I spent a fair part of my past life not understanding character encodings in its entirety. While this was totally unimportant in past times, when e.g. a dataformat or file was written or created by the same program reading it, most likely not crossing country or language borders, nowadays it is. Very. So what is this all about? Continue reading
Security is always a big issue, whether you are writing for a big company or just for fun. But many people, especially beginners, tend to underestimate the importance of securing their applications dramaticially. While stuff like a well-designed interface and the proper function of the application is directly visible, security works the other way round: it’s presence ( or a lack thereof ) are only visible when it’s in most cases too late. So, as for testing, security is a important quality attribute of your software, and you should care, and if you don’t know where to start, the SANS-institute released a very comprehensive list of the most wanted programming errors.
The list was created in collaboration with major actors, like Microsoft, Cisco and other popular names. While not all of them are applicable to all kinds of applications, you will certainly find some that do, and this list is certainly a very good source to start reading on that topic.
Enough written, the document can be found here: Top 25 programming errors.
Everyone is used to Google’s AdSense system offering relevant ads instead of providing static banners. This system not only affects the acceptance of advertising on blogs, but also enhances the user experience. Being able to access relevant products or content by one click is certainly a much more attractive and modern way of offering ads. Continue reading
I’ve been writing about the server side implementation aspects of Bonjour for Java a while ago, and I promised to explain the client side, which is a bit more tricky. The reasons therefore is that it makes heavy use of asynchronous callbacks, leaving you no other choice but to implement some interfaces and understand the way things work behind the curtain. Continue reading
This is an experiment. And I want to clearify that I’m neither a communist nor someone who never buys music, both isn’t true. But an industry not getting tired of trying to control very important aspects of our lives just to guarantee some profit is indeed driving me nuts. So here’s my plan.
Maybe you’ve heard that the music industry finally decided on dropping charges against individuals, and that from now on the strategy is to work with ISPs to simply cut off unprofitable users. This reminds me of ancient laws ( that are, unfortunately, still used in some parts of the world ) where a criminal would get his hand cut off if he used it to steal something with it.
While some countries like France are already in the process of passing such a law, elsewhere lobbyists are still busy convincing politicians to do so. If you want to get into the topic, a good place to turn to is certainly the Electronic Frontier Foundation, featuring an article covering the topic.
If you are just like me, and many other folks, just follow a specially created twitter-user called #ourrights. This account will link nowhere, it’s just a statement to follow it. Please also spread the word by posting an update on your tweed. Thank you, and always keep in mind that we are the masses.
Actually it’s nothing that’s pulling me off my chair, just because it’s not that hard to get digital music without copy protection. But I’m a bit impressed that Apple is actually the first legal music provider to sell music without any DRM system.
Already bought songs can be updated for something around 30 cents, which certainly sucks hard, and the price for new songs can be anything between 69 and 129 cents, a long-time demand of the music industry.
I guess not the action itself is the big important here, but rather the perception of some guys over at Universal or wherever that DRM just doesn’t work. No it’s finally there: legal, unprotected music ( like in the old days ) at a reasonable price ( not like in the old days ). Welcome.
Im Laufe eines Studiums stolpert man öfters über Themengebiete, die in der Essenz leicht und verständlich sind, durch fremde Formulierungen und ungewohnte Schreibweisen aber fast unlösbar sind. Im Nachhinhein lacht man vielleicht darüber, aber wenn man drinsteckt eben nicht. Zusammen mit meinem Freund Thomas Fankhauser habe ich deshalb dieses ( ziemlich unvollständige ) Skript zum Thema verfasst, unter anderem gehts um Mengenlehre, Matrizen etc.. Viel Spaß damit.
I posted this also on my “old” blog. Please be good in judging it, I did it for a C++ course in Espoo. C++ Cheatsheet.
Edit: One thing not discussed in the cheatsheet, but at least from my point of view a error-prone area is the const-modifier. I found a good explanation about it and its various uses and meanings here.
I just read some very interesting programming challenges located at facebook. Though time is certainly a precious resource, I consider it crucial for a programmer, especially if the claim is to be a good one, to take some challenges from time to time, be it implementing a complex algorithm or solve puzzles like the facebook ones.
Time is a limited resource. So I’ll better hurry in doing something, otherwise I’ll be forever stuck in the 80% completion state with too many projects around here.
By the way, I’m totally unsure whether to choose git or svn for my next project. Any tips?
Just read that article. Interesting, i worked with both of them and was equally impressed, so I definitely encourage this evolution.
Jumblesale, the project discussed a few posts earlier, is also based on Rails2, and it just works.