Dude! Wake up! How often do you open an XML-RPC packet trace with your morning coffee and think 'Gosh, how cool it's in a readble bloated text format and I don't need to parse it with Ethereal !'
Seriously, the only time readability is needed is when you edit an XML web page with a notepad. Otherwise it's a brain-dead technology that first got popular among scripting developers, which are notoriously afraid of anything binary, and then it got pushed into the areas where it didn't belong.
Unfortunately, the majority of XML zealots are plain ignorant. Should they took time to learn what the byte ordering and TLV encoding mean, we would've not probably have this XML craze now:-/
Don't get me wrong, XML has its place. But it is next to HTML, and not next to RPC or databases!
Personally, if I had to fork out about 40 quid for a game, and then pay by the month to play it online, I don't think I'd be forking out the 40 quid in the first place.
But what if these 40 quids covered the game and a couple of months of a game play ?
I think it's a fair and pretty decent deal. You are getting a chance to play the game for a while and if you like it, you start paying for a gameplay. And the money go to compensate the provider for support, bandwidth and hardware expenses.
In fact, World of Warcraft is packaged exactly like that (only it's 1 month though AFAIK).
Or better yet read Edgar Poe's The Gold Bug and follow the recipe:) Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted It my inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat:
"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.
"In the present case --indeed in all cases of secret writing --the first question regards the language of the cipher; for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned, depend on, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun on the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was, I assumed the cryptograph to be English.
...
Give it a read. Great stuff, especially considering Poe lived in first half of 19th century.
Generate per-message signing key just the way these guys do it, but require your peer to disclose this key immediately after he uses it to verify your message.
PS. Damn.. 8 pages and 10 references for a simple idea, which would probably occupy under 2 lines in a normal crypto book.. man, what a bloat.
Good point. However I'd assume that even pre-packaged software would allow certain amount tweaking to accomodate it to specific usage scenarios. If so, then its default installation will be rather generic and thus not produce realistic numbers when tested.
All this performance testing is a very tricky business. Easy money though:-)
I happened to see a promotional video of one of the Energia subsidaries, who were developing Buran's thermal tiles.
The demo'ed tiles that were about 4" x 4" and a half inch think or so. They had really impressive bit where the tile was resting flat on the palm of some girl and it was blasted with oxy-acetylene torch from the top. The spot under the torch was red hot, yet the girl was alive and smiling:)
'Stealth mode' firewall normally eats ingress pings and egress 'ttl expired'. And some other rarely used ICMP types.
Never should it block ingress ICMP/DestUnreachable for Related egress TCP or UDP traffic, because this will break tons of various applications.
If eDonkey and BitTorrent ignore UDP socket errors, it just speaks that much of their developers, not the fact that NACK-based protocols are bad.
One way or another Reliable UDP (or any other custom quasi-L2 protocol for that matter) is rather advanced subject. If someone decides to tackle it, I just hope they are over-skilled and under-confident and not the other way around.
Ever heard of ICMP or more specifically - DestUnreachable/PortUnreachable code ?
It is essentially a guaranteed system-level NACK, which comes handy exactly in the situation you describe. Every decent NACK-based protocol implementation has ICMP handler (see SOL_IP, IP_RECVERR in setsockopt).
Most of reliable UDP protocols do use unsolicited NACK'ing and solicited ACK'ing. This cuts down overhead on fat pipes to just one ACK per a transfer, which is as low as it gets.
This approach doesn't work well on lossy links or for interactive sessions though.
They passed a provincial law few years back that equates the full-time holders of stock options to the owners of the company (or something along these line, IANAL). It also applies to those participating in 'employee shares purchasing' programs and alike.
Translated to plain English it means - NO OVERTIME PAY for the majority of high-tech people. That's BC, Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
- doctor, how much time do i have left ? ..
- 9
- 9 years ? 9 months ? '9' what ?
- 8, 7, 6, 5
.. but I have to say - neither. I don't like both.
And this is a reasonable answer regardless of
whether one's affiliated with Microsoft or not.
Should be Funny (or Sarcastic), not Informative.
NAT is a real menace
Yes, but true peer to peer is still possible in many
cases with a little help from a routable 3rd party -
Meet the mediated peer-to-peer a.k.a. hamachi
Dude! Wake up! How often do you open an XML-RPC packet trace with your morning coffee and think 'Gosh, how cool it's in a readble bloated text format and I don't need to parse it with Ethereal !'
:-/
Seriously, the only time readability is needed is when you edit an XML web page with a notepad. Otherwise it's a brain-dead technology that first got popular among scripting developers, which are notoriously afraid of anything binary, and then it got pushed into the areas where it didn't belong.
