A couple of days ago Jeff Stedfast ran into some problems with gcc 4.4, strict aliasing and optimizations. Being a geeky sort of person, I found the problem really interesting, not only because it shows just how hard it is to write a good, clear standard, even when you’re dealing with highly technical (and supposedly unambiguous) language, but also because I never did “get” the aliasing rules, so it was a nice excuse to read up on the subject.
Hack week!
does little jiggly dance
If you’re not familiar with what it is, here’s the gist of it: For one week, all the geeks at Novell stop what they’re doing and dive into a project of their choice. That’s right, a full week of pure, anadulterated hacking!
This year I’m going to use this week to scratch an hitch I’ve been having with bugzilla, by getting together a proper GUI for the thing, together with uber-hacker Marek Habersack.
Since all this Winforms WebBrowser control / Mono.Mozilla / gluezilla business started, there’s one thing that’s been nagging me at that place in the brain where I store stuff I’d rather not think about at the moment (and yes, it’s a place that quite resembles those junk-filled attics you see in movies where the kids go to play and occasionally encounter old moth-eaten dresses, the occasional treasure map or your garden-variety skeleton of the aunt nobody had seen in 50 years - a stuffy, moldy place where you can’t take a step without tripping on something…)…
How to write Buffer Overflows in Assembly
Just as the author wrote the article as a reminder of how to do it, so I am putting this one here so I can remember where to find it! :p Wish I’d do as he did more often, I seem to keep losing code everywhere nowadays…