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Comment Re:total eclipse of the heart (Score 1) 294

by captain random (#20451293) Attached to: Comparing Visual Studio and Eclipse
Oh, please. I see your Strawman and raise you a Reductio ad Absurdum.

Sure, lazy developers are going to use debuggers and edit/continue to avoid thinking. But that doesn't mean that everybody needs to code with a soldering iron and debug with an oscilloscope.

And windbg? For 90% of cases, that's simply masochism (I, for one, don't use obtuse tools just so I can feel smart about being able to use them).

For example, you don't need to load up windbg, load SOS, and do a gcroot command just because an InvalidCastException was raised by some piece of code you haven't worked on in a couple of months. Just step in there, and see what object is being passed in (and, probably, track it up the call stack to see what's changed).

Keeping the entire source tree in your head slows you down (and probably drives you crazy). I tend to keep an overall map of the codebase in my head and just re-familiarise myself with bits while I'm working on them.

When an app has an unhandled exception, VS launches for JIT debugging, attaches, and takes me right to the place in the source where the error was raised. It shows me the full call-stack (a double-click on any entry in the call stack will take me to the source there) and, for each level in the call stack, automatically picks likely variables of interest (as well as being able to show me the contents of pretty much anything else I choose).
Media

Submission + - AnyDVD updated, now removes Blue-Ray DRM

Submitted by
mariushm
mariushm writes: "SlySoft has just updated AnyDVD HD, offering users the possibility of watching Blue-Ray media without DRM. This comes after only two weeks from the first release which was able to remove DRM from HD-DVD.

Version 6.1.3.0 has lots of features but probably the most important one is stripping the evil DRM infection from Blu-Ray and restore your fair use rights.

The free upgrade can also remove region encoding, works on Windows XP-64 and Vista-64, and fixes a ton of bugs. You can get the update or a trial copy here."
Spam

Submission + - Reply-to-All: E-mail boob

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Now I am sure you know somebody who replied to a very personal or damning e-mail accidentally by the use of the Reply-to-All button. It happens. Very few have the impact, nor implications of the e-mail the editor of Jane magazine accidentally sent this week. According to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column, Jane had to cancel its splashy "Guide to Boobs" cover story after asking female colleagues to anonymously bare their breasts for photographers, but then after the shoot, sent out their identities by mistake via a mass e-mail. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1201 0"
Security

Submission + - RSAkey revealed in few sec w/o Quantum Computer

Submitted by
QuantumCrypto
QuantumCrypto writes: "IRISA is reporting that Branch Prediction is NOT good for Security. Branch predictors allow processors to execute the next instructions without waiting for the previous ones to be resolved, which in turn allows the RSA key to be spied.
Old news. Right? Well André Seznec at IRISA has independently verified the claims. "I've tried to validate the principle. It works! Beautiful case study by the way!" said André Seznec. Onur Aciçmez and his colleagues managed to grab 508 bits out of a 512-bit key on RSA encryption , at first shot, in just a few thousandths of a second. Quite a feat when compared to the endless three months and the line-up of 80-some 2.2 GHz CPU computers that the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) once poured in to crack a SSL 640-bit key (3).

Background from the Artikle:
Until not so long ago,processors were executing threads in a time shared mode: T0 was executing during a time slice, then T1 was executing during the next time slice, then T0 again, ..."Each of these time slices lasts far longer than the processor execution cycle. Say a thread lasts around10 milliseconds, representing about 20 to 30 million processor cycles. As long as a spy thread and a cryptographic thread are not executed simultaneously, there is no way the former can grab very precise information on the latter." The impervious architecture keeps threads peep proof. But things have changed with the arrival of Pentium 4 HT processor generation (7), a SMT processor in PCs and servers. These CPUs run two threads at the same time: on the very same cycle, instructions from the two threads are executed on the CPU. Why? "Mainly to squeeze performance from the processor, Seznec answers. The processor can execute several instructions per cycle, but generally a significant part of the resource is lost if a single thread executes. When two threads execute at the same time, the hardware is significantly better utilized." Unfortunately, running two threads in parallel on the same hardware CPU can lead to some information leakage. "One can manage to grab an indirect view on a thread execution from a spying thread that is executed simultaneously. This indirect information about its execution can allow to recover critical information such an encryption key.""
Nintendo

Submission + - WiiCade Cracks Wiimote Buttons for Online Play

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The popular online gaming site WiiCade, just announced that they've cracked the control scheme for the using the Wiimote in online games. Even better, they're releasing it as a Flash API for anyone who wants to make games for Wiicade!

