Computation on encrypted data: IBM breakthrough

IBM made a discovery that allows computations to be performed on encrypted data without decrypting it first. That could open up the possibility for some very interesting services. It would be easier to calculate, for example, aggregate statistics on sensitive data (such as financial or medical) regarding an individual, without requiring certain sensitive information (such as account numbers, specific balances, DNA sequences) to be leaked. There are almost certainly applications for this technology that have not even been dreamed of yet. The biggest downside so far is that the CPU performance hit is enormous.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27840.wss

http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/24/encryption-rsa-privacy-technology-breakthroughs-ibm.html

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/IBM-Uncovers-Encryption-Scheme-That-Could-Improve-Cloud-Security-Spam-Filtering-135413/

Cross-platform ways to develop for iPhone

Irrlicht
Engine, SDK, basic editor
License: Free
Runtime platforms: Windows 98, ME, NT 4, 2000, XP, XP64, Vista, CE, Linux, Mac OSX, Solaris, iPhone
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/index.html
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32494

Rhodes
Ruby-based engine, SDK
License: Commercial with GPL option for GPL apps
Runtime platforms: iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry (RIM), Symbian, Android (Google)
http://www.rhomobile.com/

Game Salad
Beta engine, rich editor
License: Commercial (at least for iPhone)
Runtime platforms: web, iPhone
http://gamesalad.com/

Torque
Highly polished engine, SDK, rich editor
License: Commercial
Runtime platforms: Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, Wii, iPhone, web
http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-2d/iphone

Jumpstart on iPhone with Objective-C in Windows

Eager to learn about building an iPhone app but not quite ready to set aside the money for a Mac? That's okay, you can still get started using the Objective-C programming language right away. Objective-C is the language used to write iPhone, iPod Touch, and Mac applications. Luckily it is supported by gcc (GNU Compiler Collection), which is available on many platforms.

If you have a Windows box handy, then you just need gcc with Objective-C support. The easiest way to do that in Windows is with MinGW, Minimalist GNU for Windows. The download page should have an Automated MinGW Installer for Windows.

Once you've installed MinGW, you can add the binaries to your path or use a build file of sorts; there are lots of options depending on your taste.

Let's see a basic Hello World app; we'll call it Main.m (m is the preferred file extension for Objective-C programs):

// From http://codewandering.blogspot.com/
// Main.m
int main(void)
{
printf("Hello, world!\n");
}

Look familiar? Objective-C is a proper superset of the C language, so valid C code is valid Objective-C code. Of course, to get the full power of Objective-C you'll want to use the object-oriented programming aspects of Objective-C as well.

A simple batch file like this will compile the program:

@rem From http://codewandering.blogspot.com/
setlocal
set path=%path%;c:\MinGW\bin\
gcc.exe -x objective-c Main.m -lobjc
endlocal

You may need to modify the set path command if you specified a different home folder for MinGW.

Now just run the batch file from a command line, which produces a.exe, your executable program. If you run that, you should see:

Hello, world!

Ready for more? Check out these great resources:

• http://www.otierney.net/objective-c.html
• http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/Introduction/introObjectiveC.html
• http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php
• http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iphonedev/
• Effort to create a cross-platform runtime environment similar to Cocoa (development must still be done on a Mac): http://www.cocotron.org/