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Years ago in my employment, that is.

If there is interest, I might recreate it for the Public Domain. It should only take a weekend.

The principle is simple: go through all writable memory (including the stack and the registers). The idea is -- and I didn't invent this -- what looks like a pointer [to the heap] is a pointer. Those heap blocks that were not pointed to, are reported as garbage.

A special allocator package records the calling frame so you can tell where the block was allocated. Other niceties are included. The tools is implemented as function calls that you typically invoke from the debugger.

While the principle is heuristic, the practical experience (with Solaris and Interactive UNIX) is that it instantaneously finds all garbage.

Marko

I have a brand new Compaq 700Z laptop. Mandrake 8.1 would install beautifully, but it would never boot. I was forced to try SuSE 7.3. What a terrible install, but it worked.

I'm still working on issues, though. I had to install and repair lvcool to stop the fan. I'm still desperately trying to get the sound to work. NFS is broken (I bought the laptop to be a silent server). Unloading the wireless LAN driver hangs the machine so I can't shut the machine down cleanly.

Marko

No cookies, no java, no javascript. A very graceful, responsive, hasslefree site that beats yahoo.com or slashdot.org hands down. Can't compare it with Amazon's, though, since I never visit that company out of principle (patents, privacy).

Marko

... I am not off the hook either.

Two weeks ago somebody took over my home server using an sshd loophole and used it to attack sobobody else.

Now I only have a postgraduate degree in CS, so maybe I need to be educated.

Yeah, I was aware of the loophole and I was determined to patch it up one of these days... However, I was appalled to find out that even SuSE 7.3 was vulnerable and had to be patched.

Marko

Too bad. It looked just like what I'd been looking for for months. A silent cooling system with no pump. I also checked out the same review before buying.

I got the box within a few days after the email order (the Web order failed). I took apart my very noisy 400-MHz emachine and reassembled it in the box. One small part was missing in the shipment ("the heat connector"), but I built the machine all the same.

The result was impressive. The only audible sound was the very tolerable hard disk whiz. I somehow managed to destroy my PS/2 port in the process but I was using the emachine as a proof of concept anyway. I kept running the machine remotely with a flashy screen server client. I remarked it crashed about once a day probably because of overheating.

Close enough. I was ready to build the real machine with a 950-MHz AMD CPU. I emailed the vendor about the missing heat connector, but got no reply. After a few days I telephoned them, and the person on the phone promised to send it the same day. I got the part within a week.

Now this heat connector is supposed to lead the heat from the chipset to the CPU cooling element. It comes with two screws you are supposed to use to attach it to the chipset heat sink. The screws that came with the part didn't fit between the folds of the heat sink on my motherboard. What was worse, the heat connector is quite a rigid, unadjustable component, and the chipset and the CPU were half an inch off the right distance for the heat connector.

With some ingenuity and violence I managed to attach the heat connector and the CPU heat sink. I started the machine expecting to see the BIOS greetings. Nothing. Then after 30 seconds or so, I smelled something burning. Turn off the machine.

I had observed in my first installation that the coolant moved rapidly in the plastic pipes even if I just pressed the cooling element with my fingers. It still was true regarding two of the three elements, but the CPU element had a stagnant bubble in the pipes.

The manual indicated (in enigmatic English) that sometimes the coolant wouldn't start moving properly and that should be considered normal. Please try again in an hour. I did, but to no avail. This time the bubble in the CPU pipes had noticeably grown.

The following morning the bubble in the pipes had replaced the coolant, which I guess had evaporated since I couldn't feel any moisture. Apparently my forceful installation had fractured one of the pipes.

I sent a lengthy email to the vendor in the (slim) hopes that they might be able to repair the problem. After six weeks they haven't replied and I haven't bothered to call them up.

However, I noticed in my last bank statement that they had silently refunded the whole purchase amount on my check card.

My conclusion is that this company is a sincere business with a sensitive product that suffers from the varying dimensions of the different mother boards (one LED cable couldn't reach the connector on the mother board -- not to mention the heat connector issue). They don't seem to be comfortable at all with English so don't expect any support in that language.

Marko

... you should ban free software, too.

In market economy nobody deserves anything, you just sell stuff if you can. If you can't, switch products or die away.

Marko

This is a wonderful reason for us all to learn Esperanto. This site offers a free Esperanto course with a personal tutor.

... are excommunicated.

Please don't force your freedoms on me. I'll call you when I want to hear your free speach.

BTW, about 95% of my personal

• and

You say install filters. I say incarcerate the spammers.

Marko

I absolutely depend on the X server architecture both at work and at home. I run my employer's Solaris software by displaying on my Linux desktop. I often need to display from East Coast to West Coast.

At home I run the apps on my wife's emachine and display on my own Pentium 166 MHz/48 MB.

Marko

... how do I build a fanless, 0dBA X server with this thing.

The instructions should be for a software engineer whose most glorious hardware accomplishment was a blinking light in junior highschool.

Marko

Some American visionary presented a year or two ago that Finland should come up with the Nobel prize of engineering. The idea hadn't then been taken yet, and it would be good business PR for the Finnish industry.

