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Observation by State

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I am living in Austria and currently there is a discussion about how to observe the internet-traffic. This is more interesting for Germans and Austrians, because we all know the problem of a “Bundes-Trojaner”.

Several engineers from different Austrian companys and the interior ministry are discussing about technical solutions for observing internet traffic. Last year they discussed a so called “Bundes-Trojaner”. This is a virus written for observing criminal citizens. They want them, because they think they aren’t able to observe Skype (For sure, could be tricky, but nothing is impossible).

Main argument was, the new security dangers force us to do something against it. This means, translated for the stupid ones.

“Osama is using VOIP for command new attacks”.

What an absolut dumb argument. I could not even say how angry i am, when i hear something like this from responsible politicans. Let’s have a look at our security issues.

There is a bit of a mixed culture in the bigger citys, but not as heavy as f.e. in Berlin, Germany. This fact bring us some conflicts from time to time, but there are no “real” or big problems. So, Austria is also a very small country, there is no strategic interest (except finanical) on us. We are in the middle of a bunch of states, called the European Union. We have neighboures with big armed forces, but they are friends, not enemys. So, why we should observe everyone’s web-traffic.

WHY?

Maybe someone think, i am a potential terrorist, that will bomb the Houses of Parliament next year, so they should observe how i prepare for this. For sure, they should also observe my web-traffic. I will use my standard-net-connection at home for getting some information on how to build a bomb.

First step is to use Google-Earth to find out how i could enter the building. Then i am going to hack the computers of the energy-companies for shut down the electricity (Maybe they have an open web-service-API for this, so i do not need to hack it.)

Oh, sorry.. forgotten somethinkg.

I will use YouTube to generate a video-stream for the observation cameras, so the watchman, watching them, does not recognize me.

Then, i will search on FlickR for getting some plans of the building, to know where is the best place for placing the bomb.

Finally, i will write a new SSL-based protocol, encrypt it with an own-styled method and tell my complices when we will start and how we do it.

So, Mr. home secretary and friends, you will never know more, than i let you know, but i am not a criminal, so maybe the “real” criminals have better ideas, than i have.

Ask yourself: Why, to reduce the freedom of Miilions, for hoping that you are able to prevent crime that will never happen?

Ps.: If you, what i think, want to know  who is downloading illegal MP3′s, movies and other so called “copyright” content from P2P-networks, than you should better have a look at the consequences than the money from your lobbyist.

Never mind what others says, copying a MP3 is still the same than crossing the street if lights are red. It could hurt, but it shouldn’t at 99%.

h.

Posted in General

Dreamweaver CS4 Beta: "It's time for teamwork baby"

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We are using Dreamweaver in different versions at our company and sometimes for us, Dreamweaver is more or less the best choice. But we are always missing some workflow-features. We have tried to implement an Eclipse-based solution (PDT, WDT, Subclipse, etc.) into our daily workflow, but this was no real alternative.

Next step was to put all of our code into a repository. But if you have to do quick changes(and this happens very often) and login with Remote-Desktop on the Production-Environment, you always will break the repository, because lack of time and the next day someone has to “Clean-Up” the mess. So we are falling back to the Check-In, Check-Out method, availabe in Dreamweaver since i know it (MX or so). But in comparison to an SVN-solution this is not very satisfying.

Next big issue we have is using CSS-based layouts and “Includes” in DW. It seems that till version CS3, DW is pratically only useable with static pages (except you use tables for some parts of the page, but i do not like this idea very much). For cases, where a CMS is not a solution, Dreamweaver is our best friend and so we have to do a lot of debugging with FF and Firebug, or IE and Developer Toolbar.

BUT

Dreamweaver CS4 will have some features that are targeting this 2 major problems we have. SVN integration into DW. Works great for me, but check your SVN-version, DW will not work with the current release of SVN(I hope a more  SVN client into DW will be replaced for the final release).

And, the new Live-View is wonderful. F.e. if you have a calendar-widget which is included like this


include("calendar.php");

you will never get the page correctly rendered. But if you have access to a testserver(Configured within Site-Manager), than you can use Live-View. Therefore Dreamweaver loads the site from the testserver and link the code from you to this live-perspective. So, you can jump between Code and Design perspective and edit your code.

We also like, that related documents are opened in “subtabs” and you can instantly work on these. We have discovered some bugs in Live-Mode and there are some feature requests we have.

  • If you have Java-Script activated and you click on Design-View, you could never go back to any line in Code-View, because of a “marker” or so, DW is tries to jump all the time.
  • If i edit a file in Live-View, the Webkit-rendered-presentation never get updated.

I have to restart DW after writing some messy HTML-code, because the Webkit-DW-Combo could not handle this. I have to do further testing to find out under which conditions this things are going to happen.

