No, even if widgets can be user-written, it doesn't solve the problem. Here's why:
1. Widgets are written in XHTML and JavaScript. This severely limits your functionality and performance when building a widget, especially on a low power device like the iPhone. 2. Widgets don't have access to device local storage, which means all data and content has to be pulled over the network, which will cost you service fees. 3. Did you watch the demo? Did you notice how the widgets took 4-6 seconds to load? That kind of terrible load performance is unacceptable for most applications, which makes widgets a worthless option for app development.
You're thinking of DirectSong, not DirectPlay. DirectPlay is a networking API for game matchmaking and networking. DirectSong is a service run by a third party company that integrates with Guild Wars.
It does use Windows Media DRM, though, so you're about right.
I know overflows are bad, but I honestly don't know much about how the allocator in a typical OS or RTL works. Could such a small (2-4 byte) overflow be used to execute arbitrary code? Is it actually possible to use that small of an overflow to screw up the allocator so badly that it'll execute arbitrary code? Or is this just a potential denial of service?
Has anyone here ever tried to read an XML schema for anything relatively complex? It's a nightmare. RELAX looks much cleaner and more direct, which I wholeheartedly approve of.
This is the kind of 'feature' I'd expect from a format like WMV, not Quicktime. One would hope that Apple would at least be competent enough to consider the security implications of a feature like that before adding it. Well, at least it'll get fixed now...
300 bucks for a crappy UI builder that adds multiple layers of abstraction on top of Swing! That sure is cheaper than Visual C# Express, Interface Builder, SharpDevelop, wxWindows, Visual Basic, or any of the GUI builders available for Eclipse!
I've done contract programming work for people directly before, and that always worked out fairly well. I tried using RAC a few times to find both small and large pieces of contract work, and always had a bad experience - either I'd deliver a working product and the buyer would run off with it without paying (and RAC would ignore my requests for them to actually do their job as an escrow service) or the buyer would continually redefine the requirements so that I could never actually 'complete' the work and 'earn' the payment.
Of course, half the listings on there are so ridiculously underpriced ($25 for a week of work? No thanks!) or utterly brainless (Please write a custom clone of Winamp from scratch for $500) that it's not even worth bothering.
You could literally make better money by releasing an open source app and putting google ads on the website. Seriously.
Who said he got fired? His supervisor reprimanded him for being a jackass on my forum on work time, and he continued posting at my forum from his home connection until he finally got banned for continuing to break the rules.
When I have to come out and reformat someone's machine because they installed porn dialers and downloaded virus-infested software from porn sites, I think it's within my job description to at least inform the user that they're not supposed to be doing that sort of thing with government property.
As far as spying on users and getting them fired goes, that wasn't my department. I managed the hardware and software on machines, not the company firewalls and proxy and such. I agree with your statement that the admins probably should have just been firewalling off applications like Napster and blocking known inappropriate websites. Nonetheless, the issue remains: These people were doing entirely inappropriate things with government property and then leaving it to me and other people in IT to clean up after them.
I have always taken users' privacy very seriously, because I take *my* privacy very seriously. It doesn't take illegal spying or other illicit activities to notice when a user is doing completely retarded things using company resources. When the office T3 is getting modem-level throughput, it's pretty hard to not notice a bunch of connections open on napster ports from specific users' machines. If you're suggesting that a government employee has a right to do as they please with government computers and internet connections, how do you feel about what Mark Foley did with *his* government resources?
If being offended by highly paid individuals wasting time on the job instead of helping maintain the country's infrastructure makes me self-righteous, then that label is entirely accurate. As it stands, I'm no longer in IT because I hated working for the government and I hated working in IT. I make best-selling video games now.:)
The individuals were banned for violating forum rules with excessive rudeness, inappropriate language (the site's main user population was minors) and generally just being jerks. The government hostnames just made it all the more inappropriate (being a jerk on your own time is one thing, being a jerk on someone else's time is another.)
Back when I did IT work for a certain government agency, I'd often have to clean porn dialers, viruses and spyware off users' machines, all obviously the result of people browsing inappropriate sites at work. We even had to fire a few individuals for using the office T1 to swap songs on Napster (this was back when Napster was both popular and illegal). This sort of behavior wouldn't suprise me at the typical office, but many of these individuals were in their 40s or 50s and had Masters degrees/doctorates and made high 5 digit (or even six digit) salaries, with good medical and benefits. It suprised me that so many of the engineers and other govt. employees would waste so much time and basically damage government property at work instead of waiting until they got home to do it - it's not like they couldn't afford their own computer and internet connection. Often the stupid things they did would prevent them from using the machine to actually get work done, because the software they had installed impaired the operation of the system.
