If you need a (complex) binary protocol, why not use ASN.1? Mature, tested, compact (if using Packet Encoding Rules), almost readable (if using Basic Encoding Rules).
There are many ASN.1 compilers available (most of which have a rather steep licence cost...)
Morpheus: What you must learn is that these rules are no different that the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. Understand? Then hit me. If you can....
I've played around with the HTTP/XML variant and it does not appear to work the way it should...
The example taken from the developer kit:
http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=webservices-20&d ev-t=[developerâ(TM)s token goes here]&AuthorSearch=Tom%20Clancy&mode=books&type=li te&page=1&f=xml
Returns:
There are no exact matches for the search.
and the search:
http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=webservices-20&d ev-t=[developerâ(TM)s token goes here]&AuthorSearch=Isaac%20Asimov&mode=books&type= lite&page=1&f=xml
Returns a bunch of CD's (seems like the search is made for music instead of books)
Free, unlimited energy would completely change the economy (for the better, for everyone). Rest assured that the US would find ways to capitalize on that as well. There is no way such a thing is kept secret. (Not for the sake of selling more oil anyway.)
The thing is, having a well balanced portfolio is less risky than having any single stock.
Ballmer owning only Microsoft stock sends a strong message about his trust in the company, but it is not sane really... The CEO of a company is usually expected to have a large investment in his company, and Ballmer still has $10bn invested in M$.
Another thing should be remembered about risk and returns. Stocks carrying low risks also have a lower potential of providing great returns. A well balanced portfolio contains high-risk stocks as well as low-risk ones --> lower risk than a single stock while still having the potential of providing great returns.
OK, now I'm no financial genius, but isn't the purpose of diversification to reduce risk? If Ballmer is selling his MS stock simply in order to buy other stock, is this not tantemount to admitting that a) there are better investments than MS, or b) there are less risky investments, or both?
Not really. You can reduce risk by buying several different stocks carrying the same risk.
"Even a little diversification can provide a substantial reduction in variability. Suppose you calculate and compare the standard deviations of randomly chosen one-stock portfolios, two-stock portfolios, five-stock portfolios, etc. You can see from Figure 7-6 that diversification can cut the variability of returns about in half. But you can get most of this benefit with relatively few stocks: The improvement is slight when the number of securities is increased beyond, say 20 or 30."
["Principles of Corporate Finance", Brealey, Myers]
I am aware of the difference between Java the language, and JVM the platform. I also know that different JVM have differing performance characteristics.
I do assure you that applications written in C# running on the.NET platform will outperform Java applications running on any JVM in most cases.
Many JVM's use JIT compilation techniques. They just don't work as well as.NET. I am sorry, but Java is slow, on any JVM I know of.
Note:
I don't particulary like Microsoft in general, and the bulk of my professional development is done in Java. I do think that the.NET platform is the best M$ has produced since... well ever.
I can't see it being useful for games, because it's going to be slower than C++.
Slower, but not by much. For many types of games it will certainly be fast enough.
I can't see it being useful for cross-platform GUI apps because there's no guarantee that.NET really is cross-platform.
Agree with you here.
I can't see it being better than any of the various web development solutions (PHP, cold fusion, etc...)
Can't really answer this one. Better? Worse? I'd settle with different.
I can't see it being useful for enterprise server side apps because Java is more mature, more reliable, and has a VM implementation on lots of different platforms.
Thanks to JIT it is much, *much* faster than Java. The only thing Java has going for it here is platform independence and the huge libraries.
I can't see it being useful for PDA/Phone apps because the framework is too heavyweight.
20 MB is not that bad for next generation PDA's... I'd rather have.NET than a Java JVM on my PDA.
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next geek, but I have to hand it to them when it comes to C# and.NET. I have not yet used it much to be honest, but what I have seen so far is great:
Clear and concise syntax (terser than Java, but still readable)
Posix style threads and sockets
Pointers are back (if you really need them)
(Much) better performance
Very easy to interface your code with code written in other languages (JNI anyone?)
Unfortunately, I fear Microsoft lawyers will come down on the Mono project like a ton of bricks when they least expect it.
1. Break Java by being faster (and sort of platform independent).
2. Remove platform independence
3. Profit!
Maybe someone should make an addition to this entry in the Jargon Lexicon...
heisenbug:/hi:
'zen-buhg/ n. [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it. (This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use of a debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment significantly enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on the values of uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.) Antonym of Bohr bug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug. In C, nine out of ten heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto variables, fandango on core phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the malloc arena) or errors that {smash the stack}.
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
on
Open Source DRM
·
· Score: 1
The fundamental difference between SSH and DRM is that it is perfectly ok if the SSH-user knows the key used to encrypt/decrypt data. In DRM only the software must be able to find the key.
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
on
Open Source DRM
·
· Score: 1
The problem with DRM solutions based on encryption using key-pairs is that the key needed to decrypt the song must be stored on your computer. If you can restore the key, you can decrypt the song.
It really does not matter if the software is open source or not (though it will be harder to crack the binary only version).
Software only DRM is security by obfuscation only. Such security measures can *always* be broken.
Public/private key security depends on the user being trusted (naturally). The problem is that in the DRM case, the trusted user is the mp3-player (but that a malicious user has complete access to the system).
Slashdot Mirror
There are many ASN.1 compilers available (most of which have a rather steep licence cost...)