Finally, DW CS4 will be one of the most important releases in 10-years of development.

Posted in General Development, Webby Web

FP10: Vector vs Array

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Update 2 (Read first):

I noticed there are still some trackbacks to this post. To clear things a little bit up. This post is 2 1/2 years old and the Flash Player version used was one of the first (the first?) that supported Vector at all. The results of this tests are NOT VALID! any more. In general the tests are not completly wrong, but they do not fit into real-world scenarios.

Update

I have replaced the Sprite by an own class/object (SimpleObject with 3 public properties, x, y, z). The results are the same.

Vector vs Array

Started a little speed measurment with new Vector-type and the “old-fashioned” array. As everyone could read in the Adobe AS3 Docs, Vector should give us some advantages over Array iteration and data-access.

I have tried several test-settings and i was completely surprised by the results (in a bad way).

What i am most interested in, is fast access of objects. So i create a pool of object-references(simple sprite), one as an array and the other pool is defined as a Vector.<Sprite>.

[as]

var i:uint = 0;
var n:uint = N_TEST; ( n = 20000000)
var v:Vector.<Sprite>;
v = this.objectPoolV;

var timestamp:int = getTimer();

i = 0;
var r:Sprite;
while (i < n)
{
r = v[i];

i++;
}

result.htmlText += “<br />Result Vector Complex Operation Test: ” + (getTimer() – timestamp);

[/as]

This was my first test and the difference is noticeable (but look at n, how high it has to be for even get a small difference).

  • Vector result: 511 ms
  • Array result: 659 ms

But this is not a very commen use. So, next step was to save the reference in a locale variable and move the sprite in all 3 directions about 10px. I have done this test with and without an explicit cast.

[as]

var i:uint = 0;
var n:uint = N_TEST;
var v:Array;
var r:Sprite;
v = this.objectPoolA;

i = 0;

var timestamp:int = getTimer();
while (i < n)
{
r = v[i];
r.x += 100;
r.y += 100;
r.z += 100;

i++;
}

result.htmlText += “<br />Result Array Complex Operation Test: ” + (getTimer() – timestamp);
[/as]

This result i have never expected, array is faster!! than the vector, but why? I am only referencing to the current dataset.

  • Vector result: 5118 ms
  • Array result: 4885 ms

If i cast the array, the result is worse than without a cast.

[as] r = Sprite(v[i]); [/as]

I know, casting is expensive, but look at the results with casting.

  • Vector result: 7055 ms
  • Array result: 7126 ms

So, finally let’s have a look at the worst sample. Direct access of properties threw the Array and Vector.

[as]
var i:uint = 0;
var n:uint = N_TEST;
var v:Vector.<Sprite>;
v = this.objectPoolV;
i = 0;
var timestamp:int = getTimer();
while (i < n)
{
v[i].x += 100;
v[i].y += 100;
v[i].z += 100;
i++;
}
result.htmlText += “<br />Result Vector Complex Operation Test: ” + (getTimer() – timestamp);
[/as]

I have to reduce the N_TEST constant to 1000000, here are the results

  • Vector result: 1751 ms
  • Array result: 1631 ms

Is anyone able to confirm this results?

The complete testfile is downloadable here. (If you find a mistake, please tell me).

Posted in Flash Platform

Flash CS3: "Edit Selected Bitmaps"-Panel

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We are currently working on a bigger project with Flash CS3 and when it comes to performance/size-issues, there are many solutions, but one very simple is to reduce file-size of bitmaps and set some properties like smoothing enabled/disabled in the library.

This works great for us, but i do not understand why there is no availability for disabling/enabling same properties for a bunch of selected bitmaps. I have written some JSFL-Code to do this and made an extension of it so it is easy to install and work with (It’s a panel inside Flash CS3 with some buttons and a textfield).

How to do

  1. Download the extension.
  2. Select the bitmaps you want to edit (STRG + LMB, or LMB + Drag Over Bitmaps)
  3. Press one of the 4 Buttons (enter quality first for JPEG compressed bitmaps)

I hope you like it.

Posted in General

Astro is great!

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Update 2

Seems, that i am not up to date, Powerflasher’s have already done an update to FDT (it works on my Macbook now, great ;) ). Now it is possible to read the new SWC-format.

Update

Another sample (based on the first, some filter effects on it)


With a little delay(busy right now, nice project in pipeline, further information in about a month or so), here is my obligatory FlashPlayer 10 sample. 50 Planes, rotating in all axes and moving randomely every 2sec. I have tried up to 400 planes(definitly not possible), but i tink 100 non-complex objects should be ok if you have to move them (don’t know if there is a great difference between Shapes and Sprites).