There was some enthusiastic public discussion. Industrialists proposed to contribute prize money if the state matched the funds. However, nobody really adopted the project so it was forgotten within a couple of weeks.

So now the Japanese stole the idea. The Finns should have at least patented it since Japan now accepts American-style Interesting Idea patents.

Marko

The best universities don't seek to get you a good job. They don't even try to turn you into a better, more ``rounded'' person. They try to advance the sciences.

Teaching the students is a necessary evil for the universities for two reasons: to find the best graduate students to make the department the best in the world and to get funding from the government and the private sector (my professor called it prostitution).

The universities are there to leave a legacy to the future generations and civilizations other than ``Kilroy was here.''

If you don't have an interest in that objective, why should you go to a university? Well, for the employers a degree shows that you can grasp complex things and you can also finish long undertakings.

Marko

... my TV set doesn't have an annoying fan.

Try offering your PC as an upgrade to HIFI freaks.

Marko

Whether you like backdoors or not, they will work as follows:

If you detect (automatically) illegally crypted traffic, you investigate the source and destination IP addresses, connection patterns, amounts of data etc. You may legally raid the offender's home. If it turns out to be an innocent Slashdotter, you'll just slap their wrist (confiscate the computer, block their IP access for a couple of years).

If the lead takes you to the real thing, you'll devote your precious attention on those contacts.

That'll make the terrorists abandon strong encryption and favor traditional security through obscurity, and hide their message in plain text.

Now it is possible to use generic, innocent-looking plain text as a carrier for strong encryption. How do you prove nonsense English transmissions to be against the law?

However, such simple regulation can work very effectively. That is the reason I still have to keep my wireless LAN (and my NFS file systems) open to the world -- Mandrake 8.0 doesn't have IPSec installed by default.

Marko

AFAIK, RTAI is an offshoot of RTLinux. The RTLinux philosophy is that the RT side should be highly simplistic and have a tiny set of primitives. RTAI seeks to evolve the RT services to encompass everything you'd ever expect from a RT operating system.

In the RTLinux approach you want to place the minimum amount of stuff on the RT side for reliability reasons. The RTAI people feel that approach handicaps the RT application programmer.

However, Yodaiken's license applies to RTAI all the same.

Marko

The code is GPL so anybody can distribute it all they want. Yodaiken can't sue anybody for modifying, forking, selling etc etc the source code.

The patent applies to those who use the invention for commercial purposes, not the code. So IMO the GPL violation occurs when somebody sells a product utilizing RTLinux, RTAI (or a similar product) or when somebody runs the product commercially.

So RTLinux in no way violates GPL, nor does Yodaiken by developing RTLinux. Those people trying to market or use RTLinux commercially violate GPL. In other words, RTLinux, RTAI etc cannot be used for business purposes until a less restrictive patent license is granted. So not even Yodaiken is allowed to do business with his invention unless he replaces all GPL code.

Marko

You perceived it right: cut and paste is the first step toward an GUI code generation tool. That also explains why GUI tools are probably dangerous.

Why cut and paste? It creates code forks that become a nightmare to support because you need to support every reincarnation of the code, and of course they begin to diverge right away.

Instead of cut and paste, you should be building classes to capture the useful common functionality. The question is, do you build your software top down or bottom up. My brain is trained to function in the latter way, but I have noticed I'm in the minority.

Marko

It's arbitrary to tax data backup media. Why don't they just make a pact with the US Treasury? Every year the music publishers could produce data showing how much the citizenry is listening to their music and send a bill to the US Government.

Hell, why not just nationalize the whole music publishing industry. The US Congress could budget some money for the artists. The Congress would distribute the funds based on their musical tastes. Now that would spark people's interest in politics!

Marko

First they dismiss it as vaporware.

Then they criticize it as junk.

Then they say it will enslave the world.

Then they clone it.

Marko

I agree, you have a right to express your opinion -- any opinion at all.

But don't force your free speech down my throat! I think the right not to hear other people's free speech should be the next amendment to the Constitution.

Generally, unsolicited free speech should be limited to public spaces only. Not my windshield, not my doorknob, not my front lawn, not my snail mail box, not my email box, not my telephone. In fact, why not designate free speech areas in cities by zoning. So those who want to hear other people's free speech can go to the town square or Hyde Park or wherever it might be.

Marko

Esperanto is a powerful language with an "object-oriented" feel. There are many instances that I come across a simple concept in Eo that cannot be translated simply into English. An example: for the adverb form of "friend" (amike), the closest English translation I can make is "in a friendly manner." Plus, Eo was designed from the start with rules for adding new words to the language, and it has no lack of computer terminology.

Esperantist Sylvan Zaft has a great novel about Esperanto published on the web which (IMO) addresses Esperanto intelligently and fairly, addressing both positives and negatives. It's definately worth a read: Esperanto: Language for the Global Village

I don't propose everyone to learn Esperanto, and I don't propose it to replace anyone's language. OTOH, translating your pages into Esperanto is good karma, and all that jazz...

-- Scott S.

Not really. Learning English as a second language is very difficult compared to other languages. I started doing a gratis Esperanto course about two weeks ago, and already know a considerable fraction of the language. The rules of Esperanto are very simple and logical, so learning it is way easier than English (or even French or Latin, which are better structured than English).