function A = readBinaryGoceCovmat( filename )
% selected a very simple internal format: 
% although symmetric, cov mat is stored as full mat here
% the header only consists of two ints, indicating matrix dimension
% afterwards the data in column major order
% open the file to read
fid = fopen( filename, 'r' );
r = fread(fid, 1, 'int');
c = fread(fid, 1, 'int');
% allocate matrix memory
A = fread(fid, r*c, 'double');
A = reshape( A, r, c );
fclose(fid);
return