Friday, October 19, 2007

.NET Value Types

Value types in .NET

The following are the built-in value types in .NET. Value types are stored on the stack and can be accessed more efficiently than reference types.

Type: SByte
Alias(es): sbyte
Size (in bytes): 1
Range: -128 to 127

Type: Byte
Alias(es): byte
Size (in bytes): 1
Range: 0 to 255

Type: Int16
Alias(es): Short, short
Size (in bytes): 2
Range: -32768 to 32767

Type: Int32
Alias(es): Integer, int
Size (in bytes): 4
Range: -2147483648 to 2147483647

Type: UInt32
Alias(es): UInteger, uint
Size (in bytes): 4
Range: 0 to 4294967295

Type: Int64
Alias(es): Long, long
Size (in bytes): 8
Range: -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807

Type: Single
Alias(es): float
Size (in bytes): 4
Range: -3.402823E+38 to 3.402823E+38

Type: Double
Alias(es): double
Size (in bytes): 8
Range: -1.79769313486232E+308 to 1.79769313486232E+308

Type: Decimal
Alias(es): decimal
Size (in bytes): 16
Range: -79228162514264337593543950335 to 79228162514264337593543950335

Type: Char
Alias(es): char
Size (in bytes): 2
Range:

Type: Boolean
Alias(es): bool
Size (in bytes): ?
Range: true, false

Type: IntPtr
Alias(es):
Size (in bytes): Platform-specific
Range:

Type: DateTime
Alias(es): Date, date
Size (in bytes): 8
Range: 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM to 12/31/9999 11:59:59 PM


Operations with Int32, UInt32 and Double types are optimized by the runtime or the hardware.

Browsing the Linux source code

The Linux source code is a pain to go through. There's so much in there that you need to get someone to tell you where to look if you're ever planning to change anything. There are things to make your life easier, though. The LXR C source code to HTML converter adds cross-references and hyperlinks so you can find your way around just any piece of C source code. The folks at Promethos were nice enough to run the LXR on the Linux source code and the resulting HTML is available at: http://www.promethos.org/lxr/http/source

Unlike in real life, most of the good things in the computing world are free!

The Bionic Woman

Today is my weekend. I've been catching up with the Bionic Woman TV series and it's pretty neat. I've seen most of the episodes of the 1976 series and all the aired episodes of this year's series. I even saw the pre-air version of the first episode - they edited out a whole character! She wasn't all that pretty so who cares? :-P

The 1976 series starts off with Jamie Summers coming out of surgery to fix some of the bugs from her bionic replacement operation (in the 1976 series, Jamie Summers has a parachute-related accident). She returns home to Ojai and becomes a school teacher at an air force base and takes up some missions. Except for the 1st and 2nd episodes, all the others are pretty much disconnected.

In the 2007 series, Jamie Summers is carrying and shortly after meeting up with Will, her boyfriend to tell him about her pregnancy, she has a vehicle accident caused by Sara, the first bionic woman, suffers injuries and the only way to save her is through bionic replacement. Sara meets up with her a couple of times and in the 3rd episode she tells Jamie she is dying and needs her help... Sara took up bionic replacement before the technology was perfected and wants Jamie to go back with her to try some of the 'upgrades' as a fix.

Update: I watched episode 4 today and apparently Jamie has her clock ticking just like Sara does. The project sponsor does promise to work on a cure at the end of the episode.

Symantec blocks email

Symantec Client Firewall prevents me from sending out email from an email client that uses GMail as a server. I ran a system restore and got back all the factory-installed software and the Symantec suite happens to be one of them.

I haven't uninstalled it yet. I'm just sending my email through GMail's web interface for now, but something has got to change soon - either Symantec gives me an update or I move to something else.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Project Planner on Windows

If you want to create a Gantt chart and manage a To Do list of tasks on a project, you don't have to spend a couple of hundred dollars to buy MS Project. You can settle for Planner, an open-source project management utility included with most Linux distributions. A windows version is available at: http://winplanner.sourceforge.net/ for free download.