There is something so wonderful and beautiful about writing a suite of small apps to replace a singular large app.
We are currently in the process of converting a monolithic C++/VB project to several small C++ applications glued together with Perl and using wxWindows as the new GUI. All of the code relies on STL instead MFC now, and in factoring the jobs of the software, we have been able to bring order to the code, thus making it much easier to maintain than before.
I have noticed that some of the comments posted here indicate such factoring may complicate things. Perhaps, if you don't have programmers fluent in Perl, but for us, the opposite is true. Things are much simpler now. Compile time is greatly reduced in our situation. Instead of sitting on our butts waiting for the monster to compile, we wait only seconds for the small section to compile. Also, code is reusable without having to recompile at all; simply link it to a new project, and there you go. The automation layer has been eliminated, and thus our code base can be recompiled easily for *nix and Mac platforms. Perl is so very powerful for linking small programs together, and if it not for the sad fact that Windows pipes are a joke, well, don't get me started...
Featuritis is the bane of the programmer
Re:XBOX advertisement blitz
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
I have an idea, let's make sure that none of our clients or investors know what they're getting themselves into.
Since MS keeps its code secret, why not keep its vulnerabilities secret too, that way, evildoers will never know about it. Yeah right. If you can't see that an anti-disclosure policy affects only investors and customers, then you should open you eyes.
This is an example of Microsoft attempting to control information and public opinion; it does nothing to stop malicious attacks. If anything, it gives a false sense of security when their is none.
Look, don't get me wrong, a company should be wary of things that effect its image and value on the market. Microsoft has a responsibility to investors, customers, and employees to deliver a profit. However, the anti-disclosure policy is not good business. This policy does nothing to address the problem; it only addresses the public view of the problem. Security holes must be made public knowledge for the sake of the customer, so that measures can be taken to protect themselves from attack.
Perhaps you are right that the idea of bashing MS is not new, but in this case, the fact is clear that MS is sticking its head in the sand when it comes to the questionable security of IIS.
This anti-disclosure policy is about the largest example of "a problem doesn't exit if nobody knows about it" that I have ever heard. Guess what, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, it does make a sound.
MS tries to claim that publishing security flaws informs would be attackers. Excuse me, but are they f&*^(^@$ serious!? I'm sorry, but no malicious hacker above age 6 is learning about these holes in the system from USA Today's tech section (those who find the holes let us all in on the secret, and they cannot be silenced). The people who are kept in the dark here are the people who invest their money in MS stock, which is exactly as MS wants it. I pity the poor admin who thinks MS will let him know when his system is ripe for f&*^*&^%*&.
I guess that's what you get, "Thank you for choosing Micro$oft for all your server needs, now bend over".
EditPad == Good && Forte == Slow
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 1
EditPad pro is a nice text editor that allows true regular expression searches. It also has the nice feature of being able to switch between files via a tabstrip atop the workspace. Blah blah, it also has context highlighting, blah.
Forte is an infant. It is slow and painful if you want to do anything serious with it. I've heard a new version is on the horizon though, and I've heard it will be much improved...
...who tries to write a new Star Trak series. It must be difficult to cater to the whiniest, nit-pickiest, most scrupulous bunch of critics in the known universe. Of course, I am affectionately referring to the Trekkies.
I thought it was a very good pilot. Sure, it is hard to not think of Bacula as Mr. Quantum Leap. After all, I'd wager a good number Trekkies once viewed that show as well. Ok ok, the soft porn was gratuitous, but I like to watch that sort of thing (at least while my wife is away at some Tupperware party). Plus, just imagine what those chicks could do with their tongues! Yikes.
I especially appreciated the rustic feel of the ship. I think the producers did a fine job in creating a vessel that fits into the expected technological evolution of the Enterprise. I also liked how Bacula was so gruff. He almost reminded me of the old Kirk, sporting an attitude at every chance.
Anyway, be nice guys, I don't recall the Voyager pilot being such a masterpiece. In fact, I remember thinking it a setup for a real snoozer, but it turned out ok.