Unfortunately, the majority of XML zealots are plain ignorant. Should they took time to learn what the byte ordering and TLV encoding mean, we would've not probably have this XML craze now
Don't get me wrong, XML has its place. But it is next to HTML, and not next to RPC or databases!
Is how can they patch twice a day with a versioning system like that ? One does have to plan ahead and allow for extreme cases :)
Personally, if I had to fork out about 40 quid for a game, and then pay by the month to play it online, I don't think I'd be forking out the 40 quid in the first place.
But what if these 40 quids covered the game and a couple of months of a game play ?
I think it's a fair and pretty decent deal. You are getting a chance to play the game for a while and if you like it, you start paying for a gameplay. And the money go to compensate the provider for support, bandwidth and hardware expenses.
In fact, World of Warcraft is packaged exactly like that (only it's 1 month though AFAIK).
Or better yet read Edgar Poe's The Gold Bug and follow the recipe
Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted It my inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat:
53++!305))6*;4826)4+.)4+);806*;48!8`60))85;]8*:
46(;88*96*?;8)*+(;485);5*!2:*+(;4956*2(5*-4)8`8
!8)4++;1(+9;48081;8:8+1;48!85;4)485!528806*81(+
4;48)4+;161;:188;+?;
"And you really solved it?"
"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.
"In the present case --indeed in all cases of secret writing --the first question regards the language of the cipher; for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned, depend on, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun on the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was, I assumed the cryptograph to be English.
Give it a read. Great stuff, especially considering Poe lived in first half of 19th century.
Generate per-message signing key just the way these guys do it, but require your peer to disclose this key immediately after he uses it to verify your message.
.. 8 pages and 10 references for a simple idea, which would probably occupy under 2 lines in a normal crypto book .. man, what a bloat.
PS. Damn
Good point. However I'd assume that even pre-packaged software would allow certain amount tweaking to accomodate it to specific usage scenarios. If so, then its default installation will be rather generic and thus not produce realistic numbers when tested.
:-)
All this performance testing is a very tricky business. Easy money though
Say it was a WebServer We don't care how many pages/second it can handle but how well we get the webpages when the system is maxed out.
Wouldn't this to a much larger degree depend on the software rather than a hardware ?
I happened to see a promotional video of one of the Energia subsidaries, who were developing Buran's thermal tiles.
:)
The demo'ed tiles that were about 4" x 4" and a half inch think or so. They had really impressive bit where the tile was resting flat on the palm of some girl and it was blasted with oxy-acetylene torch from the top. The spot under the torch was red hot, yet the girl was alive and smiling
Then don't turn it off when you leave.
'Stealth mode' firewall normally eats ingress pings and egress 'ttl expired'. And some other rarely used ICMP types.
Never should it block ingress ICMP/DestUnreachable for Related egress TCP or UDP traffic, because this will break tons of various applications.
If eDonkey and BitTorrent ignore UDP socket errors, it just speaks that much of their developers, not the fact that NACK-based protocols are bad.
One way or another Reliable UDP (or any other custom quasi-L2 protocol for that matter) is rather advanced subject. If someone decides to tackle it, I just hope they are over-skilled and under-confident and not the other way around.
Ever heard of ICMP or more specifically - DestUnreachable/PortUnreachable code ?
It is essentially a guaranteed system-level NACK, which comes handy exactly in the situation you describe. Every decent NACK-based protocol implementation has ICMP handler (see SOL_IP, IP_RECVERR in setsockopt).
Saw this a couple of days ago. Pretty vague description,
but it does promise exactly what you are looking for. 2c.
And mod me up while you're at it :)
Most of reliable UDP protocols do use unsolicited NACK'ing and solicited ACK'ing. This cuts down overhead on fat pipes to just one ACK per a transfer, which is as low as it gets.
This approach doesn't work well on lossy links or for interactive sessions though.
What a lovely thread full of Intersting and /. is something :)
Informative posts. Ain't
Wow. Thanks, dude. Just what the doctor ordered. :)
CssZenGarden link alone is worth a fortune
He he .. EA is in Burnaby you know :) I tend to agree though EA is more of an exception than a rule.
They passed a provincial law few years back that equates the full-time holders of stock options to the owners of the company (or something along these line, IANAL). It also applies to those participating in 'employee shares purchasing' programs and alike.
Translated to plain English it means - NO OVERTIME PAY for the majority of high-tech people. That's BC, Canada.
It must be related, it cannot be just a coincidence.
Am I the only one who read 'multiPlayer ciruit board' and though 'deathmatch in hardware .. crazy, but interesting' ? :)