ActiveX support has a + and - though. Most exploits into IE get in through ActiveX and that is why Firefox doesn't have oob support for ActiveX. If you want though there is a plugin for Firefox that adds ActiveX support.
Yes, but that's the same kind of user education problem that you have with "click me and wipe your system please" email viruses. XP sp2 helps a lot with this and makes it harder for people to screw up.
The support would still be necessary to replace IE entirely - without too much messing around for Admins and users. After all, the ActiveX remote code download + install part of ActiveX is only the tiniest part of the technology. And, of course, it's needed for Windows Update to work - or any other corporate intranet Active X stuff.
I for one look forward to seeing if Microsoft is forced to sell the "stripped down OS" that Bill Gates and other "expert witnesses" in Microsoft swore blind could not be produced/delivered without fatally destroying the entire OS.
That was 6 years ago. They might have found a way around it by now.
The problem they had was the Judge didn't specify what he was asking, and wouldn't let them ask for clarification. So when he said "remove all of it", they thought he meant "remove all of it" - as in every DLL it uses. Taken on face value, such a request might even include the C Runtime Library.
The problem is that with Microsoft they never give the user any options to say "hey thanks for making html such an intergal part of my computing expierence now let me use X product instead of your sucky component please".
Don't blame Microsoft for the Netscape guys not implementing the COM interfaces that IE uses - blame Netscape.
The interfaces are there. They're documented. If the alternative browser manufacturers really cared about you doing what you claim above that you want to do, they'd implement the interfaces. They'd implement ActiveX. They'd implement.EML,.HTAs...... It's not hard, if you've already written the rest of the browser.
But do they?
No, they don't. Heck, Netscape not doing that was one of the nails they put in their own coffin.
This all came up in the Antitrust trial - Intuit wanted to use Netscape, but Netscape couldn't componentize their browser, so they went with IE.
There are emails in the evidence record for the trial full of buck-passing and blame throwing, but none of those emails blame Microsoft - they are from Netscape engineers blaming Netscape's engineers.
Things are different now - for example, Gecko is componentized. All it would need would be a wrapper around IE's COM model, support for ActiveX, HTMLHelp, etc, and it'd be a usable replacement for IE.
However, given that no-one seems to be willing to do that work, no-one is going to be able to replace IE no matter how much you bitch about it.
If MS is forced to sell XPLite or whatever, all that will happen is that MS spends a negligible amount to disable some features in Win XP, make sure it is on the shelves for a while, and then retire it. Is there a requirement to have this as an option on new OEM computers? Will computers that come with XP Lite installed be cheaper? I doubt it. Seriously. No one will buy this.
It won't hurt MS one bit. They will jump at the first chance to get rid of this product. The question then becomes, how long can the courts force MS to make a product available, when no one is buying it? More importantly, why? Will it really address the issues?
Antitrust is meant to protect consumers.
So if Microsoft do this, and consumers spurn it, the antitrust trial was wrong, based on the actions of the people it's allegedly trying to protect.
I agree that the incorporation of that functionality into the os is not in itself a bad thing. But that doesn't mean that a version can't be shipped that doesn't have the outer layers that use the hooks or that the hooks can't be designed for use by any codec.
The hooks are designed for use by any codec. Media Player doesn't only play WMV or WMA files - it'll handle anything you write a codec for. There are only two companies who don't write generic codecs that will work happily inside Windows with no external player application; one company is called Apple, the other is called Real Networks.
Look at DivX - that works quite happily inside Windows Media Player. As do most MPEG codecs used by things like Intervideo WinDVD. It's only the companies who require that you use their "skin" around the codec for marketing and branding purposes who seem to have a problem with playing nicely with Windows.
Like we all remember about OS design: if the OS crashes, when a program is doing it's job, it's the fault of the OS.
You don't seem to know what you're talking about. Virus scanners run kernel-side, as device drivers embedded in the file system.
The system should already "isolate and warn"--when applications unexpectedly quit, guess what? This dosen't change a thing in that regard.
Not if the code is running in kernel mode.
