Domain: ncsu.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ncsu.edu.
Comments · 1,326
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Re:Bah.
Well, you did identify the two games for the N64.
However, have you played... oh, I don't know...
Pole Position, Food Fight, or Crystal Castles on the Atari? (I had a 7800)
I already listed the plethora of great NES games, including the original Zelda. I liked Contra and the Ninja Gaiden series too.
I also listed a lot of good SNES games; Ogre Battle is great, as is Mario All-Stars.
Dreamcast has some fun games, too. For racing game fans MSR is very cool. Samba De Amigo! is just whacky. :)
The Playstation had some cool games. I liked Alundra, for example. The Final Fantasy games are a must, like the anthology of 5&6. And I still need to play Tactics. And for fans of fighting games, they have a lot of those.
So, on any of the other systems that I've played around with, I can name at least two or three great games, and sometimes many more. The PlayStation 2 is very new, and I haven't gotten to play with it yet, but there also aren't that many games released for it yet. However, compared to the Game Cube, it looks pretty good at the moment. :)
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Really?
The last thing I heard was that Nintendo told Square to stuff it.
I'm interested; could you post a link?
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Bah.
I loved the 8-bit NES. And even the SNES had some really cool games on it.
Metroid, Super Metroid, Final Fantasy 1-3 (american), Mario 1-3, at least some of the Zelda games, Castlevania, Mega Man...
And look at where they've gone. Nintendo dropped the ball on Metroid and Mario; in the meantime, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, and Mega Man are on Playstation.
And Zelda? Well, I heard the new ones were decent 3D remakes of the original, but that's it.
Why buy a game system that has like two or three decent games?
No, I think Nintendo has a LOT of catching up to do before they can start talking about how other people don't know how to write games, or function in the gaming industry.
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Re:Comments RE Kerberos
You are right. The MSDN document you link to allowed this group to develop mod_auth_kerb, an apache authentication handler for kerberos. It works in Windows 2000 Domains, too.
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Re:RMS strikes again!
Actually, that's why Linus released the kernel under the GPL in the first place: to thank RMS for gcc. Just for gcc, actually.
Before that, Linux was under a much more restrictive license. Therefore, either RMS hasn't done his research, or he's an ungrateful bastard, or still just pissed that HURD wasn't finished sooner.
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Re:It's nice to see it finally happen.
too bad nicksu killed (rather than nursed back to health) the best example of student-run IT ever... CATT. (hmmm, why is that still in the current handbook?) [if you wanna know more, I still live in raleigh... look me up. or visit here to get started.]
I helped run the network, stack of Ultrix boxen, and the AFS cell there for three years... including the vax that was our EFnet server. I owe a huge chunk of what I know to the other people I lived with that were patient enough to answer and explain.
formerly greck@scaredy.catt.ncsu.edu,
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Sounds cool...
Too bad I can't read Japanese, but the movie player looks nifty.
It's a shame that so much cool technology never makes it over here from Japan. I remember, at least 8 years ago, I met a Taiwanese student that had a device that was probably about the size of a TI-92. It had a built-in dictionary with a few languages crossreferenced to English, a currency calculator, a TI-81, and probably a few other things, built-in. I have yet to see anything like that in the US.
Of course, by now we have PDAs like the Palm Pilot, but I have to wonder how many great ideas never make it over here. After all, my favorite Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy 5, and that's still hard to find in America, and was only officially released a year or two ago here...
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Re:Anime != GoodI understand your point, but I think that there is a large amount of lousy stuff imported. I used to work at a comic book shop, which (as most do) quickly devolved into a comic book/anime/RPG/trading card/SF-Fantasy book store. I felt that it was part of my responsibility to know at least a passable amount about all of the things that we sold. So I watched way more Anime than I ever wanted to. I saw a moderate amount of good stuff. I also (first-hand, mind you) saw a lot of really bad stuff. Given -- the voiceover work in those that were dubbed was horrendous, and I'm sure that colored my perspective. At the same time, I grew up watching poorly dubbed Anime. Speed Racer, Robotech, etc. And other poorly voice-acted work. Most of the late 60s Marvel cartoons come to mind. And the old Justice League cartoon. (As an adult, there's little funnier than imagining Ted Baxter out of the blue saying to Mary Richards: ``Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice...''. I giggle thinking about it.)