Examples in other industries have shown that playing on people's nostalgia can be very profitable indeed.
Take, for example, the success Fender had in bringing its line of "re-issue" guitars. Let's face it, sometimes the things of the past were made with greater care, quality, and creativity than their modern counterparts, and recapturing that lost craftsmanship is a fine idea, especially if you enjoy lining your pockets with cash.
I wish this idea would reach the automobile industry, I could really go for a revamped late 60's Mustang!
Instead of acrhitects reconsidering the need for 110 story buildings, it is my opinion that after all the smoke and tears have cleared, NYC should rebuild the Towers EXACTLY as they stood before. I say, stuff it in their faces by showing them our resiliency is unmatched. Show them they can't change our skylines, because we can always change them back. At least, that's my opinion, but I don't know if we are hard enough to use such tactics.
I have a first edition Phillips Expanium mp3 player, and I must say, Phillips really seemed to be rushing this baby to market. Immediately, I knew this device was constructed in poor quality. The sound coming out of it is pretty bad, even for mp3 standards. It is slow to read the CD-Rs, taking approx. 20 sec before any music comes out of it. Even after the initial reading, it still takes 5-10 seconds when changeing tracks. Browsing through 120 or so tunes is almost out of the question, unless you happen to memorize the track position of all your favorites. It supports directories as albums, which is nice, but I wish they had a higher-end model. It'd be nice if they improved sound controls (equalizer anyone?) and/or made an insertable car player model! Still, despite it sound performance and overall cheapness, it is much more convenient carrying one CD-R than carrying 10 Red Book CDs.
I enjoy your analogy, and I must say I've had similar thoughts myself; however, I do believe that so-called 'vigilante' viruses could be of benefit.
In the natural world, we use, as you indicate, antibiotics to ward off bacterial infection. One point you may have overlooked is the source of these treatements is overwhelmingly products of other microbes. That is, the antibiotics we use are derived from organisms such as fungi, or other bacteria.
If we take from this analogy that fact, then we may expect that altering a harmful virus such that it attacks and destroys other harmfuls could be a very successful way of fighting it. As for your point that this could result in effective DOS attacks, measures could be taken to ensure that this would not happen. How? Because we (the good guys) would have full control over the distribution of the 'vigilante', just as we do for drugs in a patient. Writing a 'vigilante' to distribute itself in the same manner as the original would fall off the board in being analogous to a vaccine (which is a weakened virus incapable of replicating itself extensively); instead, it would just be another form of the virus itself. So, constructs such as web watchdogs could be used to identify vulnerable machines first. Then, they could be checked for infection. The infected "patients" could then be used to alert the watchdog of other machines to check for vulnerability (via mail list), and repeat. The key point is: watchdogs could be trained NOT to check machines that have already been checked (by catalogging checks to a large DB), thus ending a DOS attack scenario. It would be a large task to accomplish, but it is not out of the question.
We already have 'protection' against attacks in machines that are given frequent security updates. While downloading the latest patches doesn't insure one from recieving a brand new virus, it does hedge the spread of that virus. The main problem, as I see it, is that incompetent Admins often fail to realize that they are vulnerable, or that they should download a security patch post haste. I guess they never learned: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Here is an analogy that I remembered as I read the good doctor's article; I believe/.'ers will relate.
So far as DNA influences our lives and behaviors can be likened to the extent that different hardware platforms effect the performance and behavior of a computer.
In this analogy, your life experience (nurture) could be likened to the software on that computer.
I think few would argue that ASCI white with nothing but Solitaire loaded to it would be a very useful machine, and a nurture buff would be hard-pressed to load ASCI white's actual software to their Comodore 64.
RPGers have been aware of the difference between wit and wisdom for years. Why is it that Nature vs Nurture remains a debate? I would think that anyone who has grown older to find that they are slower but wiser would figure out just how our brains and our minds interact.
The problem is not that we don't know what mysterious force is affecting our probes, the problem is that we assume too much and expect regularity in things irregular.
