spend tons of time trying to
prevent pirates from pirating your
stuff, or you can spend the same
amount of time giving your paying
users more functionality.
Extreme copy protection does not give your paying users anything but more
hoops to jump through to use your
application - which might lead them
to get frustrated.
Pirates will pirate your applications
no matter how much time you spend
trying to stop them.
Budget a certain
amount of time to put in basic copy
protection - just enough to keep the
honest people honest.
Most importantly: Don't irritate your paying customers.
They are the ones you need to make
happy.
There's not much you can do.
Be flattered your work was deemed worth the effort!
How do I stop users from pirating the
script?
Do not release sensible source code to the public...
[EDIT] After a few downvotes, I decided to comment on my answer:
Any code that is released public has a chance of being hacked. This is the number one reason why Javascript is not secure. No matter how much you will obfuscate it, compress it or translate it to some random japanese dialect, it is still source code that the user has access to. Hence it should not contain any sensible information such as passwords or such. All sensible data should be stored in the server side where it is kept hidden from the user.
If you are releasing a php framework containing both the server and client code; then you have no way of fully protecting yourself. PHP is, like Javascript, an interpreted language. You may translate it, compress it, or obfuscate it as much as you want, (and it's probably the best thing you can do) you will never fully protect it when released to the public.
Again... If there was a magic way to prevent code from being broken, it would have been known for a long time. No-cd patches / cracks for new games/softwares now are almost released the same day as the softwares themselves. It is, as noted by Paul, a form of flattery for you, even though I understand how sorry you may feel.
There are a few instances where programmers ended up with bullet-proof protection, but it usually involved high-end engineering.
With PHP, you're mostly out of luck. It's an interpreted language, which means that you are essentially forced to give away the source code. Sure, there are obfuscators (tools that "scramble" the source code to make it near impossible to read for humans), but they can be circumvented as well.
There are product like Zend Guard which seem to offer a better level of protection, but from my understanding, your customers need Zend Guard installed as well, which is almost never the case.
There are several methods of handling this:
Offer your product as a service. This means finding appropriate hosting in the cloud, etc. This removes access to your code base, thus preventing direct piracy. Someone can still reverse engineer your stuff, but I'll touch on that later.
Add a unique identifier to each version of the script sold. This can be done automatically, and is great to do with obfuscated code (another, complementing method). This will give you the ability to track whoever pirated your code. If you can track them, you can sue them (or worse).
Pursue legal action. You'll need to know who leaked the code in the first place for this. Their PayPal information or even an IP address should be enough. You go to your lawyer, ask him to get a court order telling PayPal/ISP to release the identity of the thief, and then start tracking them down. If they're located overseas, your only real option is to freeze/appropriate funds from PayPal/credit card. Banks will be sympathetic only if they have a branch in your country (which can be targeted for legal action).
Ignore it, and simply build your business model around the support that you offer.
The sad fact is that information cannot be secured completely. There is no way to prevent a team of Indian programmers from reverse engineering your program. So you just have to be better than them, and constantly improve your product (this is "A Good Thing (TM)", so do it anyways)
Also keep in mind that DRM and other solutions are often controversial, and will reduce your sales (especially among early-adopters). On a personal level, I would suggest viewing this as a compliment. After all, your script was useful enough that someone bothered to pirate it within a week!
PHP is easily decoded, so for people who really want to know, it's easy to find out the source code. However, there are certain obfuscator programs such as this one that'll make your PHP script almost unreadable for those trying to decode it.
What kind of protection did you think you had added to a PHP script, anyway? You should add a line of the form:
if ($pirated)
exit();
and then make it mandatory (in the licence agreement) that users set the $pirated variable accordingly.
Forget trying to prevent it
Go the way of CakePHP (see sidebar on front page) and many other open source projects and ask for donations.
People actually do it!
Contact the pirate and let h{im,er} know that you will be forced to take legal action against them if they do not abide by the license.
I agree with #Michael.
Try ionCube or Zend Guard. They are both commercial offerings, but you say that you are selling your software so it might be worth it. Although nothing is foolproof and can be reverse engineered with enough effort and technical skill, these solutions are probably good enough for the average PHP script vendor.