I've used Norton, McAfee, and a number of other AV softwares, across hundreds of computers. I've never felt the urge to say they do it poorly at all. Perhaps McAfee is a bit more bloated than it needs to be, but It's probably better in almost any respect than what MS will put out.
McAfee has been known to badly clean viruses, leaving the payload intact and causing new variants of the same virus to spread. Norton has problems with their software not updating its virus signatures other than on a weekly basis (again, something this API tries to fix). CA's EZ-AntiVirus has occasionally caused BSODs when using files over network shares.
I've not crashed Norton yet, but I expect to be able to do it at some point. I've certainly had occasions where it has brought my system to a complete crawl.
Most AV software alredy does that, and more; why would it need to interface to the operating system?
Because most AV software, although they already do it, do it exceptionally poorly, causing system crashes and other problems for running applications.
If the OS defines the interface and enforces it, the AV software can do its magic in a tested environment, which Microsoft can ensure will not crash the system. If the AV software crashes, it can be isolated and the user warned, instead of it taking down the entire system with a BSOD.
Yes this is a news site. Yes, guys and gals this IS news. Yeah, the editors have a anti-MS bias but that does not mean that it's not newsworthy.
Actually, this is a news site until people call the editors on their integrity, at which point it morphs into a news-commentary site.
Slashdot has a very particular split personality in this regard. It likes to think it's a news site, engages in editorializing, and then washes its hands of the whole mess when it posts FUD, downright lies, or downright stupidity.
For once, I'd love to see Slashdot... oh, I dunno... post retractions? Actually be a site for nerds, as opposed to a Linux-only site.
When was the last time you saw a Microsoft OS release announced on Slashdot? Compare with the last time an x.x.1 release of the linux kernel, sendmail or XFree86 came out.
So no, this isn't a news site. It's a propoganda site.
The article gives the impression that these chips are storing or freezing light. I dont see how this is possible. If they were truly "storing" light how would one know? The way I see it, is that if you can "see" or "observe" light then by definition the light must be escaping.
A better way of describing what this stuff does is that it records the state of the wave at every point in the medium. When they want to regenerate it, they recreate the pulse using that information. Effectively, all they're doing is recording the 3D information that they need to recreate the pulse, almost like a hologram.
The pulse is not actually still in the system while it's "frozen" - the energy has dissipated, and the record of its state is all that's left.
Remember, when light moves through a substance, you're not dealing with a continuous solid indivisible "thing" that remains unchanged. When photons move through glass, they get absorbed and re-emitted billions of times before they finally come out the other side.
On a separate note, it's getting increasingly difficult for people who want to avoid antiperspirant on (perhaps ill-founded) fears of aluminum damage to one's body. Particularly for women; my girlfriend literally can't find any deodorants for women any more.
Never mind the ill-founded fears of aluminum damage; I'm more worried about the well-founded fears of getting plugged pores under your arm which cause boils.
I speak from experience of having one lanced with badly-applied anaesthetic. (ie. the anaesthetic didn't work at all).
Antiperspirants are bad for you. Only use them when you absolutely need to. For every other occasion, there are deodorants.
In effect, the.NET code remains in interpretation-intended form right up until the end. The point is that it carries around tons of info with it that makes reverse engineering easy just as with interpreted languages. The original Microsoft BASIC was an interpreted language and subject to this vulnerability, which is why it was so easy to copy on punched paper tape and why Bill Gates once referred to many of his earliest users as "thieves."
Unfortunately for Cringely, he appears to have trouble figuring out the difference between a language interpreter and an interpreted language. Microsoft BASIC was written in assembly, and as such was not subject to this vulnerbility. The thing that made it easy to copy was the fact that it was... well... binary data.
Speaking of C++ books...
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Practical C++
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· Score: 1
One I saw recently in a store near Albany NY was a really really cool book aimed at people who already knew how to program C++, but which provided tricks and tactics. It included (amongst other things) a whole section on how to implement a flat-file database including variable-length records, a section on caching data, another on resource management... All really juicy hardcore technical details that I'd never seen before in a C++ book - and done in a framework-less manner.
I was out of town for a wedding, so I didn't pick a copy up because it wouldn't fit in my carry-on. I'm really regretting this because I can't remember what it's called now. It's not C++ In Action by Bartosz Milewski (although that's a really good book).
