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Comment Re:Delphi cross platform? (Score 1) 492

by laa (#48903947) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Is Pascal Underrated?

We did some test apps during the alpha/beta testers program and purchased one license for "recreational use". We created some half-production use web server apps with it, but it was mostly used to play with. Nothing with GUI, though, only server stuff.

Now that I come to think of it, there was something funny with the UI code. Did it hardlink in QT? I think it did. Borland (or whatever they were called at the time) coughed up some dough and got a license where they could link in QT libraries in the executables. It was portable, but probably anything but quick.

Comment Re:Delphi cross platform? (Score 1) 492

by laa (#48903647) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Is Pascal Underrated?

The IDE used wine, but the apps were native. You could even do server side Apache dynamic libraries for your linux web server. Technically it was a nice effort (even though the wine IDE discouraged three of the seven potential buyers). Commercially it never stood a chance, it lacked a market and it was obvious it could never create one.

Comment Re:Last century stuff (Score 1) 753

by laa (#47457811) Attached to: Predicting a Future Free of Dollar Bills

Nice language, dude! The credit card companies, at least here, charged a fixed percentage regardless of the sum. That's why you logic is all wrong, the cost for the merchant is the same (relatively) for a 10 cent purchase as it is for a 100€ purchase. On the contrary, handling cash is way more expensive.

I once tried to by a car with plastic, but was refused because the transaction fee would have been enormous.

And no, I'm not a immigrant, and yes, I have loads of sisu.
Programming

Web-based IDEs Edge Closer To the Mainstream 244

Posted by timothy from the hope-your-connection-is-reliable dept.
snitch writes "Last week Mozilla released Bespin, their web-based framework for code editing, and only a few days later Boris Bokowski and Simon Kaegi implemented an Eclipse-based Bespin server using headless Eclipse plug-ins. With the presentation of the web-based Eclipse workbench at EclipseCon and the release of products like Heroku, a web-based IDE and hosting environment for RoR apps, it seems that web-based IDEs might soon become mainstream."
Security

40-Gbps DDoS Attacks Worry Even Tier-1 ISPs 146

Posted by kdawson from the isotropic-tsunami dept.
sturgeon and other readers let us know that Arbor Networks has released their annual survey of tier-1 / tier-2 ISP security engineers. This year they got responses from 70 lead engineers. While DDoS attacks are reaching new heights of backbone-crushing traffic — 40 Gbps was seen this past year — the insiders are also worried about emerging threats to DNS and BGP. The summary notes that "Most believe that the DNS cache poisoning flaw disclosed earlier this year was poorly handled and increased the danger of the threat," but doesn't spell out what a better way of handling it might have been. All in all, the ISPs sound a bit pessimistic — one says "fewer resources, less management support, and increased workload." You can request the full PDF report here, but it will cost you contact information. In related news, an anonymous reader passes along a survey by Secure Computing of 199 international security experts and other "industry insiders" from utilities, oil and gas, financial services, government, telecommunications, transportation and other critical infrastructure industries. They are worried too.
Security

The Real Story On WPA's Flaw 67

Posted by kdawson from the calm-down dept.
Glenn Fleishman writes "The reports earlier today on WPA's TKIP key type being cracked were incorrect. I spoke at length with Erik Tews, the joint author of the paper that discloses a checksum weakness in TKIP that allows individual short packets to be decrypted without revealing the TKIP key. I wrote this up for Ars Technica with quite a bit of background on WEP and WPA. Tews's paper, co-written with Martin Beck, whom he credits as discovering and implementing a working crack (in aircrack-ng as a module), describes a way to use a backwards-compatible part of TKIP to exploit a weakness that remains from WEP. ARP packets and similarly short packets can be decoded. Longer packets are likely still safe, and TKIP hasn't been cracked. Don't believe the hype, but the exploit is still notable."
Censorship

Nation-Wide Internet Censorship Proposed For Australia 424

Posted by timothy from the unarmed-populace dept.
sparky1240 writes "While Americans are currently fighting the net-neutrality wars, spare a thought for the poor Australians — The Australian government wants to implement a nation-wide 'filtering' scheme to keep everyone safe from the nasties on the internet, with no way of opting out: 'Under the government's $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material. ... According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million."
Robotics

Flower Robots For Your Home 119

Posted by timothy from the pretty-high-on-maslow's-hierarchy dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Flower robots are not new, and some have already been developed in the US. Now, South Korean researchers have created a robotic plant which acts like real ones. This robot has humidifying, oxygen-producing, aroma-emitting, and kinetic functions. It is about 1.30 meters tall and 40 centimeters in diameter. The robotic plant can interact with people when they approach, and it can 'dance' when music is played. The researchers don't say when a commercial version of their flowers will come to the market. They also don't mention a retail price."

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