This API is different from previous efforts in that it manages to prevent the Opera browser from navigating when buttons are pressed. As a result, ALL the buttons (including the DPad, 1, 2, +, and -) can be used by Flash games. WiiCade's latest five games (SnowBlitz, MuscoMorphia, Radioactive Snakes, and Nutty McNuts) all support this new control scheme. Are we seeing the birth of a Virtual Console competitor, or a complement to Nintendo's existing efforts?
Nintendo

Submission + - Five things Nintendo did right in 2006

Submitted by
Reinhart
Reinhart writes: "The early results are in, and they're looking pretty damn good for Nintendo: their Wii console sold some 436,000 units in the U.S. in January, compared to 294,000 for Microsoft's XBox 360 and 244,000 for the Playstation 3. Wii Software did well too, with both Wario Ware Smooth Moves and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess charting in the Top 10 titles for the month.

Even more telling than all that data, however, is that it's three months past launch and it is still impossible to find a Wii. People still line up in front of Best Buys when new shipments are announced, and for the impatient (like me) the only way to get your hands on one is through craigslist scalpers (like I did). I'd compare it to similar sold-out-everywhere phenomena like Tickle-Me-Elmos or that robot pet that blinked and plotted your demise, except for one thing: it's January.

Consumer chaos, huge line-ups and shipment sell-outs are something that happen over Christmas, not in January. We expect them in December. It's that wonderful time of year where everyone goes nuts and decides that what their bachelor apartment really needs in a 50 Plasma Television and so much IKEA furniture that the excess multitools can be melted down into a cube and exhibited in a museum as some sort of post-modern critique of consumerism and giant cubes. Everyone loses their shit in December, and so sales from that month are largely irrelevant. What's hot in December is in the bargain bin in January, as generally kids wake up and realize that the thing they wanted — whether it was that version of Battleship that actually talked to you or some sort of voice-activated water pistol that attached to your finger — actually really sucks.

But that didn't happen with the Wii. Their sales in January 2007 were the highest January sales for any console ever.

So how did Nintendo do it? I certainly didn't think they would. My expectations with the Wii started low, and only got lower as Nintendo seemingly made moves that were, not to put too fine a point on it, really stupid. It's only twice as powerful as the Gamecube! It can't output to High Definition! It has a controller that looks like a television remote! They named it "Wii"!

They looked doomed.

And now here we are, with Nintendo for the first time in a decade looking like they might actually have a chance of winning the worldwide 'war' for console userbase supremacy. How they did it exactly is anyone's guess, but here are five moves Nintendo made in 2006 that, in retrospect, seem really brilliant. Original Link: http://www.wiipals.net/index.php?categoryid=1&p2_a rticleid=9"
United States

Growth of E-Waste May Lead to National 'E-Fee' 199

Posted by Zonk from the e-xactly-what-we-e-want dept.
jcatcw writes "A bill in Congress would add a recycling charge to the cost of laptop PCs, computer monitors, televisions and some other electronic devices, according to a story at Computerworld. The effort to control what's called e-waste could lead to a national 'e-fee' that would be paid just like a sales tax. Nationwide the cost could amount to $300 million per year. Already, California, Washington, Maryland and Maine have approved electronics recycling laws, and another 21 states plus Puerto Rico, are considering them."
GNOME

Submission + - Linus calls GNOME "limiting"

Submitted by
lisah
lisah writes: "The flame wars between Linus Torvalds and the GNOME community continue to burn. Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,' a member of the Linux Foundation's Desktop Architects mailing list suggested that Torvalds use GNOME for a month before making such pronouncements. Torvalds, never one to back down from a challenge, simply turned around and submitted patches to GNOME and then told the list, '...let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they actually improve the code.' After lobbing that over the fence, Torvalds concluded his comments by saying, 'Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it makes things more logical, and code more readable.'"
Programming

Submission + - What does good ajax code look like?

Submitted by b0wl0fud0n
b0wl0fud0n writes: I've been browsing through the web to look up good coding standards and guidelines for ajax, but I've been cluttered with returns of basic tutorials and examples. Enough with basic tutorials, where can I go to find in depth resources for large ajax web application development?

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