To be honest, I was a little disappointed with The Departed.

The movie was pretty good. Good storyline. Good actors. Etc.

But, it was a direct remake of a Hong Kong movie called Infernal Affairs.

I mean, sure, movies generally draw inspiration from other movies, and there's no such thing as a new idea. People were flying through the air in Chinese movies decades before The Matrix came out.

But aside from a couple of minor changes, this was plain and simply a translation into English. Right down to having Alec Baldwin practicing golf when he gives Matt Damon the promotion.

So, sure, good movie, good actors, but is that all it takes to win an Oscar these days? And what was with that psychiatrist screwing some guy who was, for all she knew, just some down and out police academy dropout? That was a plot change they could have done without.

I was hanging back the release of v1.0 due to the Win2000 thing, but I'm thinking otherwise recently.

Win2000 compatibility would be really nice to have, but I'm not sure it's worthy of holding back the "v1.0" sticker. From the previous post you can see that the solution to this problem is not within my control.

And recently the new releases have been mostly new functionality, with just a few bug fixes. I'm tinkering around the edges, which is exactly the same as if v1.0 was already out.

So it's just a number change, really. You could say that the software is already v1.0 in everything but number.

So maybe next release, maybe the one after, depending on any bugs my customers tell me about, look out for v1.0.

Background

TS is written in Visual Studio.NET. If that doesn't mean anything to you, well, it's just a programming language. There are many - C++, Java, Visual Basic, being some popular ones. They have slightly different capabilities, but in general you just use the one you are comfortable with.

Visual Studio.NET and Java both rely on your computer having their respective virtual machine running on your computer. Without the virtual machine, any programs written in VS.NET or Java will not work on your computer.

Both name their virtual machine differently - for VS.NET it's the ".NET Framework", and Java has the "JRE" or "Java Runtime Environment". They are both just other software you need installed before running software written in VS.NET or Java.

That's why you need v2.0 of the .NET Framework installed before you can run TS.

Virtual machines are supposed to make software work more consistently on different operating systems. Instead of the EXE file I create running directly on your computer, it runs on the "virtual machine". Virtual machines do other good stuff too, blah blah blah.


The Downside

EXEs written for virtual machines, meaning anything written in VS.NET or Java, have a lot of meta-data ("data about data") included, so the virtual machine knows what the hell is going on.

Anyone else can read that meta-data also. And, in fact, due this thing called "reflection", anyone can read your source code.

If they can read the source-code, they can compile their own version of the software. So they get your 2-odd years worth of hard work for free.

Moreover, they can then remove any code that does subscription checking, and hey presto, there is now in existence a version of your software that doesn't have any of that pesky need to pay anyone for the service they rendered.

They then post that to the infamous "Internet" and your source of income slowly dries up as more and more people forget about karma (which I believe in when it suits me :-)


The Solution

There are some products out there to solve this problem, and they are called "obfuscators". What they do is make it nearly impossible for people to read the source code. I say "nearly impossible", because anything's possible. But the obfuscators make it really difficult.

They also cost a lot of money. VS.NET does come with an in-built community edition of some obfuscator, but apparently they shouldn't have bothered. That's how good it is.

So I bought one of the expensive ones, and it works pretty well....


Windows 2000

...Except that I've worked out that the obfuscator is the reason that TS does not work with Windows 2000.

So I had a look around at other obfuscators, and they are really expensive. Really. It would hurt to buy another one.

I found an open-source obfuscator, the cost being the price of an accompanying e-book. So I bought that, and EXEs obfuscated with that one seemed to work just fine on Windows 2000.

Unfortunately it crashed when trying to obfuscate TS.

Because it's open-source, I was able to fix the bug in the obfuscator myself. And obfuscated TS just fine. But running the obfuscated version of TS I got an error, and I have no idea how to fix that one.

So I downloaded the trial version of one of the expensive obfuscators. And got exactly the same error.


The Result

I decided to wait for the next version of the obfuscator that I'm already using. It's coming "soon". I have no idea when it will be ready. And, there is also no guarantee that it will fix this problem. In fact, the creator of that software says that everything seems to work just fine for him with Win2000 with the old version.

Anyway, this is one of those things that is out of my hands. I assume that company wants to get their new product out as soon as possible, but it's all up to them now.

Automated trading software, if you will, is the glue that holds a number of other things together.

But should any of those other things fail, then so does the automated trading software.

Obviously the software has to place orders at the broker. And to do that, brokers provide a so-called "API". Someone at that company programmed the API. Coding is never 100% accurate. Bugs in the API means bugs in your automated trading software. At the very least, it means you have to do extra coding to get around those bugs in the API. At worst, it could make using that broker a waste of time.

It's a similar story with the database. They're pretty big and complex, and there are bound to be bugs somewhere in there. And just like the API, bugs in the database range from annoyances to reasons to switch databases.

To connect to your automated trading software to the database, you need another thing which does the connecting. That's programmed by someone else too. If it don't work, then you ain't connecting to the database, and your automated trading software don't work. So to speak.

To connect to the broker, you need to be connected to the Internet. If your modem is a dud, then so is your automated trading software. If your Internet service provider often has outages, so does your automated trading software. If a hurricane takes out the Internet connection to Taiwan, and you live in the area, then it really doesn't matter how good your automated trading software is - you can't use it anyhow.

Generally people like charts in trading packages. You can create the charts by yourself, but generally it's easier to buy a charting module from someone else. Hope there's no bugs in it. At least, no big ones.

There are also packages out there to do all the indicator calculation. Saves a lot of time over doing it all yourself.

And in my case, my software connects to my webhost to verify your subscription details. So if they go down, well, so does the software.

So pretty much all the automated trading software does by itself, is work out when to buy and sell. Just about everything else is integrating bits of software that other people have made. And therefore you are both grateful that other people have spent the time to create something you can plug in, and weary that if someone screws up, the whole thing comes tumbling down. Also that if something does go wrong, you are now reliant on someone else deciding that the problem is as important as you think it is.

Still, it's a tightrope worth walking.

It's been about 3 weeks since I started my first job in 3 years. I mostly have a routine set. It's not so bad. For the Sundays though, I have had this dread feeling when thinking about having to go to work for the next 5 days. That's pretty normal, right?

Anyway, my apartment is about 100m from the beach. 4th floor so I can see the ocean from the living room. Pool on the roof. Two bedroom, and I have 2 Japanese girls as sharemates (I have one room, and they are room-sharing in the other). I ride my bicycle to work, eat lunch next to the river, and the workplace itself has a subsidised gym.

As with any large organisation though, it's taken a while to get all my logins and access to everything I need set up properly. In fact my name was not spelled correctly, and it's taken the 3 weeks to get it corrected. And then when it was corrected, my login changed, and I had to get access to everything all over again.

On Friday my new ADSL2+ modem was delivered. Now, I live in the middle of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. It's summer, and there are bikini girls everywhere. But when I downloaded the 90MB installation file for OpenOffice.org, and that download took 4 minutes, that my friend, that was the sexiest thing I have seen for a long time.

So I'm back, and anyone who's sent an email in the past couple of weeks would hopefully be happy with the response time. The old job does cut into the free time though, doesn't it? It's not just the working hours, it's the ironing, the packing the lunch, it's the travel time, it's the relaxation time needed afterwards. And let's not forget that I've decided to spend more time on my health. And now that I'm not in hicksville, there is the woman-hunting to think of.

Still, I got v0.9.2 out today, and v0.9.3 shouldn't be too far behind.