I've been looking through bookstores in Seattle ever since hoping to happen across it. Does anyone have any idea which book this is? I seem to remember it had a great sense of humor, and the back panel referred to it being a book for experienced/professional programmers (or something like that).
Common people. Inform yourselves, read, google a bit more.
MS makes deals in which they forbid PC manufacturers to bundle any other software but MS's own.
THus if DEll, HP or another company want to distribute MS Windows *and* a non MS media player, MS will not sign a contract that would allow a manufacturer to do just that.
I call Yahtzee, and rule YOU out as the weakest link.
Every Dell machine I've ever owned comes with MusicMatch Jukebox and RealPlayer pre-installed.
The Toshiba Tablet PC I'm typing on right now came with RealPlayer and Quicktime pre-installed.
What does this tell you? I mean, other than that you're completely wrong, and whoever moderated you up is also similarly smoking crack?
Since my recollection of the USS Yorktown failure stems from back when it actually happened, I'll admit the crashing of NT is a detail I may be incorrect on. I do remember being quite clear at the time that it was in fact an application fault and subsequent operating system failure, but again that was six years ago.
I was unable to find a link that explained the situation in more (technical) detail. If you have a link that would indicate specifically whether the operating system of the computer running the database software was still alive or not after the crash, then that would be helpful. Otherwise the issue remains unclear.
The Yorktown last September suffered an engineering LAN casualty when a petty officer calibrating a fuel valve entered a zero into a shipboard database, officials said. The resulting database overload caused the ship's LAN, including 27 dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro miniature remote terminal units, to crash, they said.
The petty officer, who has since left the Navy, fed the bad data into the Remote Data Base Manager, a Standard Monitoring Control System application. SMCS, developed by Canadian Aviation Electronics Inc. of Toronto, allows sailors to monitor the ship's engineering and propulsion plant for potential casualties.
The system provides troubleshooting data and normally indicates whether a valve is open or closed without requiring calibration. But something went wrong.
"There was a problem in that this one valve was closed, but SMCS wasn't indicating it as such," said Cmdr. Eric Sweigard, the Yorktown's commanding officer. "So this petty officer started playing with the data.
"This was the only time it occurred, and since then there have been some changes made to prevent it from happening again," he said.
SMCS managers are now aware of the problem of entering zero into database fields and are trained to bypass a bad data field and change the value if such a problem were to occur again, Sweigard said.
"Now that we know what can happen, we've realized how to bring the system back quickly," Petty Officer 1st Class Phillip Cramer said. "All we have to do is change the zero to any number, and everything comes right back up."
Note that Excel had the first GUI-driven spreadsheet.
Wordprocessors were even older - and Microsoft Word has the distinction of being arguably the first ever massmarket WYSIWYG wordprocessor.
Borland? Not sure what you're getting at with them, but I'm pretty sure that Harvard Graphics was the precursor to Powerpoint - not anything Borland came up with.
Wrong, it is Microsoft's fault. The application cause a divide-by-zero fault. Windows NT failed to properly handle that fault, and died. It is Microsoft's fault. There is no excuse for an operating system being brought down by a divide by zero error in an application.
Do some research. The OS wasn't brought down, as proved by the fact that they could bring the entire system back up by merely changing the zero in a single field to any other value.
Ok, I'll bite. How about the USS Yorktown shutdown in 1997. A Windows NT bug crashed their engine control system and required that they be towed to port. Dockside repairs took several days. You can get the full story here.
Had this happened in a battle, it would have likely resulted in loss of life and probably the ship.
Nice attempt at FUD there, skippy. It's a pity you're misinformed and ignorant of the true facts.
In a letter to the "Comment and Discussion" department, published in the Aug 98 Naval Institute Proceedings, page 22, Captain Richard T. Rushton, then-CO of Yorktown, categorically states:
"The Yorktown was never towed as a result of any Smart Ship initiative. During my command, we lost propulsion power twice while using the new technology. Each time, we knew what caused the interrupt and were underway again in about 30 minutes. The September 1997 incident was caused by incorrect data insertion by a well-trained crewman. The Yorktown returned to port using two FFG-7 emergency control units that specifically had been requested by me, and supported by other commands as a risk reducer. We knew there were some risks in the engineering development model propulsion-control system installed under a rapid prototyping development effort. The bottom line: The data field safeguards found in production-level systems were not installed yet in the Yorktown by intention, until complete wring-out was accomplished.""
