For my sins I've done extensive work with WinCE. Often we've found serious bugs for which no fix ever came about. I've never seen a fix come out in less than a month. When you do get fixes they're in the form of "QFEs". Currently you need to download a gigabyte of this shit to fix WinCE3.0.
In comparison, I've seen Linux fixes come out in less than 30 minutes. Likely having Linux hackers spanning all time zones helps a lot to improve bug fixing time. Report bug at 6pm, patch available 8am.
People write some apps with the idea of usin g.NET and Mono.
Microsoft changes some stuff so that there is an incompatibility.
You then chose to go with.NET or stay with Mono and break the compatability. One might argue that Mono can change to keep chasing.NET, but this is a loser's game. Too much resource just gets swallowed up with juggling compatability etc. People running a "mission critical" app will just shell out dollars and buy.NET to get going again.
Microsoft has used this tactic many times over. While Borland and other compiler vendors served Microsoft's interests they wore tolerated, but as soon as they were seen to be the enemy (ie MS wanted people to use Visual Studio), they started changing stuff in such a way that the other vendors just could not really keep up. Eventually even die-hard Borland supporters had to switch to keep going.
They did a similar thing with NT. They provided a Unix streams model to encourage people to port their Unix drivers to NT but then crippled the streams driver support and finally killed it, thus breaking compatability.
It is a safe bet that Mono will be treated the same way. MS has no fear of anti-trust.
Self modifying code is used with x86 to generate software interrupts. x86 has no instruction like "INT AL" to execute the interrupt in register AL. But you can execute explicite interrupts eg INT 5, INT 0x21 etc. These are encoded with a common form, thus to execute an arbitrary interrupt you have a chunk of code that builds up the takes the AL value and saves it into the instruction to be executed, then executes it.
Also, in BIOS code there are some other pervy things you can do to do fake subroutine calls (ie without a stack in place).
I think the most sneaky code I've seen used a "jump to self" instruction stored in a counter register. When the counter incremented, the instruction became a "jump to next". It was a clever way to implement a synchronised wait.
"Developers in these countries work cheap because they're typically not very good."
Keep thinking like that and you will get wiped out. I cost approx a third of an equivalent US employee, yet I hold around nine or so US patents, have won international awards and various other things.
I recently had dealings with a company in India that does a damn good job of building and fixing gcc etc tools. Thes folk are "world class".
These people will work cheap because there is an army of them looking for a job. and mostly they have lower personal expenses. It takes a lot less than a US salary to make one of these guys very happy and motivated.
assembler? Baah! Real blokes write self-modifying machine code in hex. In case you think this is an obsolete art form, those that write BIOS-level code frequently have to resort to such tricks.
As for frying girls, well we still had some wild parties and once (at least) a naked geek-girl did fall in the barbeque and another set her pubic hair on fire trying to do this stunt involving burning matches and genitalia that the blokes could do with much lest risk.
C'mon... anyone wired right to write code for a C64 would never write C++ bloatware and thus anyone in a position to make a comparison is automatically disqualified as a C64 geek.
This whole mess is nothing new. In many ways this is the same as what has happened in the past with the primary sector (imported raw materials that competed with the domestic coal, oil, agricultural producst) and the the manufactring sector (those Nikes from Mexico etc).
I live in New Zealand and work (embedded firmware etc) for a company owned by an American corporation. My salary + overheads are a third of what it costs to put an American behind a desk to do the same job. OK, we're not talking complete sweatshop, but the basic principle is there.
It is easy to say that the American engineer is getting screwed becasue he can't get a job. In many ways, the NZ economy is also getting screwed (at least in the short term) because my skills are going into building the American corporation rather than some New Zealand company.
In reality I think we're only seeing the thin end of the wedge. Countries like China, India etc have the potential to become stronger and stronger. As these countries get upskilled in all areas (manufacturing and engineering), the value added that comes from America is diminished. What's left for the American corporation to do? Marketing. How long before marketing etc also get commoditised and go offshore along with service organisations (tech support etc which already have)? Eventually there are likely to be full Chinese etc corporations with the capability to do everything better and cheaper. Where to then?
Bottom line: American corporations are so driven by quarter-by-quarter profits that they do not invest in the future. This will fail not only those corporations, but the economy on which they're based.
It definitely screws with power saving since it uses all the CPU it can get its hands on. I used to think that SETI was just a harmless bit of stupidity, not I realise it also contributes to global warming.
Unlike in the USA, where the size of the contribution determines the way things go, in many parts of the world comsumer protection groups actually do have some real power. Of course, though, the powers here only apply inside Australia.
With luck, high profile cases like this will actually make the Americans realise that they're being screwed with and make them start demanding to get back their rights.
Weak passwords, clear text in http, ftp etc are hardly Unix specific and would also feature on the Windows, though lower down.
