Lack of coding knowledge? np use DieHard...

eMTee · Post by **eMTee** » 2007-01-03 16:09

Heres a short review of a new software (technology?) called DieHard which can be used for eliminate memory handling bugs and exploits of a running software.

diehard-software.org wrote:DieHard eliminates — or greatly reduces the likelihood of — a class of bugs and security vulnerabilities called memory errors. DieHard prevents certain kinds of errors from happening at all. It also reduces the probability that a bug will have any effect at all. DieHard works by randomly locating program objects far apart from each other in memory. This scattering of memory objects all over memory not only makes some errors unlikely to happen, it also makes it virtually impossible for a hacker to know where vulnerable parts of the program's data are. This thwarts a wide class of exploits.

Hmm sounds good at the first time... but

One caveat is that DieHard noticeably increases memory usage - a rise of 50 to 75 percent ... Application performance shouldn't be noticeably altered, though, as long as the system has sufficient memory.

Ah, I can see now so there is no need of a quality, sufficient, optimized, tested code and skilled programmers anymore... Use DieHard, require the user to get another bunch of ram modules to the comp and LET'S ROCK!

And who are the sponsors of the developing? Guess...

This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, Intel Corporation, and Microsoft Research.

So we have fast cpus and many gigs of memory let's use them. A viewer for a document of 200k size will use 150M memory... no problem

To save the best for last :

The problems (we) wanted to address were caused by the fact that despite the huge amount of memory installed in today's PCs, programmers are still writing code as if memory is in short supply.

I couldn't belive my eyes reading this

http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?NewsID=7688
http://diehard-software.org/

Opinions?

Todi · Post by **Todi** » 2007-01-04 05:07

What couldn't you believe? I'd say a large percentage of C/C++ software (and other languages, in lesser percentages) contains potential buffer overflows, regardless of the expertise of the programmers behind the programs. This is a way to protect yourself against them, at the expense of some RAM. Cheap price to pay to stop exploits and break-ins.

eMTee · Post by **eMTee** » 2007-01-04 06:01

Seems you have misunderstood me. I didn't mean its unuseful. I mean the tendency what we can see in the recent years that 'now we have strong CPUs and lots of cheap memory, don't care about huge binaries and resuorce requirement, the time is the only that really matters, make our life easier, drag & drop some components, write some event code and thats it. Doesn't matter how huge it will be the user will pay for the hardware.

And with this kind of technology - what I must admit is fine in the field of fighting exploits - things could go further. It could lead big software developer companies (because of the strong interest of finacials) easily to the approach that they shoudn't make as much effort to code quality and debugging of their software as they did before because here is the magical DieHard and it'll take care. And you can bet they will do it exactly this way.

And you dear user you will be paid the same for the software and double for the hardware and the life goes on... you will use 100's of megs of memory to open the same document what you did 10 years before using a 500K. You think its cheap price but for me its a awful waste of resources instead of make efforts for more perfect production of softwares. Cheap for you(?) and easier way to sofware giants to make some more money and sell a bit more crap as they did before...

And I meant couldn't believe my eyes for the last quote ONLY. I don't believe that statement doesn't make angry anybody who uses or works for such a superb coded and optimized project like DC++..

Pothead · Post by **Pothead** » 2007-01-05 19:19

I think it's a good idea if it reports these errors and problems for testing the program, and fixing things.
But it seems to be more aimed at making money from the pc user, instead of a development tool.

Plus, 50 - 75% more mem used kind of indicates that they are not very good at writing efficient code. So what will the rest of the code be like ?