"On Sept. 21, 1997, the Yorktown experienced what the Navy called "an engineering LAN casualty" [GCN, July 13, Page 1]. A systems administrator fed bad data into the ship's Remote Database Manager, which caused a buffer overflow when the software tried to divide by zero. The overflow crashed computers on the LAN and caused the Yorktown to lose control of its propulsion system, Navy officials said.
The Navy CIO Office is trying to determine whether the crash was caused by the software application, NT or some other problem.
"So far, it doesn't seem like it's an NT issue but a basic programming problem," said deputy CIO Ron Turner, who is in charge of the inquiry."
"Between July 1995 and June 1997, the Yorktown lost propulsion power to buffer overflows twice while using the new Smart Ship technology, said Capt. Richard Rushton, commanding officer of the Yorktown at the time of the failures. But in each incidence the Yorktown crew knew what caused the failure and quickly restored systems, Rushton said. "NT was never the cause of any problem on the ship," Rushton said. "The problems were all in programs, database and code within the individual pieces of software that we were using."
""Now that we know what can happen, we've realized how to bring the system back quickly," Petty Officer 1st Class Phillip Cramer said. "All we have to do is change the zero to any number, and everything comes right back up.""
So all in all, it doesn't sound like the system crashed to me... You can't bring back a dead system by changing data in a field. You can't even change the data if the system is down.
Re:See a doctor
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Cyberchondria
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· Score: 5, Insightful
If you are concerned about something health related the best advice I can give is DON'T LOOK ON THE INTERNET and see a doctor. Doctors vists are a great way to get piece of mind, which IMO is well worth the cost/hassle.
Doctors can also be (pick several):
1. Only Human, not Omnipotent AllSeeing DemiGods. 2. Overworked. 3. Reduced to a 15 minute visit per person, max - when the average visit used to be a much larger figure only 20 years ago. 4. Not always up on the latest research and/or information. 5. Quick to dismiss other possibilities after arriving at a single conclusion, even if other evidence presents itself.
Analyzing the data effectively can give you an edge over a doctor. You know your body. You know how it should work. Just be comprehensive in your analysis, and don't leave anything out.
I was once diagnosed with tendonitis. The actual cause of the problems I was experiencing was a small boil in my armpit (due to using antiperspirants). The lump was pressing against a nerve, giving all of the same symptoms as tendonitis (the nerves are quite exposed there). Several visits later, and I diagnose the problem myself. A short course of antibiotics later, and the problem was completely gone.
Another example:
I was diagnosed with borderline sleep apnea by a sleep medicine center. I was waking up with severe headaches every morning, and had a wildly variable sleep cycle. The idea would have been to go on a CPAP machine, and see if I got better.
What was the real problem?
I'm sensitive to caffeine. I don't get the jitters or get hyper - I just get anxious. I metabolise it so quickly that in my sleep, I'd be undergoing caffeine withdrawal. That was what the headaches were. I cut out caffeine, and everything's fine now. I'm much more confident, happier, and have *no* headaches when I wake up.
Doctors aren't infallible. If they were, they'd be magicians. They're not - they're just human. Treat them accordingly.
No, my understanding was that it was microsoft policy to use 8.3 naming because of backward compatibility (with older filesystems, i.e. Win 3.1, DOS, etc). Any of the released code with VC6 (and I think VC7) is 8.3. And I remember reading them suggesting that people follow this as well, for their own code.
Having worked at Microsoft, I beg to differ. Source filenames are whatever you want. Files which have to be distributed externally are 8.3 because of ISO9660 (and a slight efficiency increase on VFAT systems). But files used internally? That's personal preference.