A space venture such as these reflects travel over vast distances. Try putting your car on autopilot and have it drive for millions of miles on the path you have created for it, no really, try it.
What if a small piece of debris hits your probe? What if a magnetic breeze brushes across its nose? What if the thrust is not perfectly aligned? Though we attempt to correct these events with the allmighty fudge factor, the simple reality is, that in a chaotic system, seemingly irrelevant anomelies can result in significant deviations from the expected outcome.
Can NASA do better in predicting the unpredictable? Probably. How much better? Can we ever produce something that behaves exactly as we planned every time? Well, I can't, but then again, I don't work for NASA.
You'd have to think, if AOL employees are forced to use the garbage they produce, then maybe that garbage will become more useable. As a software developer, I believe it is important for those who write the programs to use the programs they write (when appropriate, as in this case), however, it seems unusually cruel to force the whole company to use such a crappy product. It is as if the AOL moguls want to say, "look our product is so good, we use it ourselves"
The problem is, their product is not good.;)
This story actually reminds me of the one where Microsoft purchased Hotmail, tried to convert it to MS Servers, failed miserably since they couldn't scale, and reverted to using the original UNIX servers. In that we see a case where a company had to use another's product because theirs wasn't good enough.
Although I see the point of using your own stuff, maybe a company should seriously evaluate the quality of their product before strong-arming their employees into using it full-time. Perhaps, this could lead to a better product, but in AOL's case, I seriously doubt it.
If code is broken, but nobody ever uses it, is it still broken?
Hey Mario, the boss says your time is up, now you gotta' pay the man, or he says I gotta' break your legs. Its not personal to me, you know?
Headlines .Net deprecates MFC - World rewrites code bases - in STL
Whistler requires dll hack to reload OS without Evil Empire approval - Lord Gates: "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it again!"
Send money to M$ every few years - or else no soup for you!
Slashdot Mirror
There is something so wonderful and beautiful about writing a suite of small apps to replace a singular large app.
We are currently in the process of converting a monolithic C++/VB project to several small C++ applications glued together with Perl and using wxWindows as the new GUI. All of the code relies on STL instead MFC now, and in factoring the jobs of the software, we have been able to bring order to the code, thus making it much easier to maintain than before.
I have noticed that some of the comments posted here indicate such factoring may complicate things. Perhaps, if you don't have programmers fluent in Perl, but for us, the opposite is true. Things are much simpler now. Compile time is greatly reduced in our situation. Instead of sitting on our butts waiting for the monster to compile, we wait only seconds for the small section to compile. Also, code is reusable without having to recompile at all; simply link it to a new project, and there you go. The automation layer has been eliminated, and thus our code base can be recompiled easily for *nix and Mac platforms. Perl is so very powerful for linking small programs together, and if it not for the sad fact that Windows pipes are a joke, well, don't get me started...
Featuritis is the bane of the programmer
that must be why they look so unspectacular.
I have an idea, let's make sure that none of our clients or investors know what they're getting themselves into.
Since MS keeps its code secret, why not keep its vulnerabilities secret too, that way, evildoers will never know about it. Yeah right. If you can't see that an anti-disclosure policy affects only investors and customers, then you should open you eyes.
This is an example of Microsoft attempting to control information and public opinion; it does nothing to stop malicious attacks. If anything, it gives a false sense of security when their is none.
Look, don't get me wrong, a company should be wary of things that effect its image and value on the market. Microsoft has a responsibility to investors, customers, and employees to deliver a profit. However, the anti-disclosure policy is not good business. This policy does nothing to address the problem; it only addresses the public view of the problem. Security holes must be made public knowledge for the sake of the customer, so that measures can be taken to protect themselves from attack.
Perhaps you are right that the idea of bashing MS is not new, but in this case, the fact is clear that MS is sticking its head in the sand when it comes to the questionable security of IIS.
This anti-disclosure policy is about the largest example of "a problem doesn't exit if nobody knows about it" that I have ever heard. Guess what, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, it does make a sound.