That these folks had to dig so deep to find 10 Unix vulns heartens me. Apart from BIND, what this says to me is the worst Unix vulnerabilities are only as bad as the fifteenth or twentieth placed Windows ones.
The technologies being proposed here have been around for decades. Why were they not developed?
The darling measure of PV has been efficiency. The big bucks have gone into pushing efficiency. The solar races across Australia provide the big showcase for PV and these favour efficient cells.
The quest for efficiency has been at the expense of the more important quest of reducing $/W. $/W is about the only measure of any meaning when it comes to using PV in any volume.
There is always the bullshit theory that the quest for high efficiency will have the spin off of producing reduced $/W cells. I don't believe this any more than if NASA said their $16000 toilet seats would bring plumbing to the masses.
The crosstalk is likely to be quite low since capacitive effects drop off with the square or cube of distance (I forget which).
The limitation of this technologyy is really how to place the correct components adjacent to each other to get the capacitive coupling working. ie, you wont be able to build buses with these devices.
As people have pointed out, a major power consumer in most chips (excluding Pentiums!) is charging the pin driving circuit that has to charge the pins and pcb tracks. These currents are also the largest source of electomagnetic interference etc. The capacitive coupling could help to reduce both these effects. I say "could", since used incorrectly, these could also get worse!
That old one: "I'll go blind if you don't" doesn't work any more since their mothers started telling them.
Good to have a new one, but it really needs your mate to come crashing through the pub door yelling "Hey everyone, there's a big-ass asteroid gonna kill us all in 20 minutes time".
Aree. The weather folk tell us when it is going to hail so we can park our cars away. I'd be really pissed if my 1987 Toyota rice rocket got dented by an asteroid because somebody forgot to tell me.
This is called "salesmanship". Bullshit, it's called lying.
Re:Why did MS move to C++ in the first place?
on
Does C# Measure Up?
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
MS bought Lattice C back in 1983 or so. This came on two single-density 5.25 inch floppies. You could copy the whole lot onto a single double-density (360kB floppy) with room left for an editor. With a dual floppy system you were in heaven with the second drive for source etc.
Back them, Microsoft viewed MSDOS as the single-user front end and Unix as the server/backend. Being multi-platfrm and portable was of benefit. I don't think MS pushed for C or C++, rather they were lead there by existing code and compilers which they subsequently destroyed and ruined platform nuetrality with their class libraries etc. Now by pushing C# they improve their lock-in, not just to applications but also to the Microsoft back-end services etc.
If your code is just gluing together Windows API calls, database engines etc, then is won't matter a damn what language you're using since almost all the time is spent inside the API/DLL.
If, however, you write code that does a bunch of computation etc, you will see difference. C will outperform C++, C# and Java.
I'm mildly dyslexic. I'm English speaking and grew up in South Africa where we were forced to learn Afrikaans (Dutch-like) at school and used Afrikaans 80% of the time while in the army there so I can read/write/speak this fluently. I also learn to speak a bit of Zulu and Xhosa.
While at University I thought I'd take some Xhosa courses and eventually packed it in because I was struggling so much to read Xhosa, though I could speak it better than most of the other kids.
This leads me to think that once one builds a certain familiarity with any language, one can cope with the scramble.
To me, the most interesting part of this discovery/research is that it might find a way to help dyslexic kids. I sure hope so.
They are this fragile. However, such effects are difficult to control and the end result is not guaranteed.
Even the onld Concorde was fly-by-wire.
I remember a discussion on sci.electronics some ten years back where a private pilot (and EE) said he could get some degree of steering on a private plane with a regular FM radio. The local oscillator, it seems, was intefering with the radio beacon reception.
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In comparison, I've seen Linux fixes come out in less than 30 minutes. Likely having Linux hackers spanning all time zones helps a lot to improve bug fixing time. Report bug at 6pm, patch available 8am.
Microsoft changes some stuff so that there is an incompatibility.
You then chose to go with .NET or stay with Mono and break the compatability. One might argue that Mono can change to keep chasing .NET, but this is a loser's game. Too much resource just gets swallowed up with juggling compatability etc. People running a "mission critical" app will just shell out dollars and buy .NET to get going again.
Microsoft has used this tactic many times over. While Borland and other compiler vendors served Microsoft's interests they wore tolerated, but as soon as they were seen to be the enemy (ie MS wanted people to use Visual Studio), they started changing stuff in such a way that the other vendors just could not really keep up. Eventually even die-hard Borland supporters had to switch to keep going.
They did a similar thing with NT. They provided a Unix streams model to encourage people to port their Unix drivers to NT but then crippled the streams driver support and finally killed it, thus breaking compatability.
It is a safe bet that Mono will be treated the same way. MS has no fear of anti-trust.
Also, in BIOS code there are some other pervy things you can do to do fake subroutine calls (ie without a stack in place).
I think the most sneaky code I've seen used a "jump to self" instruction stored in a counter register. When the counter incremented, the instruction became a "jump to next". It was a clever way to implement a synchronised wait.