I agree with Samoz's suggestion to keep the logic server side, however this can often be hard to do. The best strategy is to make the user want to buy it by offering updates automatically to registered users, as well as installation, advice and good support. You are never going to sway people hell bent on pirating, however your goal should be to persuade those who are undecided as to whether to pirate or purchase the script.
Any obfuscation/decryption technique for PHP can be cracked
Jumping in very late to this conversation, but saw this question featured. Nobody mentioned contacting a lawyer and pursuing litigation. You likely saw the script on a server - hosted by a known hosting company - you can probably get a DMCA takedown to have the script removed. If you really press the case, you may be able to sue for damages.
Found this link to assist in going this route:
http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/cheese.htm
You could always pirate it yourself to the internet and hope that any nuller will think "its already been grabbed" so don't bother. But pirate a real buggy version. When users come to you looking for help you'll know they have a pirate version if they question you about specific bugs you purposely added and you can approach them accordingly
If your script won't consume a lot of bandwidth, you could keep your "logic" server-side, as samoz suggested, but if your users won't use it responsively ( a crawler, for example ), this could be trouble.
On the other side, you could become a ninja ...
Attach a copyright notice to it. Some companies will actually care that they're using software properly.
Actually I think it's easier to protect PHP scripts than desktop software, because with latter you never know who is running the cracked copy.
In case of PHP on the other hand, if people run your software on public web servers, you can easily find them and take them down. Just get a lawyer and turn them in to the police. They could also be breaking DMCA laws if they remove your protection so that gives you even more ammunition.
Technical way to protect your code is obfuscation. It basically makes your code unreadable like binaries in compiled languages (like Java). Of course reverse engineering is possible, but needs more work.
In general it's hard to prevent users from stealing code when the program is written in a scripting language and distributed in plain text. I've found that http://feedafever.com/ did a really nice job of being able to sell PHP code but still give the code to users.
But the solution to your problem is very dependent on the domain of your program. Does this script run on the users machine with no internet connection? Or could this be a hosted service?
I'd also suggest looking at some of your favorite software, and seeing how they convinced you to pay for it initially. The issue I find isn't always "how can I prevent my users from stealing my software" but sometimes more "how do I convince my users that it's in their best interests to pay me". Software piracy often comes when your product is overpriced (Ask your friends what they would pay for a software package like the one you are selling, I've found that I have historically overpriced my software by 20%).
Anyway, I hope this helps. I'm glad that you are trying to create software that is useful to users and also not incredibly crippled. I personally of the mind that all software that isn't shrink wrapped or SAAS should be free, but I totally understand that we all need to eat.
The trick is not to try to prevent the piracy (in the long term, this is a losing battle), but to make the legitimate version of your product more accessible and/or more functional than the pirate versions.
"Making it more functional" generally means providing involves additional features or services to registered users, which cannot be replicated for free by the pirates. This may be printed materials (a users manual, a gift voucher, etc), services such as telephone support or help setting the product up, or online extras within the software.
I'll point out that companies such as RedHat are able to make significant amounts of money selling open source software. The software itself is freely available -- you can download it and use it for free without paying RedHat a penny. But people still pay them for it. Why? Because of the extra services they offer.
"Making it more accessible" means making it easier to get your legitimate software than a pirate copy. If someone visits Google looking for your software and the first result is a pirate download site, they'll take the pirate copy. If the first result is your home page, they're more likely to buy it. This is especially important for low-cost software: pirated software may be 'free', but usually it takes more effort to get. If that effort is outweighed by the low cost and lack of effort of simply buying it legitimately, then you've won the battle.
I saw anti-piracy working once only. Quantel EditBox systems (a post-processing video solution), Hardware+Software+Internet solution against Piracy. Workstation only works after checking if the bank received the monthly rent. If not, workstation was locked. Funny days when this happens... (Funny days for me, no work at all... No funny day for the hacker.)
Well, PHP is far away from hardware solutions... so I guess your only real choice is a server side protected against a tiny unsafe client pushing content, as pointed in some answer yet.
piracy != copyright infringement
There are known routes to litigate copyright infringers.
Does it really matter enough to hire a legal team?
Obfuscation do add something. It will not be fun to try to modify your code at least even if they can take the first version of it. In best case they will try to find some open source project that does something similar. Guess this would give you an fast fix at least for your problem?