Anyway, we quickly became a haven for Anime geeks of all rationales. We were pretty much the only place in town. Before long, an Anime fan club popped up. Or maybe it existed before and became prominent. I don't really know. They started having screenings of every piece of Anime known to mankind. We were inundated by a load of idiots that could speak of nothing but the Anime they saw last night. If one could believe them, it was all the best thing ever. I had seen some of it, and the majority is awful.
I'm speaking from a film buff's point of view, to some extent. I'm not one, but I aspire to be. While, on occasion, the stories or possibly even dialogue (again, it's hard to tell due to the poor translations and acting) are good to excellent, the filmmaking aspects of it are almost always atrocious. I understand the tropes involved in, for example, speed lines (they existed for many years prior in manga and were adapted with some success to Anime), but just using the same ones over and over again for no reason or benefit is simply bad filmmaking. And so many other things about them are just so bad.
I'm not saying that I don't like the occasional thing that is simply bad. You'll occasionally find me listening to some really cheesy music, or watching horrible sitcoms. All of us have our perverse streaks. But I don't evangelize those things as being good.
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Re:Hear hear
My favorite was Final Fantasy V, but I must admit that I liked Barret in FF7; he was entertaining.
FF7 has a lot of full motion video, but it still managed to pack in a fair amount of gameplay. That was over 3 or 4 CD's, though. I think, in the future, they'll actually be able to cut this down by doing more rendering of the FMV sequences.
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Re:It's nice to see it finally happen.
Love the "vaguely moderate" rant.
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank. -
It's nice to see it finally happen.
My school, North Carolina State University, eventually saw the light as well.
When we had Consultants running the show, they suggested using Windows NT 4.0, and we have a lot of machines running that. However, they are slow and unstable, especially with third-party add-ons for Kerberos and AFS, and they also leak memory like a sieve.
However, some students working for the University (friends of mine) worked on Linux for the realm. It has its share of problems too, because it hasn't been worked on as much as Solaris, and we don't have a lot of apps compiled in the lockers for it, but it's *far* more stable than NT ever was, and has better support for AFS and Kerberos.
Incidentally, the original reason for switching to NT was so we could have apps like Word and Excel and Powerpoint. But now we have a cluster running Citrix Metaframe that does that. And for us engineers, it's much more important that we have other apps where we *already* have licenses on the Unix side of things, or sometimes don't need licenses...
Anyhow, I hope they keep improving the Linux side of things; it's come along decently, and we owe it all to the students.
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I can't help but wonder...
Is this merely an expression of Slashdot's bizarre Penguin fetish?
:)
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Unfortunately...
I hear they'll have to make the ship out of Adamantium, and use some Vibranium in the engine room.
What is this with Science imitating Comic Books, these days; I kept looking for the "It's Funny, Laugh!" section on this one!
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Why?
Why can't one of you (or someone you trust) trademark it?
I'm not too familiar with the law, but I know I've seen trademarks for such projects.
"Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds"
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Re:New question...
Netscape 1.0 was the first version of UNIX, and it started out on UNIX as well; he wasn't "porting" anything. Later on, he ends up architecting as well as coding. This makes him an authority on Netscape and its development, at least IMO.
Also, I took a look at your homepage URL. :)
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Re:New question...
No, JWZ didn't write the bad parts of Mail & News (i.e., 4.0), and he wrote a lot of the core browser; check his page. He also RAN the Mozilla project, as well as having written xscreensaver, xdaliclock, dadadodo, and lots of other cool stuff.
Lots of UNIX systems have Netscape installed; they might also have lynx, and around here possibly a few file browsers that double as web browsers, IE for Solaris or HP/UX, Amaya, and a host of other forgotten browsers.
And, AFAIK, Stallman wouldn't be terribly happy with Mozilla, because it isn't GPL'ed. The MPL ain't bad, but I'm sure he'd find something to object to in there. Now *that* would be somewhat amusing.
In short, reply to someone who knows less about the subject next time, Matt. :)
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Re:MS will exploit IE, and that will push users aw
Perhaps you misunderstood the intent of that comment.
I don't want to know how I can turn off whichever preferences in a particular version of netscape; I want to know when browsers like netscape will let a user create my own buttons and customize their actions.
OF COURSE I can go to my preferences, but I can't just have one button that does a frequent task. Similarly, I liked the "Font Size" button they had in IE; in Netscape, that might make up for the lack of a "Zoom" feature (Opera and Galeon did this well).