Keep thinking like that and you will get wiped out. I cost approx a third of an equivalent US employee, yet I hold around nine or so US patents, have won international awards and various other things.
I recently had dealings with a company in India that does a damn good job of building and fixing gcc etc tools. Thes folk are "world class".
These people will work cheap because there is an army of them looking for a job. and mostly they have lower personal expenses. It takes a lot less than a US salary to make one of these guys very happy and motivated.
As for frying girls, well we still had some wild parties and once (at least) a naked geek-girl did fall in the barbeque and another set her pubic hair on fire trying to do this stunt involving burning matches and genitalia that the blokes could do with much lest risk.
C'mon... anyone wired right to write code for a C64 would never write C++ bloatware and thus anyone in a position to make a comparison is automatically disqualified as a C64 geek.
I live in New Zealand and work (embedded firmware etc) for a company owned by an American corporation. My salary + overheads are a third of what it costs to put an American behind a desk to do the same job. OK, we're not talking complete sweatshop, but the basic principle is there.
It is easy to say that the American engineer is getting screwed becasue he can't get a job. In many ways, the NZ economy is also getting screwed (at least in the short term) because my skills are going into building the American corporation rather than some New Zealand company.
In reality I think we're only seeing the thin end of the wedge. Countries like China, India etc have the potential to become stronger and stronger. As these countries get upskilled in all areas (manufacturing and engineering), the value added that comes from America is diminished. What's left for the American corporation to do? Marketing. How long before marketing etc also get commoditised and go offshore along with service organisations (tech support etc which already have)? Eventually there are likely to be full Chinese etc corporations with the capability to do everything better and cheaper. Where to then?
Bottom line: American corporations are so driven by quarter-by-quarter profits that they do not invest in the future. This will fail not only those corporations, but the economy on which they're based.
It definitely screws with power saving since it uses all the CPU it can get its hands on. I used to think that SETI was just a harmless bit of stupidity, not I realise it also contributes to global warming.
With luck, high profile cases like this will actually make the Americans realise that they're being screwed with and make them start demanding to get back their rights.
That these folks had to dig so deep to find 10 Unix vulns heartens me. Apart from BIND, what this says to me is the worst Unix vulnerabilities are only as bad as the fifteenth or twentieth placed Windows ones.
and nobody would even realise he's dead!
The darling measure of PV has been efficiency. The big bucks have gone into pushing efficiency. The solar races across Australia provide the big showcase for PV and these favour efficient cells.
The quest for efficiency has been at the expense of the more important quest of reducing $/W. $/W is about the only measure of any meaning when it comes to using PV in any volume.
There is always the bullshit theory that the quest for high efficiency will have the spin off of producing reduced $/W cells. I don't believe this any more than if NASA said their $16000 toilet seats would bring plumbing to the masses.
this thread becomes yet another "what about terrorists" thread.
The limitation of this technologyy is really how to place the correct components adjacent to each other to get the capacitive coupling working. ie, you wont be able to build buses with these devices.
As people have pointed out, a major power consumer in most chips (excluding Pentiums!) is charging the pin driving circuit that has to charge the pins and pcb tracks. These currents are also the largest source of electomagnetic interference etc. The capacitive coupling could help to reduce both these effects. I say "could", since used incorrectly, these could also get worse!
they didn't have weather back in those days.
Good to have a new one, but it really needs your mate to come crashing through the pub door yelling "Hey everyone, there's a big-ass asteroid gonna kill us all in 20 minutes time".
Since most of the damage will be caused by idiots running/driving scared the biggest danger is the hype.
Aree. The weather folk tell us when it is going to hail so we can park our cars away. I'd be really pissed if my 1987 Toyota rice rocket got dented by an asteroid because somebody forgot to tell me.
This is called "salesmanship". Bullshit, it's called lying.
Back them, Microsoft viewed MSDOS as the single-user front end and Unix as the server/backend. Being multi-platfrm and portable was of benefit. I don't think MS pushed for C or C++, rather they were lead there by existing code and compilers which they subsequently destroyed and ruined platform nuetrality with their class libraries etc. Now by pushing C# they improve their lock-in, not just to applications but also to the Microsoft back-end services etc.
If, however, you write code that does a bunch of computation etc, you will see difference. C will outperform C++, C# and Java.
Segways?
While at University I thought I'd take some Xhosa courses and eventually packed it in because I was struggling so much to read Xhosa, though I could speak it better than most of the other kids.
This leads me to think that once one builds a certain familiarity with any language, one can cope with the scramble.
To me, the most interesting part of this discovery/research is that it might find a way to help dyslexic kids. I sure hope so.
Those that can't post moderate!
Even the onld Concorde was fly-by-wire.
I remember a discussion on sci.electronics some ten years back where a private pilot (and EE) said he could get some degree of steering on a private plane with a regular FM radio. The local oscillator, it seems, was intefering with the radio beacon reception.