Rik's Ramblings

Friday, November 22, 2013

3D Printed Buildings

I'd not thought of this, but it's a natural progression really. Concrete buildings lend themselves to being manufactured with a tool based on the current plastic extrusion 3D printers.



Tuesday, November 19, 2013

When did Java become the LEAST secure part of the web browser?

If I remember rightly, back in 1997 we used java to make remote code execution more secure. Now it seems Java is the last thing you least want to enable in your browser if you want to be secure.

Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply CPU fixes as soon as possible. Starting Oct 2013, the Java SE Critical Patch Update will be released quarterly every year as per the main Oracle Critical Patch Update Schedule. This Critical Patch Update contains 127 new security fixes (including 51 Java fixes) across the product families listed below...



See also:
Oh, and baby, do we have one today. This is - you want to be at Java 7, Update 45. That's the newest one. Fifty-one security vulnerabilities, all but one of which are remotely exploitable without any authentication.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Win Phone Month View

I love the way that the month view just uses random jumbles of letters for the appointment text.

Presumably it would be too slow, or too much memory, to fetch the real text?

Thursday, November 07, 2013

Locking a mutex

Locking a mutex, then calling someone else's code!  It's like putting a pan of bacon on the stove, then going to take a bath.  You just don't!

So ends today's lecture.


Sunday, November 03, 2013

Interesting video on C++11 memory model

Watched this recently, and thought it was useful. 
 
Interesting talk from Herb Sutter on multithreaded code, processor architecture and languages features in C++11.  We’ve come a long way since the C “volatile” keyword.
 
atomic Weapons: The C++ Memory Model and Modern Hardware | Sutter’s Mill
 
I follow Herb's blog for insight into the evolving C++ standard, it's a good read.  Herb is chair of the ISO C++ standards committee, and a software architect at Microsoft - so what he says is especially relevant how C++ works on Xbox, Win8, Winphone, etc.