Also, that code you posted is pretty long and ugly; not only would a link have sufficed, but couldn't someone have neatened up their error handling code? I wrote a function in C just for that, and it has greatly reduced the amount of pointless 'if' statements I have had to write, and improved debugging.
...and while I'm being pedantic, why the hell did you put my user name in quotes, "pjrc"?
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Re:MS will exploit IE, and that will push users aw
I think browsers should be more customizable with what they allow the users to do.
For instance, why can't I bind a button to turn off animated gifs, cookies, and JavaScript? Microsoft considered making a similar button in IE, but stopped when people started calling it "The Porn Button". But if that's what users want, they should be able to do it.
The web is becoming overrun with proprietary data formats and protocols, but at least the open ones do get more popular. Notice the popularity of mp3's, Shockwave Flash, DivX-encoded movies, and mpegs. That's because there are at least players out there for everyone, and the tools aren't too hard to find.
Pop-up windows and banners don't necessarily work; web advertising needs a different model that doesn't involve annoying the consumer. Maybe product placement would work somewhat better, or text ads like Google, or little "sponsored by" buttons.
Personally, I use junkbuster to get rid of ads; it's also cross-platform, and cross-browser compatible, and works rather well.
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New question...
I had a great time using Mozilla 0.7; it has gotten a lot better, and so much better than the original Netscape code they were using. However, I don't think that's the issue anymore.
The real issue is, what will happen to Netscape? They aren't losing the browser war now because of Mozilla. Now it's because of AOL, who makes every stable Mozilla release into a horribly patched, rushed Netscape release with extra annoying commercial features and bundling that none of us want or need.
Also, despite the benefits Mozilla has seen due to Open Source development, I doubt it will do as well without Netscape, as gutted as it is. JWZ said that the benefits gained from opening a project like that is about 30%, which means that 70% of the work has to be done by AOL/Netscape/Time Warner, and if AOL loses this war to Microsoft, we might lose a lot of developers.
Also, it sucks seeing a great team of people turn into a large impersonal entity that no one really likes. As the Open Source community is already developing other browsers, it isn't clear how much work will be put into Mozilla, and how much will be spent reinventing the wheel.
I only hope that a truly impressive, usable browser comes out of all this: one that doesn't annoy me and show me ads, but rather lets me tell it what I want it to do. Being able to set a level of HTML compliance would be nice, as well.
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In the Same Boat
I wish I had some good answers for you but I don't. I just moved into my first house and have been working toward solar power. Living in Central Florida, we have plenty of sun to spare. (Wind, too, but I'm sure the neighbors would be unhappy with a 75-foot tower in the backyard.) The question now is what am I going to do with it.
I've replaced all my incandescent lights with fluorescent. (You'll be amazed at how much flourescent lighting will save you each month. Not only does it use fewer watts, it doesn't produce nearly as much heat). I've made sure there is plenty of insulation. I'm getting rid of the electric water heater and putting in a solar version. The 15-year-old electric dryer is being replaced with a natural gas version (yes, gas is expensive but it's not nearly as pricy as electrons). There are also a few more appliances (all over ten years old) I'd like to replace but I've already blown my monetary wads so to speak.
I've been reading HomePower for inspiration and ideas. While building a solar system from scratch sounds like the best way to go about it, what I really want is a kit being that this will be my first attempt. I want parts I know will work together and a clear path to setting everything up.
There are a number of places that sell solar power kits but none look, er, reputable. I have no reason to believe they aren't but they certainly look as though they are run out of someone's basement. If would be great if I could walk into a local showroom and talk to someone.I like the configuration you are proposing and your usage isn't too far out of line. (I've gotten down to 7.5 KW a day.) Most of what I've heard about Trace and Siemens is good. They both have a very loyal following.
Make sure you check out the DOE's Million Solar Roofs web site. There is lots of good information there. Specifically, they have a state-by-state incentive guide that tells what incentives are available from where and how to get your system subsidized by any number of public and private groups.
Good luck. Once you get your system up and working, I'd love for SlashDot to follow-up with you.
InitZero
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What...
Did it conflict with a Barnes & Noble one-click patent, or are the courts becoming rational?
</SARCASM>
The article is brief in the extreme, and just says that B&N raised some questions, and at the moment the court likes them.
