Posts

On the recent Noso outage

To me this outage comes with no surprise. To be fair, I'm actually astounded that it hasn't happened before. You see, the code that drives the entire chain is done in Pascal. Not even in Object Pascal, which is the most recent and Object Oriented Programming version of the Pascal dialect. It's written in a dialect version of Pascal that has been out of fashion since the early 1990s. While this is not a bad thing in itself, as can be proven for the more than 4 years of operation of this coin, it's not a good thing due to lack of easy ways to scale it or even maintain it. And, mainly due to that, no one as ever wanted to actually dive into the code and find any relevant security issues. Welp... Looks like someone finally said: Hold my beer!!! I'm not quite sure what that person found that is so easy to attack and provides such a devastating effect, but from my own foray into the code, it's not that hard to find. All the code was done with standards from the early ...
9 comments
Read more

Official announcement of the 1 Billion Row Challenge in Object Pascal

 This is to announce the official launching of the 1 Billion Row Challenge . The challenge is starting on the 10th of March and will run through to the 10th of May. At first I was thinking about making it open ended. But then I realised that some of us still like to work under some pressure. Hence the 2 month period. I extend to you all the most sincere wishes of having fun in coming up with a solution that will top the charts.
Post a Comment
Read more

Recentes problemas com os servidores da Embarcadero

Faz algum tempo que os servidores da Embarcadero , nomeadamente o DocWiki , o Portal de Qualidade e o GetIt para as versões 11 e abaixo. Este ultímo inclui o " Delphi Community Edition ". Entretanto os servidores para a versão 12, DocWiki e Portal de Qualidade já voltaram à vida, deixando somente o GetIt por resolver. Blogs de interesse com mais actualizações: Recent system outages on Embarcadero websites Some Embarcadero Servers Are Experiencing A Hardware Outage Link para monitorização dos servidores da Embarcadero: Delphi Related Server Uptime Atualização 20 Fevereiro 2024 O servidor GetIt para as versões 11 e abaixo voltou à vida. Quer dizer que as pessoas que querem instalar a versão Community Edition já o podem fazer.
Post a Comment
Location: Lancaster, UK
Read more

Personal Opinion about Getting GIT video series by JMac (Updated)

Image
 Introduction  I've never been a good Versioning System user. That's a fact! I barely used it when it was SVN and now with GIT and the whole distributed part of it... Well I'm kinda lost. Enter Getting Git : "A comprehensive video series from git init to Git Master ". When this endeavour, by Jason "JMac" McCreary @gonedark , hit my attention, I immediately followed that link and had a look at it: JMac was going to release a series of videos about how to get along with the whole GIT thing. He already had the first 2 sections of it released and was in the middle of doing the following one. He was asking $29 USD for it. My immediate reaction was: YES and yes... The first yes was for the fact that someone was taking the initiative to do one of these. The second yes was in total agreement with such a low price. Impressions First of all I have to apologise to JMac. He sent me a mail asking for some feedback and I didn't reply ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Of numerology, patterns, sequences and life.

Numerology had it right, life's all about numbers. What it got wrong is that one to two digit numbers have no meaning. It's all about big data . And you have to crack the patterns or numbers.    Human brains can grasp/memorize up to 7 numbers. More with some practice, but that's it, it's memory, not associations. For associations, patterns and "big picture" you need more brain power. Easy for autism, real hard for Joe Shmoe, you and me. People see numerology and patterns as something that will predict a fixed end. Fate, some would call it. The power is not in the fixed numbers, the power is in the equation you can extrapolate from those patterns. An equation has variables, and when you input those variables you get an output dependent on those variables. This means that change is in the system already. You can influence these variables and get different outcomes. Nothing is written in the stars, nothing is written in stone. That's just...
Post a Comment
Read more

Liquids and Mists in Modern Building

The Show I've been, recently, watching a TV series produced by the History Channel called Ancient Aliens . Links: History Channel Ancient Aliens on History.com Ancient Aliens on TV.com Buy the show The series start with the theory of the book " Chariots of the Gods? " written by a Swiss author called Erich von Däniken . In it, through 5 seasons and still ongoing, they try to give you enough insight into a, somewhat, trending new way of interpreting some of the most puzzling clues that mainstream archaeology is still battling with. Mind you, I'm still in the early episodes of season one, so I'm not doing any profound analysis on the whole series. Observations What I want to talk about now, is one small thing they mentioned in episode 1: "To make such precise cuts or joints, one would have to need to liquefy stone and probably use some kind of mould." That is one of the various answers they spun out. But, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Game Programming, The Journey: Part 2

The mighty Game Loop Previous in the series: A new long term challenge: Game Programming Game Programming, The Journey: Part 1 Any game should have one, or at least say the experts on the matter. They also say that it's the place to start. But it's really not as simple as that. A simple implementation of this loop would be as follows: variable game_is_active of type boolean = True while game_is_active do     execute run_game     execute refresh_display end exit The run_game function is where the logic of the game is processed and the refresh_display function is where the graphical display is updated with the data from the game objects. This is the most broad representation of a game. and the catch is how you will implement each function.  But before anything One always do a practice run on something else before a big project. So I think I'm going to have a go at a Sudoku clone before tackling the bit RTS project. Com...
Post a Comment
Location: Lancaster, Lancashire, UK
Read more