Also there appear to be duplicate headers, repeated in various directories that I'm almost positive would end up screwing the compile process in a real build. Also, another thing is that, if their distributed files with VC6/7 are indicative of their internal naming, they stick to a strict 8.3 naming scheme, and make note of this in their documentation (don't remember *where* it was that I read it, but it was MS docs, and I remember being surprised by it). Another thing, again assuming that the files distributed with VC6/7 are a good model, their files tend to be all UPPERCASE! For example, here's a listing from their includes in for VC6:
1. Filenames can be shared in different folders with no issue. No problem whatsoever.
2. 8.3 filenames are *only* needed for ISO9660 CDRs. The source tree uses whatever filenames people want.
For example, on the 6502 family (like the 6510 from the C64), you have only three registers; X, Y and A. These registers can only hold a byte each. Most of the variables you have are stored in zero pointers, a 255-byte range from address $00-$FF.
Then the 68k CPU (as in the Amiga, Atari, etc) you have several more registers which can be used more freely. You have D0-D7 data registers and A0-A7 address registers. These can be operated as bytes, words or longwords as you wish, from wherever you want.
The x86 assembly is written the "wrong way", and is pretty confusing at times. Where I would say "move.l 4,a6" on the 68k, I have to say "mov dx,4" on the x86. Takes a few minutes to adjust each time.
No, I believe you'll find that the C64's assembly language is written the wrong way. The correct (Zilog) way is the other way around.
Sheesh... these C64 users... Sinclair owners still have to put them in their place.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
ActiveX support has a + and - though. Most exploits into IE get in through ActiveX and that is why Firefox doesn't have oob support for ActiveX. If you want though there is a plugin for Firefox that adds ActiveX support.
Yes, but that's the same kind of user education problem that you have with "click me and wipe your system please" email viruses. XP sp2 helps a lot with this and makes it harder for people to screw up.
The support would still be necessary to replace IE entirely - without too much messing around for Admins and users. After all, the ActiveX remote code download + install part of ActiveX is only the tiniest part of the technology. And, of course, it's needed for Windows Update to work - or any other corporate intranet Active X stuff.
The problem is that with Microsoft they never give the user any options to say "hey thanks for making html such an intergal part of my computing expierence now let me use X product instead of your sucky component please".
.EML, .HTAs... ... It's not hard, if you've already written the rest of the browser.
Don't blame Microsoft for the Netscape guys not implementing the COM interfaces that IE uses - blame Netscape.
The interfaces are there. They're documented. If the alternative browser manufacturers really cared about you doing what you claim above that you want to do, they'd implement the interfaces. They'd implement ActiveX. They'd implement
But do they?
No, they don't. Heck, Netscape not doing that was one of the nails they put in their own coffin.
This all came up in the Antitrust trial - Intuit wanted to use Netscape, but Netscape couldn't componentize their browser, so they went with IE.
There are emails in the evidence record for the trial full of buck-passing and blame throwing, but none of those emails blame Microsoft - they are from Netscape engineers blaming Netscape's engineers.
Things are different now - for example, Gecko is componentized. All it would need would be a wrapper around IE's COM model, support for ActiveX, HTMLHelp, etc, and it'd be a usable replacement for IE.
However, given that no-one seems to be willing to do that work, no-one is going to be able to replace IE no matter how much you bitch about it.
If MS is forced to sell XPLite or whatever, all that will happen is that MS spends a negligible amount to disable some features in Win XP, make sure it is on the shelves for a while, and then retire it. Is there a requirement to have this as an option on new OEM computers? Will computers that come with XP Lite installed be cheaper? I doubt it.
Seriously. No one will buy this.
It won't hurt MS one bit. They will jump at the first chance to get rid of this product. The question then becomes, how long can the courts force MS to make a product available, when no one is buying it? More importantly, why? Will it really address the issues?
Antitrust is meant to protect consumers.
So if Microsoft do this, and consumers spurn it, the antitrust trial was wrong, based on the actions of the people it's allegedly trying to protect.
I agree that the incorporation of that functionality into the os is not in itself a bad thing. But that doesn't mean that a version can't be shipped that doesn't have the outer layers that use the hooks or that the hooks can't be designed for use by any codec.