MS tries to claim that publishing security flaws informs would be attackers. Excuse me, but are they f&*^(^@$ serious!? I'm sorry, but no malicious hacker above age 6 is learning about these holes in the system from USA Today's tech section (those who find the holes let us all in on the secret, and they cannot be silenced). The people who are kept in the dark here are the people who invest their money in MS stock, which is exactly as MS wants it. I pity the poor admin who thinks MS will let him know when his system is ripe for f&*^*&^%*&.
I guess that's what you get, "Thank you for choosing Micro$oft for all your server needs, now bend over".
EditPad pro is a nice text editor that allows true regular expression searches. It also has the nice feature of being able to switch between files via a tabstrip atop the workspace. Blah blah, it also has context highlighting, blah.
Forte is an infant. It is slow and painful if you want to do anything serious with it. I've heard a new version is on the horizon though, and I've heard it will be much improved...
...who tries to write a new Star Trak series. It must be difficult to cater to the whiniest, nit-pickiest, most scrupulous bunch of critics in the known universe. Of course, I am affectionately referring to the Trekkies.
I thought it was a very good pilot. Sure, it is hard to not think of Bacula as Mr. Quantum Leap. After all, I'd wager a good number Trekkies once viewed that show as well. Ok ok, the soft porn was gratuitous, but I like to watch that sort of thing (at least while my wife is away at some Tupperware party). Plus, just imagine what those chicks could do with their tongues! Yikes.
I especially appreciated the rustic feel of the ship. I think the producers did a fine job in creating a vessel that fits into the expected technological evolution of the Enterprise. I also liked how Bacula was so gruff. He almost reminded me of the old Kirk, sporting an attitude at every chance.
Anyway, be nice guys, I don't recall the Voyager pilot being such a masterpiece. In fact, I remember thinking it a setup for a real snoozer, but it turned out ok.
This is a fantastic idea.
Examples in other industries have shown that playing on people's nostalgia can be very profitable indeed.
Take, for example, the success Fender had in bringing its line of "re-issue" guitars. Let's face it, sometimes the things of the past were made with greater care, quality, and creativity than their modern counterparts, and recapturing that lost craftsmanship is a fine idea, especially if you enjoy lining your pockets with cash.
I wish this idea would reach the automobile industry, I could really go for a revamped late 60's Mustang!
Instead of acrhitects reconsidering the need for 110 story buildings, it is my opinion that after all the smoke and tears have cleared, NYC should rebuild the Towers EXACTLY as they stood before. I say, stuff it in their faces by showing them our resiliency is unmatched. Show them they can't change our skylines, because we can always change them back. At least, that's my opinion, but I don't know if we are hard enough to use such tactics.
I have a first edition Phillips Expanium mp3 player, and I must say, Phillips really seemed to be rushing this baby to market. Immediately, I knew this device was constructed in poor quality. The sound coming out of it is pretty bad, even for mp3 standards. It is slow to read the CD-Rs, taking approx. 20 sec before any music comes out of it. Even after the initial reading, it still takes 5-10 seconds when changeing tracks. Browsing through 120 or so tunes is almost out of the question, unless you happen to memorize the track position of all your favorites. It supports directories as albums, which is nice, but I wish they had a higher-end model. It'd be nice if they improved sound controls (equalizer anyone?) and/or made an insertable car player model! Still, despite it sound performance and overall cheapness, it is much more convenient carrying one CD-R than carrying 10 Red Book CDs.
I enjoy your analogy, and I must say I've had similar thoughts myself; however, I do believe that so-called 'vigilante' viruses could be of benefit.
In the natural world, we use, as you indicate, antibiotics to ward off bacterial infection. One point you may have overlooked is the source of these treatements is overwhelmingly products of other microbes. That is, the antibiotics we use are derived from organisms such as fungi, or other bacteria.