Therefore, it doesn't do much to assuage my fears about rampant patent abuse.
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Moronic.
Put a sin tax on ties; they can be used to strangle poeple.
Put one on paper; you can use it to burn down buildings.
Outlaw letters; you can use them to make death threats to the President.
Like all of these things, computers are a tool; they have many uses. There's no way to determine *how* someone is going to use it, and therefore there's no way you can turn this approach into a fair piece of legislation; it assumes many things that it can't know.
Do we need a damn Digital Bill of Rights? Was the first one just not enough for them?
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Re:Here's my part of the discussion
Hopefully, the database wrappers won't be a problem; for instance, PHP has ADODB, which should let you keep your choice of databases fairly flexible, AFAICT...
Also, there are already a ton of webmail packages out there; I remember HOARD had something that looked promising for a while. I think a lot of the pieces are out there, so hopefully a project like this will be more about architecting a good solution, and the implementation will be more about putting it all together than making it from scratch.
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Re:Corels's Java Attempt
I think it could be done properly given a lot of work and good design, but I'm still not a big fan of Java. I guess it'll take a few years for the applications to get there; I suppose the performance will catch up for a word processor, but it'll still burn a lot of cycles.
However, using CORBA to tie it all together would be interesting. Then the Java could really be more of a glue language, and maybe we could re-implement parts of it natively for extra speed or efficiency.
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Good idea.
I remember that Corel already did some work on this, and decided that Java wasn't the answer. PHP might be ok for the Server-side, but personally I'd just want to see more speed...
I hope we have a free alternative before the .NET initiative gets off the ground; I don't want to see how that gets licensed. One of the big things in the .NET project is the common language runtime they worked on; I'd love to see an open answer to that.
Why doesn't anyone make a JIT C Compiler, and maybe specify a small API with multiple platforms in mind; it seems to me that this would be much easier to implement efficiently than Java, and could probably support a lot of legacy applications with a little porting, if done correctly...
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Re:Not too far off.
In theory, you're correct, but in practice, it happens all the time, and not just in Software. That's what frightens me.
(Yeah, right, "Entertaining a Cat with a Laser Pointer" is a novel idea... need I say more?)
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Not too far off.
Remember, you can always take an existing patent, and patent all obvious variants, and probably cover a few pre-existing ones.
Although I doubt it'd be enforceable, I'm sure a company could come along, extend the existing chair patents, slap some businesses with lawsuits, and make some money.
Like it or not, with the patent office in the sorry state that it's in, and the DMCA becoming the law of the land, this sort of ridiculous tripe is becoming a viable business model.
I hope we can still laugh about this sort of thing in a few years, instead of having to buy 20-seat licenses for our chairs...
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A blatant rip-off?
I found the site to be clean, legible, and a pleasure to read, things that I've never accused Slashcode of being. It's like comparing the layout of Google to Yahoo: it's so much cleaner that you wonder why you go to that other site in the first place.
If it's a Slashcode rip-off, then I hope they eventually provide source, but that might be asking too much... I bet Slashdot *still* looks like a black page in older browsers, too...
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What's special about their railgun?
At our school, we've had a home-made one for years in the nuclear engineering department. =)
The main problem with using the rail gun anywhere was the size of the capacitors needed to reach the extrmemely high voltage it required to fire.
I didn't see anywhere on their site that they managed to reduce this overhead, has anyone? -
What's special about their railgun?
At our school, we've had a home-made one for years in the nuclear engineering department. =)
The main problem with using the rail gun anywhere was the size of the capacitors needed to reach the extrmemely high voltage it required to fire.
I didn't see anywhere on their site that they managed to reduce this overhead, has anyone? -
Re:Linux on a calculator
Hey now, I wouldn't say that just yet. It's probably harder than installing RedHat 7 on a 486, (boot disk doesn't support it by default) but if this guy thinks it's doable, then I might have to get a TI-92+.
:)
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Re:Why does anyone use Gnome?
Yeah! Kung-fu ninjas with hot syrupy pancakes rule!!!
It's night-time, when the trolls lurk, so I say let them eat grits!
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Hey!
Clones are people, two!
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Re:Well...
But the crazy part is, they actually did this for (price/)performance reasons! If you compare the die size to the functionality, it's quite impressive. Apple spent a lot of time rewriting 68k code into native code instead of just tuning their 68k emulator to do it for them.