Morpheus: What you must learn is that these rules are no different that the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. Understand? Then hit me. If you can....
The example taken from the developer kit:d ev-t=[developerâ(TM)s token goes here]&AuthorSearch=Tom%20Clancy&mode=books&type=li te&page=1&f=xml
http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=webservices-20&
Returns:
There are no exact matches for the search.
and the search: http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=webservices-20&d ev-t=[developerâ(TM)s token goes here]&AuthorSearch=Isaac%20Asimov&mode=books&type= lite&page=1&f=xml
Returns a bunch of CD's (seems like the search is made for music instead of books)
At least it wasn't legit... (Unless he planned on adding the levy...)
Or you can always go:
telnet [smpt-server] 25
helo anything
.
mail from: [email address]
rcpt to: [kmart address]
data
Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE
Free, unlimited energy would completely change the economy (for the better, for everyone). Rest assured that the US would find ways to capitalize on that as well. There is no way such a thing is kept secret. (Not for the sake of selling more oil anyway.)
Ballmer owning only Microsoft stock sends a strong message about his trust in the company, but it is not sane really... The CEO of a company is usually expected to have a large investment in his company, and Ballmer still has $10bn invested in M$.
Another thing should be remembered about risk and returns. Stocks carrying low risks also have a lower potential of providing great returns. A well balanced portfolio contains high-risk stocks as well as low-risk ones --> lower risk than a single stock while still having the potential of providing great returns.
Not really. You can reduce risk by buying several different stocks carrying the same risk.
"Even a little diversification can provide a substantial reduction in variability. Suppose you calculate and compare the standard deviations of randomly chosen one-stock portfolios, two-stock portfolios, five-stock portfolios, etc. You can see from Figure 7-6 that diversification can cut the variability of returns about in half. But you can get most of this benefit with relatively few stocks: The improvement is slight when the number of securities is increased beyond, say 20 or 30."
["Principles of Corporate Finance", Brealey, Myers]
And if the police had one to, they would be in lukewarm pursuit...
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/gal ileo/intro/challenge_en.htm
Thing is, they throttled this service when they introduced the subscription.
IMO RHN used to be really good.
Now I usually get
Error Message:
Demo service for server 1002109410 limited due to high load
[snip]
For several days after an important security update has been released.
I suppose it still is good if pay up...
So...
How many antique Borgs does it take to screw in a lightbulb into a crewman?
AWT/Swing is horrible. Ecplipse looks excellent on the other hand. I will definetly try out IBM's SWT.
No hard numbers. This is Slashdot right? ;)
I would tend to agree, but at the same time, this doesn't say a hell of a lot about previous APIs from MS more than anything.
Agreed. I find the Windows API as well as MFC to be... less than excellent...
I do assure you that applications written in C# running on the .NET platform will outperform Java applications running on any JVM in most cases.
Many JVM's use JIT compilation techniques. They just don't work as well as .NET. I am sorry, but Java is slow, on any JVM I know of.
Note: .NET platform is the best M$ has produced since... well ever.
I don't particulary like Microsoft in general, and the bulk of my professional development is done in Java. I do think that the
Don't knock .NET until you have tried it!
Slower, but not by much. For many types of games it will certainly be fast enough.
I can't see it being useful for cross-platform GUI apps because there's no guarantee that .NET really is cross-platform.
Agree with you here.
I can't see it being better than any of the various web development solutions (PHP, cold fusion, etc...)
Can't really answer this one. Better? Worse? I'd settle with different.
I can't see it being useful for enterprise server side apps because Java is more mature, more reliable, and has a VM implementation on lots of different platforms.
Thanks to JIT it is much, *much* faster than Java. The only thing Java has going for it here is platform independence and the huge libraries.
I can't see it being useful for PDA/Phone apps because the framework is too heavyweight.
20 MB is not that bad for next generation PDA's... I'd rather have .NET than a Java JVM on my PDA.
Yeah. Right. The Iraqis had AK-47's did that stop your government?
(Like Apache on XP Home Edition)
Can they even disallow such usage?
Technically you are right. But:
1. On many Windows installations, it's more or less equivalent.
2. Under *nix, running arbitrary code as a user is a good first step to excalating to root.
I am sure the joke should involve coconuts and swallows rather than hell though...
Clear and concise syntax (terser than Java, but still readable)
Posix style threads and sockets
Pointers are back (if you really need them)
(Much) better performance
Very easy to interface your code with code written in other languages (JNI anyone?)
Unfortunately, I fear Microsoft lawyers will come down on the Mono project like a ton of bricks when they least expect it.
1. Break Java by being faster (and sort of platform independent).
2. Remove platform independence
3. Profit!
heisenbug: /hi:
'zen-buhg/ n.
[from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it. (This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use of a debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment significantly enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on the values of uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.) Antonym of Bohr bug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug. In C, nine out of ten heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto variables, fandango on core phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the malloc arena) or errors that {smash the stack}.
The fundamental difference between SSH and DRM is that it is perfectly ok if the SSH-user knows the key used to encrypt/decrypt data. In DRM only the software must be able to find the key.
It really does not matter if the software is open source or not (though it will be harder to crack the binary only version).
Software only DRM is security by obfuscation only. Such security measures can *always* be broken.
Public/private key security depends on the user being trusted (naturally). The problem is that in the DRM case, the trusted user is the mp3-player (but that a malicious user has complete access to the system).