The hooks are designed for use by any codec. Media Player doesn't only play WMV or WMA files - it'll handle anything you write a codec for. There are only two companies who don't write generic codecs that will work happily inside Windows with no external player application; one company is called Apple, the other is called Real Networks.
Look at DivX - that works quite happily inside Windows Media Player. As do most MPEG codecs used by things like Intervideo WinDVD. It's only the companies who require that you use their "skin" around the codec for marketing and branding purposes who seem to have a problem with playing nicely with Windows.
Like we all remember about OS design: if the OS crashes, when a program is doing it's job, it's the fault of the OS.
You don't seem to know what you're talking about. Virus scanners run kernel-side, as device drivers embedded in the file system.
The system should already "isolate and warn"--when applications unexpectedly quit, guess what? This dosen't change a thing in that regard.
Not if the code is running in kernel mode.
I've used Norton, McAfee, and a number of other AV softwares, across hundreds of computers. I've never felt the urge to say they do it poorly at all. Perhaps McAfee is a bit more bloated than it needs to be, but It's probably better in almost any respect than what MS will put out.
McAfee has been known to badly clean viruses, leaving the payload intact and causing new variants of the same virus to spread. Norton has problems with their software not updating its virus signatures other than on a weekly basis (again, something this API tries to fix). CA's EZ-AntiVirus has occasionally caused BSODs when using files over network shares.
I've not crashed Norton yet, but I expect to be able to do it at some point. I've certainly had occasions where it has brought my system to a complete crawl.
But why the heck would that be useful?
Most AV software alredy does that, and more; why would it need to interface to the operating system?
Because most AV software, although they already do it, do it exceptionally poorly, causing system crashes and other problems for running applications.
If the OS defines the interface and enforces it, the AV software can do its magic in a tested environment, which Microsoft can ensure will not crash the system. If the AV software crashes, it can be isolated and the user warned, instead of it taking down the entire system with a BSOD.
Makes perfect sense.
Yes this is a news site. Yes, guys and gals this IS news. Yeah, the editors have a anti-MS bias but that does not mean that it's not newsworthy.
... oh, I dunno... post retractions? Actually be a site for nerds, as opposed to a Linux-only site.
Actually, this is a news site until people call the editors on their integrity, at which point it morphs into a news-commentary site.
Slashdot has a very particular split personality in this regard. It likes to think it's a news site, engages in editorializing, and then washes its hands of the whole mess when it posts FUD, downright lies, or downright stupidity.
For once, I'd love to see Slashdot
When was the last time you saw a Microsoft OS release announced on Slashdot? Compare with the last time an x.x.1 release of the linux kernel, sendmail or XFree86 came out.
So no, this isn't a news site. It's a propoganda site.
The article gives the impression that these chips are storing or freezing light. I dont see how this is possible. If they were truly "storing" light how would one know? The way I see it, is that if you can "see" or "observe" light then by definition the light must be escaping.
A better way of describing what this stuff does is that it records the state of the wave at every point in the medium. When they want to regenerate it, they recreate the pulse using that information. Effectively, all they're doing is recording the 3D information that they need to recreate the pulse, almost like a hologram.
The pulse is not actually still in the system while it's "frozen" - the energy has dissipated, and the record of its state is all that's left.
Remember, when light moves through a substance, you're not dealing with a continuous solid indivisible "thing" that remains unchanged. When photons move through glass, they get absorbed and re-emitted billions of times before they finally come out the other side.
would even go as far as saying that 100% of the "Linux hacks" are third party software hacks unrelated to any vulnerabilities in the kernel itself.
I'd go as far as saying that about Windows as well. But then you'd jump up and down and claim "no fair".
If you're talking about Linux-as-kernel, not Linux-as-distro, you're being very disingenuous.
On a separate note, it's getting increasingly difficult for people who want to avoid antiperspirant on (perhaps ill-founded) fears of aluminum damage to one's body. Particularly for women; my girlfriend literally can't find any deodorants for women any more.
Never mind the ill-founded fears of aluminum damage; I'm more worried about the well-founded fears of getting plugged pores under your arm which cause boils.
I speak from experience of having one lanced with badly-applied anaesthetic. (ie. the anaesthetic didn't work at all).
