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Indian student beats Java, .NET security.

An Indian research student from Princeton university comes up with a hacking method to beat the security of Java and .NET virtual machines using the properties of a computer’s memory and …a lamp!

"Our experimental study shows that soft memory errors can lead to serious security vulnerabilities in Java and .NET virtual machines, or in any system that relies on type-checking of untrusted programs as a protection mechanism. Our attack works by sending to the JVM a Java program that is designed so that almost any memory error in its address space will allow it to take controlof the JVM. All conventional Java and .NET virtual machines are vulnerable to this attack. The technique of the attack is broadly applicable against other language-based security schemes such as proof-carrying code.", says Sudhakar on the Princeton University website.

Read more here ...

Difference between / and \

Have you ever known that '\' operator exists in .NET ?! This is another difference between the syntax in VB.NET and C# that i found out pretty recently...

In VB.NET you could do 5.0\2.0 and 5.0/2.0  ( The result does vary, but i'll come to that in a minute )

But in C# only 5.0/2.0 is allowed while the other syntax throws up a compiler error...

Ok. What the point in having two similar syntax unless it does something different ?! Here's the difference ...

Basically, always divide the integral values with a \ (back slash) operator when you do not need decimal points or fractional values. The \ (back slash) operator is the integral division operator and it is up to 10 times faster than the / (forward slash) operator.

Aha .. The difference is very subtle and could be confusing for programmers now and then .. but it might not matter if used responsibly to improve the performance of math integral checks and all such operations .. A possible pitfall here and so all VB.NET programmers watch out :)

Artificial Intelligence !

This is a beautiful AI program which tries to guess what you think in 20 questions. It doesnt really matter on absolutely what you might be thinking but if you answer the questions and give appropriately close answers, this will read minds. Really :)

Check out the program here. It has been around for quite sometime but remembered about it and dug it out from my favorites after reading about it in Steve Maine's blog !

The program has changed a lot from the last time i saw it to this time .. The UI has changed, the AI engine i assume has grown and become more efficient. There used to be a description that this program uses neural networks and fuzzy logic to accomplish this AI task by traversing nodes based on the result for the questions asked ... Very very cool ! Definitely a must try !

I wasn't surprised this time when it guessed an 'Orc' correctly within 18 questions ! Kewl isn't it ?