Cody Taylor

jonr writes “‘I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965. At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language (ALGOL W). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years. In recent years, a number of program analysers like PREfix and PREfast in Microsoft have been used to check references, and give warnings if there is a risk they may be non-null. More recent programming languages like Spec# have introduced declarations for non-null references. This is the solution, which I rejected in 1965.’ This is an abstract from Tony Hoare Presentation on QCon. I’m raised on C-style programming languages, and have always used null pointers/references, but I am having trouble of grokking null-reference free language. Is there a good reading out there that explains this?”

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Michael J. Ross writes “The owners and the developers of typical Web sites face a quandary, one often unrecognized and unstated: They generally want their sites’ contents and functionality to be accessible to everyone on the Internet, yet the more they open those sites, the more vulnerable they can become to attackers of all sorts. In their latest book, Securing PHP Web Applications, Tricia and William Ballad argue that PHP is an inherently insecure language, and they attempt to arm PHP programmers with the knowledge and techniques for making the sites they develop as secure as possible, short of disconnecting them from the Internet.” Keep reading for the rest of Michael’s review.

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nandemoari writes “As his administration continues to work on a stimulus plan that can save America’s economy, Obama’s latest course of action will see millions of dollars being allocated to heighten cyber security. The move will assist government officials in preventing future attacks on the United States. The President recently addressed his 2010 budget, outlining funding plans that will grant the Department of Homeland Security 5 million to secure the nation’s most essential computer systems. The money will be spent on both government and private groups, with much of the funding going to the National Cyber Security Division and the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative programs.”

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adeelarshad82 writes “CNet reports on a bizarre comment from Sony’s Computer Entertainment CEO in response to complaints from developers on how hard it is to develop games for the Playstation 3. ‘We don’t provide the “easy to program for” console that (developers) want, because “easy to program for” means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?’ Given that games heavily drive console sales, and the fact that the PS3 is already 8 million units behind the Xbox 360, I think making a developer’s job harder is the last thing Sony needs.”

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Hugh Pickens writes “A company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks has discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Barack Obama’s helicopter. ‘We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president’s helicopter,’ says Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, a security company that specializes in peer-to-peer technology. Tiversa was able to track the file, discovered at an IP address in Tehran, Iran, back to its original source. ‘What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One,’ says Boback, adding that someone from the company most likely downloaded a file-sharing program, typically used to exchange music, without realizing the potential problems. ‘I’m sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went.’ Iran is not the only country that appears to be accessing this type of information through file-sharing programs. ‘We’ve noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence.'”

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TapeCutter writes “After the devastating firestorm in Australia, there has been a lot of speculation in the press about the role of climate change. For the ‘pro’ argument the BBC article points to research by the CSIRO. For the ‘con’ argument they quote David Packham of Monash university, who is not alone in thinking ‘…excluding prescribed burning and fuel management has led to the highest fuel concentrations we have ever had…’ However, the DSE’s 2008 annual report states; ‘[The DSE] achieved a planned burning program of more than 156,000 hectares, the best result for more than a decade. The planned burning of forest undergrowth is by far the most powerful management tool available…’ I drove through Kilmore on the evening of the firestorm, and in my 50 years of living with fire I have never seen a smoke plume anything like it. It was reported to be 15 km high and creating its own lightning. There were also reports of car windscreens and engine blocks melting. So what was it that made such an unusual firestorm possible, and will it happen again?”

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Peace Corps Online writes “In the 1980s a deadly fungus called chytrid appeared in Central America and began moving through mountain streams, killing as many as 8 out of 10 frogs and extinguishing some species entirely. (The fungus has little effect on any other vertebrates.) Now a returned Peace Corps volunteer and her husband have opened the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center in western Panama to house more than 600 frogs as chytrid cuts a lethal path through the region. Experts agree that the only hope of saving some of the more endangered, restricted-range species is to collect animals from remaining wild populations, establish captive breeding programs, and be prepared to conduct reintroduction projects in the future. But before reintroduction can even begin, scientists must find some way to overcome the chytrid in native habitats using vaccines, breeding for resistance, or genetic engineering of the fungus. Conservationists are budgeting for 25 years of captive breeding, long enough, they believe, to allow some response to chytrid to be found. ‘There are more species in need of rescue than there are resources to rescue them,’ says Amphibian Ark’s program director. ‘When you’re talking about insidious threats like disease or climate change, threats that can’t be mitigated in the wild, there’s simply no alternative.'”

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chthonicdaemon writes “I have been using Linux as my primary environment for more than ten years. In this time, I have absorbed all the lore surrounding the Unix Way — small programs doing one thing well, communicating via text and all that. I have found the command line a productive environment for doing many of the things I often do, and I find myself writing lots of small scripts that do one thing, then piping them together to do other things. While I was spending the time learning grep, sed, awk, python and many other more esoteric languages, the world moved on to application-based programming, where the paradigm seems to be to add features to one program written in one language. I have traditionally associated this with Windows or MacOS, but it is happening with Linux as well. Environments have little or no support for multi-language projects — you choose a language, open a project and get it done. Recent trends in more targeted build environments like cmake or ant are understandably focusing on automatic dependency generation and cross-platform support, unfortunately making it more difficult to grow a custom build process for a multi-language project organically. All this is a bit painful for me, as I know how much is gained by using a targeted language for a particular problem. Now the question: Should I suck it up and learn to do all my programming in C++/Java/(insert other well-supported, popular language here) and unlearn ten years of philosophy, or is there hope for the multi-language development process?”

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commodore64_love writes with news that a number of cable companies, such as Time-Warner, Comcast, and Cox, are trying to establish themselves as content providers on the web in addition to television. They are currently negotiating with HBO, TNT, CNN, and a number of other channels to bring their programming online exclusively for cable TV subscribers. They say they’re not trying to develop “some enormous new revenue opportunity,” but rather trying to compete with sites like Hulu, which provide shows for free. “They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web. … People aren’t yet cutting the cord en masse – the Leichtman survey found that people who watch recent TV shows online every week are not more likely to give up TV service than other people. But the industry is heading off what could end up as a troubling trend. After all, the availability of free content online has befuddled other media industries, from music to newspapers. … The cable companies and others involved in the talks for a TV service said their goal isn’t to kill the online video goose, but to work out a plan that keeps everyone’s business intact.”

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There are a number of open source (and completely free) programs out there that do much of what Photoshop can. In this collection, you will find 10 excellent examples of open source and free alternatives to Adobe Photoshop.