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neutrino38 writes "This is an alert for all developers using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. At the beginning of January, Microsoft issued a security fix for Visual Studio 2005 forcing the use of new dynamic libraries (DLLs) by all applications compiled with this IDE. Basically, applications compiled with Visual Studio 2005 will not work anymore on an ordinary (non-dev) PC unless the newer DLLs are installed. And we found out that this is true on fully updated PCs. I just posted some details and some suggested fixes." Read below for some more background on Microsoft's so-called "side by side assemblies."

For those unfamiliar with the Microsoft world, native microsoft applications written in C++ rely on dynamic libraries. Two of them are infamous: MSVCRT.DLL and MFCxx.dll. Because of software evolution and security fixes, multiple versions of these DLLs were often present in the system, causing application instability. Where Linux implemented a simple suffix notation on the dynamic libraries, Microsoft created a new beast in 2001: the Side By Side assembly. These are basically DLLs with a companion XML file that identifies them. The XML file contains a digital signature and when the system binds these DLLs dynamically to an application, it checks that the signature of the DLL matches the DLL itself. When everythings runs well, this is pretty transparent. But when issues arise, it becomes excruciatingly difficult to troubleshoot and fix. DLL hell is not over.

neutrino38 writes "Adobe has released the specification of the AMF format, the format used by Flash Remoting — the equivalent of AJAX for the Flash world. The article doesn't mention the AMFPHP project and the fact that some German and Canadian guys had reverse-engineered the format a long time ago. Adobe's action eases a long-standing legal uncertainty that slowed the uptake of AMFPHP for commercial projects. Next, we note that Adobe has not released its RTMP protocol used to contact a Flash Media server. This latter protocol is more interesting as it provides sessionful operation; media streaming; RPC both client-side and server-side using the AMF format; and shared objects among several sessions and server-side events. Fortunately, RTMP has been partially reverse-engineered by the red5 project. I suggest that the W3C should take a look at the whole Flash ecosystem as they think about upgrading the HTTP protocol."