And strangely enough, in my free time while administering some fairly sizable gaming forums, I've actually had to ban users with hostmasks indicating they were using government internet connections. I even went to the trouble of tracking down the name of one individual and contacting their boss about their behavior. It's suprising how badly some professionals will behave at work when they think nobody's watching.
You'd think that with AMD sponsoring Slashdot, they could at least spell 'Opteron' right once or twice in stories...
What about other forms of external data?
on
Virus Jumps to RFID
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This is a good example of how people will sometimes trust data that isn't trustworthy at all.
I'd be willing to bet that someone with enough cleverness and free time could come up with a 'credit card virus' that could compromise specific vulnerable payment systems/credit card processing devices when swiped. For all we know, there may already be such exploits out there now. At least in the case of credit card processing, it's financial code so hopefully there are some stringent security processes along with multiple layers of verification, but still - pretty scary to think about.
Pointing out that GTA-style games aren't very good at storytelling isn't 'GTA-bashing'. It's obvious to anyone who knows anything about game design. I don't see any comments in the article by Gilbert that remotely qualify as GTA-bashing.
Of course, you probably didn't read the article...
Why implant a magnet? I can only imagine what kind of hassle that would be if you ever needed an MRI. Couldn't a ring or some sort of fingertip cap be created that transmitted signals through the skin to nerve endings, so you could take it off as needed? I imagine it might be less effective due to the skin barrier, but it seems like it would be a much safer alternative that would work nearly as well.
VB6, with all its flaws, is still hard to compete with when you want a native Win32 app that has a lot of UI and doesn't take a long time to build. If you use it properly, it'll usually do what you want without having any major issues.
On the other hand, it has trouble coping with large complex projects (One of my larger projects regularly crashes the VB IDE when I load it, for no particular reason, and sometimes the VB compiler spits out mysterious build failure errors for no particular reason), and it lacks a lot of important features you get out of better languages and tools. If performance is a concern, you'll also find that it has trouble scaling there (though it's at least tolerable, and if you're careful you can get pretty efficient code out of it). There are also some data models and algorithms that simply don't work well in VB due to the overhead and inefficiency of using COM IDispatch and reference counting for every object.
If you need to make a transition from VB, you might be able to manage to convert it over to VB.net, but I've never been able to do that successfully. I personally use C# for any project these days that I would have used VB6 for in the past. And if you don't really need to do much in the way of UI, C++ is a pretty solid option for almost anything else, even if it's tough for some VB coders to grasp.
One middle-ground option would be to rewrite chunks of the application using C++ or C# and wrap them in COM so that you can drop them into the existing VB application. I had pretty good success doing this with performance-critical parts of a few of my larger VB applications and didn't lose any of the benefits of doing my UI in VB in the process.
Probably for new features and a sane render target API, off the top of my head. Rendering to anything but the framebuffer in OpenGL absolutely sucks compared to doing it in Direct3D, and with how often people are starting to render offscreen with 3D hardware these days that's going to increase D3D's appeal.
(There are some extensions to GL that improve on this but most cards still don't support them properly, and even then, they're still kind of a pain to use compared to doing it in D3D.)
If you actually RTFA, you see that he's specifically saying that indies shouldn't try to work with existing publishers like EA. He's not telling indies to give up entirely.
Half the comments so far are advising the guy to ditch.NET ASAP so that he doesn't have to upgrade again.
He doesn't HAVE to upgrade at all! He's voluntarily decided to upgrade to a new version of an existing product. How is this a negative thing? It could definitely be a bad idea, but I don't see anyone saying that.
It's bad enough that people don't even read linked articles, do people even read the text of the story before posting anymore?
So, look at the pages dedicated to MS SQL Express and IBM DB2. DB2 costs thousands of dollars, MS SQL Express is free. DB2 has a slightly superior feature set and additionally runs on Linux... and they rate it drastically higher, even though it's ridiculously expensive in comparison. Don't even get me started on the fact that the MS SQL version they tested was a beta (almost every Beta MS releases is far slower than the release versions, and contains tons of additional debugging code - VC# Express Betas were drastically slower than the release version of VC# Express.) Of course, none of this is really a suprise, since the 'labs test' is pretty obviously nothing of the sort.
And of course, absolutely no mention of stability, reliability, bugs, robustness, etc... what a suprise, considering that both MSSQL and MySQL are arguably far behind in those areas.
Where are the test cases? Where is the testing methodology? How about some explanation of particular cases where one solution didn't compare with the others, or where one solution excelled? This 'labs test' reads more like a sales pitch than anything resembling an actual test.
Slashdot Mirror
No, even if widgets can be user-written, it doesn't solve the problem. Here's why:
1. Widgets are written in XHTML and JavaScript. This severely limits your functionality and performance when building a widget, especially on a low power device like the iPhone.