I think the Adobe-developers have done their job. From a designer’s perspective and for not-so-heavy-hardcore 3D (in my opinion approx. 90% of work) this is a more natural approach other than it is with the great 3D-libs like Papervision3D, Away3D, Sandy, Alternativa(.. are there more?, i know one other vector-rendering engine, but have forgotten the name by now).
But i am missing a camera3d-class and a scene3d (sure, easy to program one for yourself, but if you compare it with After Effects, it would be nice to have one for the non-developer-CS4-artists).

Feature i like most is the new Vector-datatype. I am not sure if it is a “real” datatype, it seems to me it is more like a generic(i know them from C#), would be great to have your “own” generics in AS3, but for the beginning the Vector is ok. I have not done any speed-measurements by now, but type-safe access should give us a great performance improvement and it will safe my time, because i will never ever have to cast the contents of an array or search for an type-problem.

I am still missing the private field for classes (very bad, i hate this crappy workarounds for Singelton, etc.). But if anyone from the Adobe guys read this, if you are going to implement private fields, abstract would be also a nice to have… ehm… and support for overloading methods. And i agree with Andrè Michelle var and function is only good for a typewriter’s cramp. Would be nice too, if the syntax for getter/setter could be reduced, and enum’s by the way ;) … ok stop, stop, stop

TextComponent is a great thing, i am on the search for a stable and easy-HTML/CSS solution for years, now it seems to be possible to do fine-typo on the web with Flash, great!

I am surprised how easy it is to setup and compile with mxmlc-compiler, great thing from Adobe to give it away as open-source(i knew the SDK is free before, but first time i try it on my own).

I was not able to do a project with FDT (FDT-parser did not like the new Vector-type …;( and the playerglobal.swc did not work too, any solutions out there?)

FlashDevelop works great, the sample at the beginning is written with it.

I know there are a lot of more interesting and nice aspects of the new player, but it’s time for bed now ;) .

Update

Vector is a class wit a “base type” and could be extended, so the could be used in a very similar manner like generics in C#, hope asdatastructures and other projects may get an update sooner or later @see poylgonal.de.

Note for myself: Study the documentation.

Download code from the sample here.

Posted in Flash Platform

Die Ösis

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Im Zuge der Berichterstattung zur Fußball-Europameisterschaft in den großen deutschen Tageszeitungen(allen voran FAZ und Süddeutsche) durfte man als “Ösi” (ja, ich bin einer) diverse Feststellungen über die grauslige Leistung österreichischer Fußballer, den nicht zu verstehenden Sprachschatz usw. lesen. Naja, wir sind es ja gwohnt, dass man ein bißchen auf das kleine Nachbarland hinabsieht, ein kleines Problem gibt es aber, nämlich wenn bei den ganzen aufgesetzten Beiträgen und Kommentaten, die augenscheinlich die Hass-Liebe zwischen uns und unseren Lieblingsnachbarn festigen soll, einfach Fehler passieren,

Betrifft mich eigentlich insofern nicht, aber nachdem ich jetzt schon den 3. fehlerhaften Beitrag der deutschen Presse innerhalb kürzester Zeit zu lesen bekommen habe, sehe ich mich berufen hier etwas klarzustellen.

  1. Wir Österreicher finden “Ösi” weder charmant, noch witzig, sondern einfach anmaßend und falsch. Es heißt und man spricht “Österreich” und “Österreicher” (irgendein deutscher Kollege hat ein Ö-Problem und murmelt immer etwas von Estareicher).
  2. “Wienerisch” oder der in der Bundeshauptstadt gesprochene Wiener Dialekt gilt nicht für Gesamt-Österreich. Grandioses Ergebnis eines Österreichers beim “Ösi-Quizl” in der Online-Ausgabe der FAZ, gerade mal 8 von 16 Antworten richtig, 80% Alt-Wiener-Wörter, bzw. Wörter die es gar nicht gibt.
  3. Dialektvielfalt widerspricht nicht dem Fakt, dass auch wir uns im so genannten Hoch-Deutschen artikulieren können, sprachlich und schriftlich. Ganz nebenbei, eine konservative Deutsch-Ausbildung ist anscheinend auch kein Garant für gute PISA-Resultate…
  4. I-Tüpferl-Reiten (dass war jetzt wohl gerade “österreichisch”, Übersetzung: pingelig) ist weiters kein Garant für Erfolg und ein richtiges Komma macht noch keinen Satz.
  5. Ich wünsche mir eine sinnvolle Berichterstattung, ansonsten seh ich mich gezwungen die deutschen Online-Medien als homogenes Eins zu verstehen, in der Reihenfolge Bild, FAZ, Süddeutsche.

Danke und Pfiat Eich,

Posted in General

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