Antiperspirants are bad for you. Only use them when you absolutely need to. For every other occasion, there are deodorants.
Now, back to your original problem.
In effect, the .NET code remains in interpretation-intended form right up until the end. The point is that it carries around tons of info with it that makes reverse engineering easy just as with interpreted languages. The original Microsoft BASIC was an interpreted language and subject to this vulnerability, which is why it was so easy to copy on punched paper tape and why Bill Gates once referred to many of his earliest users as "thieves."
... well... binary data.
Unfortunately for Cringely, he appears to have trouble figuring out the difference between a language interpreter and an interpreted language. Microsoft BASIC was written in assembly, and as such was not subject to this vulnerbility. The thing that made it easy to copy was the fact that it was
One I saw recently in a store near Albany NY was a really really cool book aimed at people who already knew how to program C++, but which provided tricks and tactics. It included (amongst other things) a whole section on how to implement a flat-file database including variable-length records, a section on caching data, another on resource management... All really juicy hardcore technical details that I'd never seen before in a C++ book - and done in a framework-less manner.
I was out of town for a wedding, so I didn't pick a copy up because it wouldn't fit in my carry-on. I'm really regretting this because I can't remember what it's called now. It's not C++ In Action by Bartosz Milewski (although that's a really good book).
I've been looking through bookstores in Seattle ever since hoping to happen across it. Does anyone have any idea which book this is? I seem to remember it had a great sense of humor, and the back panel referred to it being a book for experienced/professional programmers (or something like that).
Thanks!
Does it really matter anymore what Microsoft is doing?
Where I live, opterons are selling like hotcakes and something [Redhat] must [Debian] be going onto them.
Not necessarily. After all, Opterons run 32-bit code fine too. So they're probably all still running Windows.
Common people. Inform yourselves, read, google a bit more.
MS makes deals in which they forbid PC manufacturers to bundle any other software but MS's own.
THus if DEll, HP or another company want to distribute MS Windows *and* a non MS media player, MS will not sign a contract that would allow a manufacturer to do just that.
I call Yahtzee, and rule YOU out as the weakest link.
Every Dell machine I've ever owned comes with MusicMatch Jukebox and RealPlayer pre-installed.
The Toshiba Tablet PC I'm typing on right now came with RealPlayer and Quicktime pre-installed.
What does this tell you? I mean, other than that you're completely wrong, and whoever moderated you up is also similarly smoking crack?
Fuck MSFT it's called bounds checking. e.g.
1. load int from char array
2. check int against sizeof(yourbuffer)
3. reject if greater
Not exactly a challenging task. I guess they're too busy adding in all that crapware to actually code at least one thing right.
I guess you missed the original article, brainiac, but your code is flawed.
"Reject if greater" will fail if int is negative.
But hey, thanks for proving that you're as dumb as a box of rocks.
I was unable to find a link that explained the situation in more (technical) detail. If you have a link that would indicate specifically whether the operating system of the computer running the database software was still alive or not after the crash, then that would be helpful. Otherwise the issue remains unclear.
Here you go:
http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/november9/6.
Bottom Line: good docs listen.
Hear hear.
Maybe Lotus, Wordperfect and Borland?
No. Visicalc, from VisiCorp was the first spreadsheet - not Lotus.
Spreadsheet history
Note that Excel had the first GUI-driven spreadsheet.
Wordprocessors were even older - and Microsoft Word has the distinction of being arguably the first ever massmarket WYSIWYG wordprocessor.
Borland? Not sure what you're getting at with them, but I'm pretty sure that Harvard Graphics was the precursor to Powerpoint - not anything Borland came up with.
Wrong, it is Microsoft's fault. The application cause a divide-by-zero fault. Windows NT failed to properly handle that fault, and died. It is Microsoft's fault. There is no excuse for an operating system being brought down by a divide by zero error in an application.
Do some research. The OS wasn't brought down, as proved by the fact that they could bring the entire system back up by merely changing the zero in a single field to any other value.
Had this happened in a battle, it would have likely resulted in loss of life and probably the ship.
Nice attempt at FUD there, skippy. It's a pity you're misinformed and ignorant of the true facts.