2. Widgets don't have access to device local storage, which means all data and content has to be pulled over the network, which will cost you service fees.
3. Did you watch the demo? Did you notice how the widgets took 4-6 seconds to load? That kind of terrible load performance is unacceptable for most applications, which makes widgets a worthless option for app development.
You're thinking of DirectSong, not DirectPlay. DirectPlay is a networking API for game matchmaking and networking. DirectSong is a service run by a third party company that integrates with Guild Wars.
It does use Windows Media DRM, though, so you're about right.
I know overflows are bad, but I honestly don't know much about how the allocator in a typical OS or RTL works. Could such a small (2-4 byte) overflow be used to execute arbitrary code? Is it actually possible to use that small of an overflow to screw up the allocator so badly that it'll execute arbitrary code? Or is this just a potential denial of service?
Has anyone here ever tried to read an XML schema for anything relatively complex? It's a nightmare. RELAX looks much cleaner and more direct, which I wholeheartedly approve of.
This is the kind of 'feature' I'd expect from a format like WMV, not Quicktime. One would hope that Apple would at least be competent enough to consider the security implications of a feature like that before adding it. Well, at least it'll get fixed now...
300 bucks for a crappy UI builder that adds multiple layers of abstraction on top of Swing! That sure is cheaper than Visual C# Express, Interface Builder, SharpDevelop, wxWindows, Visual Basic, or any of the GUI builders available for Eclipse!
Wait, no, sorry. It's not.
Nice slashvertisement.
kdawson, is that how much they paid you to get this worthless story on the front page?
Really, how is this news? I don't get it.
I've done contract programming work for people directly before, and that always worked out fairly well. I tried using RAC a few times to find both small and large pieces of contract work, and always had a bad experience - either I'd deliver a working product and the buyer would run off with it without paying (and RAC would ignore my requests for them to actually do their job as an escrow service) or the buyer would continually redefine the requirements so that I could never actually 'complete' the work and 'earn' the payment.
Of course, half the listings on there are so ridiculously underpriced ($25 for a week of work? No thanks!) or utterly brainless (Please write a custom clone of Winamp from scratch for $500) that it's not even worth bothering.
You could literally make better money by releasing an open source app and putting google ads on the website. Seriously.
Mod parent up. Completely on the mark.
Who said he got fired? His supervisor reprimanded him for being a jackass on my forum on work time, and he continued posting at my forum from his home connection until he finally got banned for continuing to break the rules.
When I have to come out and reformat someone's machine because they installed porn dialers and downloaded virus-infested software from porn sites, I think it's within my job description to at least inform the user that they're not supposed to be doing that sort of thing with government property.
:)
As far as spying on users and getting them fired goes, that wasn't my department. I managed the hardware and software on machines, not the company firewalls and proxy and such. I agree with your statement that the admins probably should have just been firewalling off applications like Napster and blocking known inappropriate websites. Nonetheless, the issue remains: These people were doing entirely inappropriate things with government property and then leaving it to me and other people in IT to clean up after them.
I have always taken users' privacy very seriously, because I take *my* privacy very seriously. It doesn't take illegal spying or other illicit activities to notice when a user is doing completely retarded things using company resources. When the office T3 is getting modem-level throughput, it's pretty hard to not notice a bunch of connections open on napster ports from specific users' machines. If you're suggesting that a government employee has a right to do as they please with government computers and internet connections, how do you feel about what Mark Foley did with *his* government resources?
If being offended by highly paid individuals wasting time on the job instead of helping maintain the country's infrastructure makes me self-righteous, then that label is entirely accurate. As it stands, I'm no longer in IT because I hated working for the government and I hated working in IT. I make best-selling video games now.
The individuals were banned for violating forum rules with excessive rudeness, inappropriate language (the site's main user population was minors) and generally just being jerks. The government hostnames just made it all the more inappropriate (being a jerk on your own time is one thing, being a jerk on someone else's time is another.)
Back when I did IT work for a certain government agency, I'd often have to clean porn dialers, viruses and spyware off users' machines, all obviously the result of people browsing inappropriate sites at work. We even had to fire a few individuals for using the office T1 to swap songs on Napster (this was back when Napster was both popular and illegal). This sort of behavior wouldn't suprise me at the typical office, but many of these individuals were in their 40s or 50s and had Masters degrees/doctorates and made high 5 digit (or even six digit) salaries, with good medical and benefits. It suprised me that so many of the engineers and other govt. employees would waste so much time and basically damage government property at work instead of waiting until they got home to do it - it's not like they couldn't afford their own computer and internet connection. Often the stupid things they did would prevent them from using the machine to actually get work done, because the software they had installed impaired the operation of the system.