;)
In a sense, they are moving the microcode into software, similar to how RISC architectures simplified hardware instruction decoding already.
You're right, FX!32 did sound like an similar (brilliant) idea as well, but I didn't hear nearly enough about that, even at the time. (and Microsoft still dropped NT on Alpha, and Linux is native on the Alpha...)
I'm sure Intel does have some good engineers, too; and many of them are probably pissed off, or working for someone else... Intel doesn't have the best track record for working with their employees--in fact, I have yet to hear something good about them in this respect.....
I am a big fan of x86 assembler, though. Intel was in the right place at the right time, they made something cheap that the market adopted, and they implemented all the real functionality starting with the 386. It's really another Microsoft success story. But I like programming in CISC-style assembler better, even though x86 doesn't have (pre/post) increment/decrement built-in as a memory addressing mode...
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Well...
I don't care as long as the technology gets used.
IMHO, Transmeta has come up with one of the coolest ideas in computer history: they're making a platform designed for dynamic recompilation. If it gets buried, I'll be sad.
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DETA
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Re:Under the hood
Hey, this was just an example; I didn't intend for it to be a *serious* example. The memory I wanted to test was allocated by no one, or possibly malloc(); I just wanted to see how it worked, and hope that I'll never have to use a trick like that, because it is dangerous... which was my point.
So, of course you can have a pointer handed to you that wasn't directly from malloc(); I'm sure the function in question would have to have that in huge letters on the documentation, somewhat like fgets(). ;)
I'll have to lurk in trolltalk some more; I haven't posted there in a while. How time flies; I started the one on kuro5hin, and that's already dead...
And yes, I've obviously been karma capped for way too long; it's at 252 now, from 350 originally... But who cares, right?
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Re:Under the hood
Hey, thanks; that's really cool!
If I ever need it, I'll try implementing it for different C libraries on different platforms. :)
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Yeah.
I like realloc() a lot; I wrote a replacement for fgets() that uses it, and allocates memory dynamically.
But what if you want to know how large a memory structure is, and don't want to truncate it? It can happen.
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Re:Under the hood
Hey, I'm not advocating this approach. You'll never see code like this in a portable program. I'm just explaining the dangers of tinkering under the hood; maybe I wasn't really clear on that.
This stuff *does* change from one version of libc to the next, and I've *seen* demons get created from code like this! (didn't I say it was unspecified?) That's why I wish there was a function call that did this for me, in the C library. (there's sizeof(), but that doesn't work! :)
And yes, as many have pointed out, what you can also do is pass a region of memory, and the size that you think it is. That's all fine and dandy until (a) someone lies to you or (b) all you have is a pointer to some unknown amount of memory. It's easy to do, and it will happen to you someday.
Also, I stopped posting on USENET once it started getting spammed to hell and back, although I'm sure those groups are still moderated. I used to post to comp.lang.pascal.misc, until about when they reorganized the whole thing and created all the stupid delphi groups. But maybe I'll check it all out again sometime, since Slashdot sucks so much. :)
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Re:Under the hood
First, I wasn't really trying for a troll, but I appreciate the sentiment. Second, I'm sorry you got modded down; moderators aren't very clueful when it comes to rating anonymous posts. Or maybe informational content is considered Trolling on Slashdot, these days.
Third, I thought I was clear on this: I wasn't talking about the kernel. I was talking about the dangers of breaking an implementation by working around the interface, something that can easily happen when the programmer in question knows too much about implementation-specific details. This is a trap that yospelld not standardized. This is an example of something that I would have liked to see standardized, and something that a programmer might end up having to work around.
I do like your malloc() wrappers; those could potentially be pretty handy. But I can't necessarily expect all memory allocated in a program and passed to a function to use those.
Oh, and I wouldn't call your moderator "an cueless asshole", just in case they still have some mod points, and happen to be a spelling nazi as well. ;)
Cheers,
Peter
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Re:Under the hood
Well, first, this is just an example; I've tested this out before to see if I could do it, and to see how it would be implemented. I also wish this was standardized into the language already, because I can see how useful it would be. (it would make implementing something like vectors in C trivial)
But yes, the best theoretical use for something like this would be for memory coming from outside your program, or into your function when you do not already have knowledge about it. I know that C can do it, because functions like realloc() make use of this information; I just wish I could as a programmer.
