The tech they send out probably won't be able to take your word for it.
In fact, he'll probably be outfitted with a CD that has programs on it that root around inside your machine and sends the information back home via the Internet. In a perfect storm of stupidity, the programs would have to be run as Administrator.
This problem doesn't occur in Java, however in C/C++ when you simply tell the machine to write out blocks of memory (that happen to be data structures) the resulting byte order is whatever the machine natively uses.
Experienced programmers used to working with C or C++ know about this and write code where this isn't a problem. It's similar to how a Java programmer eventually learns to use File.separatorChar instead of hardcoding the separator. Someone mentioned on Slashdot that the Windows API can accept either a forward or back slash, but I don't personally know.
The IO routines don't know if one piece is a double, another a long and yet another a short.
That's true for the raw IO routines, and that's the way it's supposed to be. It's perfectly reasonable for the programmer to know what data type he's reading.
Java is really portable.
Writing portable code in C, C++, or Java requires that the programmer know how to do it.
Also note how the "UNIX" tradition of chaining smaller, single-purpose applications together would have also prevented the problems described in this paper.
True, but when you use multiple tools, you have to concern yourself with any temporary files created during the process. Programs like tar and bzip2 aren't designed with security in mind, and they might leave portions of an archive or the whole archive itself on disk in a temporary file.
Heck, in the version of WinZip I'm familiar with, every zip/unzip process make a list of the files it zipped/unzipped in C:\winzip.log.
While all that processor speed is mighty good, who needs top-of-the-line equipment anymore?
There are always research houses that need computations done as quickly as possible. If that's not convincing, keep in mind that as faster processors are developed, the market will drive down the prices of the ``lower end'' processors. It won't be too many years before you can pick up cheap Athlon64s for what an XP 2000+ costs.
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The tech they send out probably won't be able to take your word for it.
In fact, he'll probably be outfitted with a CD that has programs on it that root around inside your machine and sends the information back home via the Internet. In a perfect storm of stupidity, the programs would have to be run as Administrator.
This problem doesn't occur in Java, however in C/C++ when you simply tell the machine to write out blocks of memory (that happen to be data structures) the resulting byte order is whatever the machine natively uses.
Experienced programmers used to working with C or C++ know about this and write code where this isn't a problem. It's similar to how a Java programmer eventually learns to use File.separatorChar instead of hardcoding the separator. Someone mentioned on Slashdot that the Windows API can accept either a forward or back slash, but I don't personally know.
The IO routines don't know if one piece is a double, another a long and yet another a short.
That's true for the raw IO routines, and that's the way it's supposed to be. It's perfectly reasonable for the programmer to know what data type he's reading.
Java is really portable.
Writing portable code in C, C++, or Java requires that the programmer know how to do it.
Also note how the "UNIX" tradition of chaining smaller, single-purpose applications together would have also prevented the problems described in this paper.
True, but when you use multiple tools, you have to concern yourself with any temporary files created during the process. Programs like tar and bzip2 aren't designed with security in mind, and they might leave portions of an archive or the whole archive itself on disk in a temporary file. Heck, in the version of WinZip I'm familiar with, every zip/unzip process make a list of the files it zipped/unzipped in C:\winzip.log.
While all that processor speed is mighty good, who needs top-of-the-line equipment anymore?
There are always research houses that need computations done as quickly as possible. If that's not convincing, keep in mind that as faster processors are developed, the market will drive down the prices of the ``lower end'' processors. It won't be too many years before you can pick up cheap Athlon64s for what an XP 2000+ costs.
It appears to be a Martian wearing a Ryo-Ohki spacesuit.