Saturday, February 5, 2005

Australia –James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, said last week that he believes Microsoft is wrong in its decision to support C and C++ programming languages in the common language runtime in Microsoft .NET. According to him, this decision may lead to severe security flaws in .NET. Gosling is currently in Australia, giving talks and visiting friends.

According to Gosling, the problem lies with the programming languages and some of their characteristics: “C++ allowed you to do arbitrary casting, arbitrary adding of images and pointers, and converting them back and forth between pointers in a very, very unstructured way.”

The Java language was developed due to limitations of C++. Gosling began using C++ for the former Sun Microsystems‘s star-seven project. At that time Gosling concluded C++ was inadequate and created the Oak language. The Oak language would become the language known today as Java. The former star-seven project shares its defining characteristics with networked software applications today: safety and portability.

Gosling continues: “If you look at the security model in Java and the reliability model, and a lot of things in the exception handling, they depend really critically on the fact that there is some integrity to the properties of objects. So if somebody gives you an object and says ‘This is an image’, then it is an image. It’s not like a pointer to a stream, where it just casts an image.”

Charles Sterling, a Microsoft developer and product manager of the .NET framework, didn’t entirely disagree with Gosling’s thoughts. But he said that .NET defines different types of code. And there is the code which is managed by the .NET framework. All new Microsoft languages, such as C# and Visual Basic.NET, produce only code managed by the .NET framework, so they are safe.

A key idea that has not shown up in Gosling’s talk is that Java itself allows a very similar process to occur. Java’s JNI (Java Native Interface) allows the integration of the same unsafe code that prompted Gosling’s central thesis.

However, Gosling says languages like C and C++ can still produce unsafe code which would not follow the rules of safety of .NET. This sort of code, usually found in old software applications, requires additional .NET permissions to execute. Sterling says it is up to developers to decide whether or not to use unsafe code in their .NET applications.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Funerals began Monday across Newfoundland for the deceased of the downed Sikorsky S92 helicopter that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Friday killing 17 of the 18 people on board. All bodies have now been recovered, and the voice and flight data recorders have been retrieved to aid the investigation.

“We have a big attachment to the sea, even if a family is not directly involved you know how dangerous it is out there. Some funerals are strictly a family matter. In this situation there’s a large extended family because we’re all affected,” said Jim Maher, the uncle of Allison Maher, 26, the first deceased recovered after the crash.

The Archbishop of St. John’s, Martin Currie, said, “Tragedy is no stranger to the people of Newfoundland. They’re very resilient people and in a time of tragedy, they come together to support each other. Most of the communities in Newfoundland are small communities. Everybody knows everybody.”

The Transportation Safety Board has retrieved nine more bodies from the wreckage. The Atlantic Osprey is the offshore supply vessel which has been with the search and rescue effort since day one. The newly recovered bodies were taken back to St. John’s aboard the ship.

Since the recovery operations began Monday “it took 24 hours to get nine bodies out Each presents its own challenges depending on how it is entangled inside the aircraft” said RCMP Sergeant Wayne Newell.

Operations continued Tuesday to recover the final seven bodies tangled inside the mangled wreck 120 to 150 meters (394 to 492 feet) below the ocean surface. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are being used in the icy waters to place the bodies in a basket so they can be raised to the surface. After the Atlantic Osprey arrived in port, the bodies were taken to the Newfoundland’s chief medical officer by hearse for identification.

Of the 19 people aboard, Robert Decker is the sole survivor. Decker’s family has informed the RCMP that he is not yet able to communicate. Decker, who was put on life support when first admitted to hospital with injured lungs and broken bones, has said a few words; RCMP investigators hope that he will be able explain what happened in the accident and assist with the investigation, possibly toward the end of the week.

Twelve names of the missing victims had previously been announced, and with family permission, the RCMP have now released the names of Corey Eddy, from Paradise, N.L., age 32, and John Pelley, from Deer Lake, N.L. age 41.