Slashdot Mirror
Domain: codeproject.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to codeproject.com.
Stories · 10
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C# Memory Leak Torpedoed Princeton's DARPA Chances
nil0lab writes "In a case of 20/20 hindsight, Princeton DARPA Grand Challenge team member Bryan Cattle reflects on how their code failed to forget obstacles it had passed. It was written in Microsoft's C#, which isn't supposed to let you have memory leaks. 'We kept noticing that the computer would begin to bog down after extended periods of driving. This problem was pernicious because it only showed up after 40 minutes to an hour of driving around and collecting obstacles. The computer performance would just gradually slow down until the car just simply stopped responding, usually with the gas pedal down, and would just drive off into the bush until we pulled the plug. We looked through the code on paper, literally line by line, and just couldn't for the life of us imagine what the problem was.'" -
Stephane Rodriguez Dismantles Open XML
Elektroschock writes "Stephane Rodriguez, a reengineering specialist who became popular for his article on MS Office 2007 binary data, now comprehensively debunks Microsoft's new Open XML format. With small case studies he demonstrates the impossible challenges third-party developers will face. His conclusion: it is 'defective by design.' Next week members of the International Standard Organization are likely to approve the format as a second official ISO standard for office documents, even though most nations have submitted comments. Rodriguez claims he is 'not affiliated to any pro-MS or anti-MS party/org[anization]/ass[ociation].'" -
Why Is "Design by Contract" Not More Popular?
Coryoth writes "Design by Contract, writing pre- and post-conditions on functions, seemed like straightforward common sense to me. Such conditions, in the form of executable code, not only provide more exacting API documentation, but also provide a test harness. Having easy to write unit tests, that are automatically integrated into the inheritance hierarchy in OO languages, 'just made sense'. However, despite being available (to varying degrees of completeness) for many languages other than Eiffel, including Java, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Ada, and even Haskell and Ocaml, the concept has never gained significant traction, particularly in comparison to unit testing frameworks (which DbC complements nicely), and hype like 'Extreme Programming'. So why did Design by Contract fail to take off?" -
Practical Exploits of Broken MD5 Algorithm
jose parinas writes "A practical sample of an MD5 exploit can be found, with source code included,in codeproject, a site for .Net programmers. The intent of the demos is to demonstrate a very specific type of attack that exploits the inherent trust of an MD5 hash. It's sort of a semi-social engineering attack. At Microsoft, the MD5 hash functions are banned. The main problem is that the attack is directed to the distribution of software process, as you can understand reading the paper, Considered Harmful Someday. Some open source programs, like RPM, use MD5, and in many open source distributions MD5 is used as check sum." -
WVG : The New Scalable Vector Graphics
jafro_svg writes "While the press has discussed Microsoft's upcoming 'Sparkle' as a potential Flash-killer - the technology arena on which Microsoft's new technology is having the most impact is SVG. SVG (now a W3 standard for 3 yeras) was itself billed as a Flash-killer some years ago, and speculation about how it might be accepted into the mainstream for developers (i.e. incorporated into IE) now seems inevitable -- you see, Sparkle's real name is WVG and is 90% identical to SVG." Jafro_svg also points out this online SVG tutorial. -
Mouse Gestures in Javascript
christodd writes "I have become big fan of mouse gestures, a feature included in Opera, Mozilla, and MyIE2. There's even a plugin for IE. Other programs like StrokeIt and Cocoa Gestures are also based around the concept. I can't believe nobody else has thought of this before, but what about mouse gestures in javascript? Turns out that it is incredibly simple to implement, and really handy for those 'feature incomplete' web browsers. Unfortunately, for the total user experience, we'd have to upgrade the whole internet..." -
Slashback: Membership, Quarkiness, Audioggogy
Slashback this fine tax-day evening (you did remember, right?) brings you updates on Gentoo Linux, Mike Myer's brush with the Humor Police, Microsoft's spin on the waning Hailstorm, and more. Read on for the details.A tornado's worth of spin control. telstar writes "The Code Report is reporting that last week's story from the New York Times concerning the death of Hailstorm was not entirely accurate. A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that Microsoft is shifting from a model in which MSN was the sole operator to a model where the operation of these services is available to multiple operators."
Onan Meets Midas. daoine writes: "Reversing the outcome of an earlier argument, boston.com is reporting that MGM and New Line Cinema have reached an agreement that permits New Line to continue with the Goldmember name. It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM."
Does dishes, saves gas, freshens your breath, cleans your pets ... Apparently, Gentoo Linux is contagious. JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an interesting review of Gentoo Linux 1.0 and they call it 'the fastest loading, fastest-operating Linux distribution to date.' Gentoo may be the fastest Linux for a workstation today, but according to the review, it still has some problems, most notably, annoying bugs. However, it still manages to score a glowing 8.2 out of 10 overall."
Reader sckevyn also points to the Gentoo PowerPC page for those equipped different.
First steps always seem small. camusflage writes "Yahoo has a story from ZDNet about TheKompany's recent release of tkcPlayer for the Zaurus, which is being billed as the first portable Ogg Vorbis player. A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success."
Honey, your quark is showing. ngrier writes "As a quick follow-up to the story posted here a few days ago regarding the potential quark star, the NASA APOD today is a picture of the aforementioned star."
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Interview with Stanley Lippman, Mr. Visual C++
Bender writes "Stanley Lippman, who is best known for his work on the C++ language, recently became the head honcho for Microsoft's Visual C++ product. This is a link to a recent interview in which he discusses standards conformance and Microsoft's policy towards C99." -
Visual C++ and C++ Standard
Screaming Lunatic writes: "There is an interview over at codeproject about the future of C++ and .NET. Since I don't really care about .NET, the interesting part of the article is about the quest to standarize Visual C++. If you're going to code for Windows, Visual C++ is one of your few choices for a IDE/compiler combo. (Even though, if I'm not mistaken, you can hook gcc up to the IDE.) M$ seems somewhat in favor of conforming to the C++ standard, which is surprising. They talk about pushing forward with template compliance. I'm still waiting for them to get the variable declarations in for-loops right. They also claim to beat several popular compilers in compliance tests." -
Visual C++ and C++ Standard
Screaming Lunatic writes: "There is an interview over at codeproject about the future of C++ and .NET. Since I don't really care about .NET, the interesting part of the article is about the quest to standarize Visual C++. If you're going to code for Windows, Visual C++ is one of your few choices for a IDE/compiler combo. (Even though, if I'm not mistaken, you can hook gcc up to the IDE.) M$ seems somewhat in favor of conforming to the C++ standard, which is surprising. They talk about pushing forward with template compliance. I'm still waiting for them to get the variable declarations in for-loops right. They also claim to beat several popular compilers in compliance tests."