In a letter to the "Comment and Discussion" department, published in the Aug 98 Naval Institute Proceedings, page 22, Captain Richard T. Rushton, then-CO of Yorktown, categorically states:
Or this one: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~survive/NEWS/news003.
http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/november9/6.
So all in all, it doesn't sound like the system crashed to me... You can't bring back a dead system by changing data in a field. You can't even change the data if the system is down.
If you are concerned about something health related the best advice I can give is DON'T LOOK ON THE INTERNET and see a doctor. Doctors vists are a great way to get piece of mind, which IMO is well worth the cost/hassle.
Doctors can also be (pick several):
1. Only Human, not Omnipotent AllSeeing DemiGods.
2. Overworked.
3. Reduced to a 15 minute visit per person, max - when the average visit used to be a much larger figure only 20 years ago.
4. Not always up on the latest research and/or information.
5. Quick to dismiss other possibilities after arriving at a single conclusion, even if other evidence presents itself.
Analyzing the data effectively can give you an edge over a doctor. You know your body. You know how it should work. Just be comprehensive in your analysis, and don't leave anything out.
I was once diagnosed with tendonitis. The actual cause of the problems I was experiencing was a small boil in my armpit (due to using antiperspirants). The lump was pressing against a nerve, giving all of the same symptoms as tendonitis (the nerves are quite exposed there). Several visits later, and I diagnose the problem myself. A short course of antibiotics later, and the problem was completely gone.
Another example:
I was diagnosed with borderline sleep apnea by a sleep medicine center. I was waking up with severe headaches every morning, and had a wildly variable sleep cycle. The idea would have been to go on a CPAP machine, and see if I got better.
What was the real problem?
I'm sensitive to caffeine. I don't get the jitters or get hyper - I just get anxious. I metabolise it so quickly that in my sleep, I'd be undergoing caffeine withdrawal. That was what the headaches were. I cut out caffeine, and everything's fine now. I'm much more confident, happier, and have *no* headaches when I wake up.
Doctors aren't infallible. If they were, they'd be magicians. They're not - they're just human. Treat them accordingly.
No, my understanding was that it was microsoft policy to use 8.3 naming because of backward compatibility (with older filesystems, i.e. Win 3.1, DOS, etc). Any of the released code with VC6 (and I think VC7) is 8.3. And I remember reading them suggesting that people follow this as well, for their own code.
Having worked at Microsoft, I beg to differ. Source filenames are whatever you want. Files which have to be distributed externally are 8.3 because of ISO9660 (and a slight efficiency increase on VFAT systems). But files used internally? That's personal preference.
Also there appear to be duplicate headers, repeated in various directories that I'm almost positive would end up screwing the compile process in a real build. Also, another thing is that, if their distributed files with VC6/7 are indicative of their internal naming, they stick to a strict 8.3 naming scheme, and make note of this in their documentation (don't remember *where* it was that I read it, but it was MS docs, and I remember being surprised by it). Another thing, again assuming that the files distributed with VC6/7 are a good model, their files tend to be all UPPERCASE! For example, here's a listing from their includes in for VC6:
1. Filenames can be shared in different folders with no issue. No problem whatsoever.
2. 8.3 filenames are *only* needed for ISO9660 CDRs. The source tree uses whatever filenames people want.
For example, on the 6502 family (like the 6510 from the C64), you have only three registers; X, Y and A. These registers can only hold a byte each. Most of the variables you have are stored in zero pointers, a 255-byte range from address $00-$FF.
;-)
Then the 68k CPU (as in the Amiga, Atari, etc) you have several more registers which can be used more freely. You have D0-D7 data registers and A0-A7 address registers. These can be operated as bytes, words or longwords as you wish, from wherever you want.
The x86 assembly is written the "wrong way", and is pretty confusing at times. Where I would say "move.l 4,a6" on the 68k, I have to say "mov dx,4" on the x86. Takes a few minutes to adjust each time.
No, I believe you'll find that the C64's assembly language is written the wrong way. The correct (Zilog) way is the other way around.
Sheesh... these C64 users... Sinclair owners still have to put them in their place.