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Surviving unscathed in a .net-managed world

Here’s a good article that explains how well the Visual Studio 2005 compiler can optimize .net managed C++ code. To me, it’s just further argument that “unmanaged” (“native”) (read: portable, non-MS-proprietary) C++ code is far superior. Is there anything in the .net API that is really really necessary that would be more difficult in straight C++? MS is committed to
making an effort to ensure that there is, so you go with their proprietary solutions. But I will always make an effort to code everything I can in portable clean C++, and link to .net managed C++ only when necessary.

And to follow up, here’s an article from Paul DiLascia, who’s been kicking a$$ with his C++ Q&A articles for decades, explaining how to link in .net code with unmanaged C++ code, on a MODULE-BY-MODULE basis! Excellent.

Update: There’s no stopping him, in his next article he shows how to “wrap (.net) Framework classes in a native way so you can use them in any C++/MFC app without /clr”.

Comments | Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Next-gen PGP is GPG

I’ve been playing with PGP for a long time, and it was a sad day when it was sucked up and commercialized. There’s still a free version somewhere, but now there’s an open-source solution as well, GPG. Works great! Under Windoze, there’s a GUI called GPGshell that is very PGP-ish. Countrymen, send me your keys!

Comments | Friday, February 11, 2005

k3b, burner of choice?

Trying out k3b, looks to be the best GUI front-end for the command line utilities cdrecord, cdrdao, and growisofs. Looks nero-like, cool.

Comments | Friday, January 28, 2005

Handling Virtual Domains with Cyrus IMAP

I am no longer a total Cyrus IMAP newbie. Cyrus IMAP newbies don’t run and administer Cyrus IMAP servers, at least not for long.

That said, I’ve lost a lot of email along the way. This stuff hasn’t been easy or straightforward. That’s mainly due to linux’s modular architecture, which is the only way to go, but it’s a mixed blessing. By the time you really figure out something like Cyrus, you’ll likely have learned a lot about linux’s authentication (PAM), your mail transport agent (MTA – it actually listens for mail and hands it off to Cyrus), other available MTA’s (sendmail, exim, qmail… why are there so many?), PHP and Mysql configuration, and so on.

So I’m not going to try to explain what it takes to get it all working. The main doc that makes that attempt is here. Use it as a reference – it’s extremely unlikely you’ll be able to actually go through the outlined steps directly. I definitely recommend trying to find a pre-built package for your distro.

I just wanted to document the steps that are needed with postfix and cyrus to get multiple virtual domains handled on one installation. There are two files that need tweaking, /etc/postfix/main.cf, and /etc/imapd.conf.

To do…

Comments | Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Anonymous Squid Proxy

It’s easy to set up the squid proxy cache as an anonymous proxy. Whenever you surf through the proxy, it will drop the HTTP headers that identify you, so the only thing that shows up at the HTTP server you’re browsing to is the IP of the machine where squid resides. Just check out /etc/squid/squid.conf, it describes which lines to add in order to remove all the header information.

Being more anonymous is great, but it’s not really much use to me, for two reasons: the proxy IP *is* my IP, so I haven’t hidden that; and if you browse anonymously, forget about all the advantages of being identified – i.e., using cookies. You simply won’t be able to browse any site that requires cookies. Cest la vie.