Welcome to the Garbage Collector.
You can reach this page via http://www.st.jyu.fi/~shang/blogs/gc.html or via http://www.garbage-collector.net/ (with annoying banners included).
This page contains news items, thoughs and links about stuff that I find interesting, with the main focus in computer related things.
The layout and content of this page is still a work-in-progress.
Zope Roadmap
Digital Creations has published a Zope Directions Roadmap that describes the planned architectural and conceptional changes that Zope will take in the future.
posted by shang at 09:46
Zope 2.3.1 beta 1
Zope 2.3.1 beta 1 has been released.
posted by shang at 13:48
Python 2.1 alpha 2
Python 2.1 is progressing nicely. The new alpha adds support for nested scopes and weak references.
posted by shang at 22:52
[games] Another Word on Black & White Release
From the Lionhead Studios messageboard:
As some of you have noticed, there are various different release dates flying around the net, on gaming sites and with online ordering companies.
I've just had a word with our man at EA, and he has told me that the date of 30th March, which has been given to the online shops is the latest date that the game will be released by. We are all working very hard to get the game to you before that date.
Keep your fingers crossed...
posted by shang at 12:02
Zope 2.3.0 final
The final release of Zope 2.3.0 is out.
posted by shang at 00:25
Zope on an Update Rampage
Just a few days after the previous beta, Zope 2.3 beta 3 has been released.
posted by shang at 22:36
[games] Black & White This Spring?
The much hyped "god-game" Black & White by the famous Peter Molyneux and his company, Lionhead Studios has been in development for a long, long time. Will we finally see its release this year? From the Lionhead message board:
Just to let you know, Black & White is still on schedule for release end of Feb / beginning of March. I will let you know any firmer dates and also miniumun (and recommended) specs as soon as I receive them. Jamie.posted by shang at 11:20
[RTS games] Battle Realms
Just finished reading the Designer Diaries for Battle Realms (developed by Liquid Entertainment) in GameSpot. Seems like a game worth waiting for!
RTS (Real Time Strategy) games have always been my favourite gaming genre, but it has been unfortunately stale for a long time now. For example the just-released Kingdom Under Fire was utter crap. Sure, we all enjoyed playing Warcraft II long time ago, but the exactly same formula with minor enhancements just doesn't cut it anymore. The RTS genre is plagued by the same problem every other gaming genre does: innovation isn't profitable. One of the most promising RTS games published within a few years, Warzone 2100 was an excellent game that, among other things, was one of the first RTS to offer playble 3D graphics. It also had a very complex research tree, a component model that allowed the customization of units and a decent non-cheating AI (after a couple of patches). However, Warzone 2100 didn't sell and got crappy reviews from game reviewers that are so used to the bread & butter Westwood RTS that they consider new ideas frightening. The creator of Warzone 2100, Pumpkin Studios is now long gone... *sigh*
posted by shang at 10:49
Python 2.1 alpha 1
Python 2.1 alpha 1 version has been released. The SourceForge page currently has the sources and a windows installer available.
LINK: Guido's announcement in comp.lang.python
posted by shang at 09:10
Zope 2.3.0 beta 2
A new beta version of Zope 2.3.0 has been released.
Still no sign of the new Python alpha though...
posted by shang at 22:46
Back from a Long Break
It's been a while... Real Life (tm) intruded badly with my blogging attempts, but now I'll begin my second attempt at keeping this site updated regularily. Here's some pointers to the things that have happened while Garbage Collector remained in stasis:
Python has had a lot of happening around it. No more is the language hosted at BeOpen, but instead at Digital Creations, the makers of Zope. At the moment of writing, the lastest Python version is Python 2.0 final, but Python 2.1 alpha 1 is scheduled to be released tomorrow.
The new pure Java implementation of Python, Jython has reached 2.0 beta 1
The aforementioned Zope has reached stable version 2.2.5 and version 2.3.0 beta 1 was just released a couple of days ago.
posted by shang at 14:08
Python 2.0 Release Candidate 1
PythonLabs has released the Python 2.0 rc 1.
The BeOpen PythonLabs team is happy to announce the release of Python 2.0. We thank all the volunteers on the python-dev list for making this release possible! Python 2.0 release candidate 1 was released on October 10, 2000. We expect to release Python 2.0 final on October 17, 2000.posted by shang at 12:36
Freenet 0.3.2
Freenet 0.3.2 has been released. There's also an easy-to-install Windows distribution.
posted by shang at 12:33
Suneido
posted by shang at 17:09Suneido™ is a complete, integrated application platform that includes an object-oriented language, client-server database, and user interface and reporting frameworks to enable you to create, deploy, and maintain applications easier and quicker, with more features and less code. Suneido is Open Source Software - it is provided free, with complete source code, to give programmers full control over their development projects.
Suneido currently runs on Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, and 2000. Windows NT or 2000 are recommended for the server.
Zope Security Hotfix
A security hotfix for Zope ZPublisher:
posted by shang at 17:05This hotfix addresses an important security issue that affects Zope versions 2.2.0, 2.2.1, and 2.2.2.
It is sometimes possible to access, through a URL only, objects protected by a role which the user has in some context, but not in the context of the accessed object.
Currently, the validate() method of all known user folder implementations validates against the users' roles in the context of PARENTS[0]. PARENTS[0] refers to the acquisition context of the object being published. All security checks, however, should check an object's containment, not its acquisition context.
validate(), therefore, needs to verify the user's roles in the context of the object being published. This hotfix forces that to occur by temporarily leaving the object at PARENTS[0] then removing it after validation has been performed.
Unfortunately, this is not an ideal correction. In the near future all user folder validate() implementations need to perform security checks using the new Zope security policy subsystem. Until that is completed, this hotfix should close the security problem.
While we know of no instances of this issue being used to exploit a site, we recommend that any Zope 2.2.x site that is accessible by untrusted clients have this hotfix product installed to mitigate the issue.
http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/Hotfix_2000-10-02/Hotfix_2000-10-02.tar.gz
The hotfix will work for all versions of Zope 2.2.0 and higher. A future version of Zope will contain the fix for this issue, and you will be able to uninstall the hot fix after upgrading.