If we take from this analogy that fact, then we may expect that altering a harmful virus such that it attacks and destroys other harmfuls could be a very successful way of fighting it. As for your point that this could result in effective DOS attacks, measures could be taken to ensure that this would not happen. How? Because we (the good guys) would have full control over the distribution of the 'vigilante', just as we do for drugs in a patient. Writing a 'vigilante' to distribute itself in the same manner as the original would fall off the board in being analogous to a vaccine (which is a weakened virus incapable of replicating itself extensively); instead, it would just be another form of the virus itself. So, constructs such as web watchdogs could be used to identify vulnerable machines first. Then, they could be checked for infection. The infected "patients" could then be used to alert the watchdog of other machines to check for vulnerability (via mail list), and repeat. The key point is: watchdogs could be trained NOT to check machines that have already been checked (by catalogging checks to a large DB), thus ending a DOS attack scenario. It would be a large task to accomplish, but it is not out of the question.
We already have 'protection' against attacks in machines that are given frequent security updates. While downloading the latest patches doesn't insure one from recieving a brand new virus, it does hedge the spread of that virus. The main problem, as I see it, is that incompetent Admins often fail to realize that they are vulnerable, or that they should download a security patch post haste. I guess they never learned: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Here is an analogy that I remembered as I read the good doctor's article; I believe /.'ers will relate.
So far as DNA influences our lives and behaviors can be likened to the extent that different hardware platforms effect the performance and behavior of a computer. In this analogy, your life experience (nurture) could be likened to the software on that computer. I think few would argue that ASCI white with nothing but Solitaire loaded to it would be a very useful machine, and a nurture buff would be hard-pressed to load ASCI white's actual software to their Comodore 64.
RPGers have been aware of the difference between wit and wisdom for years. Why is it that Nature vs Nurture remains a debate? I would think that anyone who has grown older to find that they are slower but wiser would figure out just how our brains and our minds interact.
The problem is not that we don't know what mysterious force is affecting our probes, the problem is that we assume too much and expect regularity in things irregular.
A space venture such as these reflects travel over vast distances. Try putting your car on autopilot and have it drive for millions of miles on the path you have created for it, no really, try it.
What if a small piece of debris hits your probe? What if a magnetic breeze brushes across its nose? What if the thrust is not perfectly aligned? Though we attempt to correct these events with the allmighty fudge factor, the simple reality is, that in a chaotic system, seemingly irrelevant anomelies can result in significant deviations from the expected outcome.
Can NASA do better in predicting the unpredictable? Probably. How much better? Can we ever produce something that behaves exactly as we planned every time? Well, I can't, but then again, I don't work for NASA.
You'd have to think, if AOL employees are forced to use the garbage they produce, then maybe that garbage will become more useable. As a software developer, I believe it is important for those who write the programs to use the programs they write (when appropriate, as in this case), however, it seems unusually cruel to force the whole company to use such a crappy product. It is as if the AOL moguls want to say, "look our product is so good, we use it ourselves"
;)
The problem is, their product is not good.
This story actually reminds me of the one where Microsoft purchased Hotmail, tried to convert it to MS Servers, failed miserably since they couldn't scale, and reverted to using the original UNIX servers. In that we see a case where a company had to use another's product because theirs wasn't good enough.
Although I see the point of using your own stuff, maybe a company should seriously evaluate the quality of their product before strong-arming their employees into using it full-time. Perhaps, this could lead to a better product, but in AOL's case, I seriously doubt it.
If code is broken, but nobody ever uses it, is it still broken?
Rule #1: Thou shalt not get away with it.
I just can't wait until Remo II comes out.
Hey Mario, the boss says your time is up, now you gotta' pay the man, or he says I gotta' break your legs. Its not personal to me, you know?
.Net deprecates MFC - World rewrites code bases - in STL
Headlines
Whistler requires dll hack to reload OS without Evil Empire approval - Lord Gates: "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it again!"
Send money to M$ every few years - or else no soup for you!
What's next, late fees?
Get really sloppy, and Beer's Law will be the only choice...
A = (absorptivity)bc