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Under the hood
Once you start tinkering under the hood, there's no turning back. There are a few things that I'd love to be able to do in C, but the way to do it isn't standard across platforms or compilers. I can figure it out, but I'd have to test it on *everything*, or only support a few platforms where I know enough about the internals.
For example: let's say you have a function that gets passed a region of malloc()'ed memory. You want to know exactly how much memory you have to play with. That number is stored somewhere before the beginning of that pointer. malloc() allocates a little extra memory, writes some status info at the beginning, sticks the pointer in front of that, and returns the address to you. However, exactly where and what it writes are somewhat unspecified.
I'd love to have a function in C that did this for me, but alas, there isn't one. So what I have to do is seek back through before the pointer, hope everything is allocated, and look for something like status info. I've done this on Solaris and Linux, and they don't do it the same way. :)
I think stuff like this is fascinating, but using internal knowledge to write your programs can be dangerous; it must be done carefully to avoid breakage.
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Re:Teachers...
I think that's a valid gripe; unfortunately, it seems that moderators never read anything below +2 these days... *hint* *hint*
I don't understand why they don't make sure that teachers can teach before they let them loose on a real class. I've got a teacher right now who told us all that he's taking speech therapy classes right now--and he is impossible to understand. Fortunately, this is an online course, but forget about going to the Q&A sessions...
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Teachers...
My best teachers always challenged me, and made the challenges either fun, or interesting.
I had a teacher for Assembler who, for the last project, told us that he was going to grade it only on (a) if it works correctly (80 points) and (b) our count of instructions executed relative to the rest of the class (20 points). Also, there was a 25-point bonus (or really an automatic 125) for writing a program faster than his program.
I managed to beat him by an instruction or two, but it wasn't easy! I ended up working far harder than I should have for that extra 25 points, but it was definitely worth it.
The challenge was this: given four numeric characters of input that are not all the same, (1122 is valid; 1111 isn't)
1. Sort the number from greatest to least
2. Print the result
3. Subtract from this the same number sorted from least to greatest.
4. Loop; terminate when two successive results are equal.
Example: 4377
Sort,Print:7743
Subtract:7743-3477=4266
Loop:Sort,Print:6642
...etc.
It was well worth the time spent. Hint: the final program was well under 100 x86 instructions to implement; the early implementations were well over 500, though! :)
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The problem with USENET:
USENET is flooded with lusers and spam.
Now, anyone want to wager a guess as to what the problem with Slashdot is? ;)
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That's right.
It's called filing for bankruptcy.
Since we're talking about an actual debt here, and not just a "debt to society", the people in question should make a good-faith effort to pay that debt. Then they can start building credit.
I mean, really, what happens when you steal money normally? Of course we're not going to give you more money to steal if we can absolutely help it!
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Automated Bureaucracy.
So you're describing a dysfunctional organization of disconnected entities that claim no responsibility for the system as a whole, and make no sense together...
...much like the latest Katz article. Is this deconstructionism? Katz, are you getting literate on us? :)
Seriously, though, I'm not surprised; this is the logical extension of bureaucracy and outsourcing, two horrible recent trends. Not only does everyone give you the runaround, but since they're all independent companies, they all claim no responsibility for their actions, and give you no customer service.
In fact, it sounds like there should be a niche market for people who know what the procedure is here, and help you cut through red tape for a fee. That would help a lot more than, say, home equity loans...
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Talk to your boss?
No way, I'm busy reading Dilbert! I can't talk to my boss, I have work to get done first... Besides, it's better to ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission now, right?
And, to round it all off, some quotes from my favorite movie; just think "manager" instead of "guidance counselor". Apologies in advance to any clueful managers out there; you're an incredibly tiny, underappreciated minority.
"my true pure refined hatred is reserved for guidance counselors."
"Guidance councelors! If they knew anything about career moves would they have ended up as guidance counselors?"
"I say down with all guidance counselors, make them work for a living."
-- Pump Up The Volume
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Re:Open source = no backdoor
No it doesn't; that's why you have the compiler insert back doors in code. I believe Ken Thompson wrote a paper on it, and some aspiring Karma Whore with more enthusiasm than I will surely dredge it up and point to it.
:)
Yes, this is a good thing; backdoors should be eliminated from commercial products. I don't want anyone sneaking into my database. Although Borland might not be too happy about this... :)
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