:)
And strangely enough, in my free time while administering some fairly sizable gaming forums, I've actually had to ban users with hostmasks indicating they were using government internet connections. I even went to the trouble of tracking down the name of one individual and contacting their boss about their behavior. It's suprising how badly some professionals will behave at work when they think nobody's watching.
(And yes, IT is watching you. Always watching.)
Boy am I glad I don't work in IT anymore.
You'd think that with AMD sponsoring Slashdot, they could at least spell 'Opteron' right once or twice in stories...
This is a good example of how people will sometimes trust data that isn't trustworthy at all.
I'd be willing to bet that someone with enough cleverness and free time could come up with a 'credit card virus' that could compromise specific vulnerable payment systems/credit card processing devices when swiped. For all we know, there may already be such exploits out there now. At least in the case of credit card processing, it's financial code so hopefully there are some stringent security processes along with multiple layers of verification, but still - pretty scary to think about.
Pointing out that GTA-style games aren't very good at storytelling isn't 'GTA-bashing'. It's obvious to anyone who knows anything about game design. I don't see any comments in the article by Gilbert that remotely qualify as GTA-bashing.
Of course, you probably didn't read the article...
Why implant a magnet? I can only imagine what kind of hassle that would be if you ever needed an MRI. Couldn't a ring or some sort of fingertip cap be created that transmitted signals through the skin to nerve endings, so you could take it off as needed? I imagine it might be less effective due to the skin barrier, but it seems like it would be a much safer alternative that would work nearly as well.
VB6, with all its flaws, is still hard to compete with when you want a native Win32 app that has a lot of UI and doesn't take a long time to build. If you use it properly, it'll usually do what you want without having any major issues.
On the other hand, it has trouble coping with large complex projects (One of my larger projects regularly crashes the VB IDE when I load it, for no particular reason, and sometimes the VB compiler spits out mysterious build failure errors for no particular reason), and it lacks a lot of important features you get out of better languages and tools. If performance is a concern, you'll also find that it has trouble scaling there (though it's at least tolerable, and if you're careful you can get pretty efficient code out of it). There are also some data models and algorithms that simply don't work well in VB due to the overhead and inefficiency of using COM IDispatch and reference counting for every object.
If you need to make a transition from VB, you might be able to manage to convert it over to VB.net, but I've never been able to do that successfully. I personally use C# for any project these days that I would have used VB6 for in the past. And if you don't really need to do much in the way of UI, C++ is a pretty solid option for almost anything else, even if it's tough for some VB coders to grasp.
One middle-ground option would be to rewrite chunks of the application using C++ or C# and wrap them in COM so that you can drop them into the existing VB application. I had pretty good success doing this with performance-critical parts of a few of my larger VB applications and didn't lose any of the benefits of doing my UI in VB in the process.
Probably for new features and a sane render target API, off the top of my head. Rendering to anything but the framebuffer in OpenGL absolutely sucks compared to doing it in Direct3D, and with how often people are starting to render offscreen with 3D hardware these days that's going to increase D3D's appeal.
(There are some extensions to GL that improve on this but most cards still don't support them properly, and even then, they're still kind of a pain to use compared to doing it in D3D.)
Isn't the XScale also an Intel embedded processor?
If you actually RTFA, you see that he's specifically saying that indies shouldn't try to work with existing publishers like EA. He's not telling indies to give up entirely.
Half the comments so far are advising the guy to ditch .NET ASAP so that he doesn't have to upgrade again.
He doesn't HAVE to upgrade at all! He's voluntarily decided to upgrade to a new version of an existing product. How is this a negative thing? It could definitely be a bad idea, but I don't see anyone saying that.
It's bad enough that people don't even read linked articles, do people even read the text of the story before posting anymore?
There are other brands on the following pages of the article; it's just really hard to find the 'next page' link because the site's layout SUCKS.
So, look at the pages dedicated to MS SQL Express and IBM DB2. DB2 costs thousands of dollars, MS SQL Express is free. DB2 has a slightly superior feature set and additionally runs on Linux... and they rate it drastically higher, even though it's ridiculously expensive in comparison. Don't even get me started on the fact that the MS SQL version they tested was a beta (almost every Beta MS releases is far slower than the release versions, and contains tons of additional debugging code - VC# Express Betas were drastically slower than the release version of VC# Express.) Of course, none of this is really a suprise, since the 'labs test' is pretty obviously nothing of the sort.
And of course, absolutely no mention of stability, reliability, bugs, robustness, etc... what a suprise, considering that both MSSQL and MySQL are arguably far behind in those areas.
Where are the test cases? Where is the testing methodology? How about some explanation of particular cases where one solution didn't compare with the others, or where one solution excelled? This 'labs test' reads more like a sales pitch than anything resembling an actual test.