Slashdot Mirror

Here is some code that supposedly decomplies... not that I've tried it.

Quote from the FAQ:

[35.4] How can I decompile an executable program back into C++ source code?

You gotta be kidding, right?

Here are a few of the many reasons this is not even remotely feasible:
* What makes you think the program was written in C++ to begin with?
* Even if you are sure it was originally written (at least partially) in C++,
which one of the gazillion C++ compilers produced it?
* Even if you know the compiler, which particular version of the compiler was
used?
* Even if you know the compiler's manufacturer and version number, what
compile-time options were used?
* Even if you know the compiler's manufacturer and version number and
compile-time options, what third party libraries were linked-in, and what
was their version?
* Even if you know all that stuff, most executables have had their debugging
information stripped out, so the resulting decompiled code will be totally
unreadable.
* Even if you know everything about the compiler, manufacturer, version
number, compile-time options, third party libraries, and debugging
information, the cost of writing a decompiler that works with even one
particular compiler and has even a modest success rate at generating code
would be significant -- on the par with writing the compiler itself from
scratch.

But the biggest question is not how you can decompile someone's code, but why
do you want to do this? If you're trying to reverse-engineer someone else's
code, shame on you; go find honest work. If you're trying to recover from
losing your own source, the best suggestion I have is to make better backups
next time.

Davak

Haskell is definately the worst language I have ever come accross. Maybe its the way its being shoved down our throats at my uni, but for me it just sucks (pretty much all the students here hate it, the teachers love it, which is why it is taught). Its way too hard to program in, hard to read code, and debugging it sucks, cause of the lame way too generic error messages. Its strongly typed such that it seems excessively paranoid. Most compilation errors occur because of its typing requirements.

Bah! I hate it so much.

...But I prefer using Game Maker, myself. You just have to ignore the mountain of Mario/GTA/Zelda clones the majority of the user base seems to produce...

I was thinking about this for the past few weeks as I was asked it in an interview and had said 'well of course--they spend tons of money on R&D'.

But the last truely innovative thing I could come up with which spawned directly from Microsoft was ole' BASIC.

Oh wait. Nevermind.

Not quite offtopic: back in the late 70s, some workstation designers decided they could do an intuitive user interface without waiting for bitmap displays to become affordable. The result was the form-based user interface of the CTOS operating system, which ran on special proprietary hardware. Of course, like most proprietary systems, it was driven from the marketplace by IBM compatibles. Too bad, really.

I can't really see what the Parsec parser combinator library has to do with OpenGL and Internet game play.

I just found this site.

At least it's smth different than the standard frameset :)

Do ISP's pick what goes into the newgroup, or is it added by a default list or some other odd means of populating.

Well, I have friends who would suggest I'm with Shakespeare on that one.

En Garde! ;-)

While not exactly at the front of the pack on wireless, Dartmouth has had a number of interesting contributions to the field:

- DCTS/DTSS: Dartmouth developed an early timesharing system in the late 60's
- BASIC: Kemeney & Kurtz, a pair of professors, wrote Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code in 1964. It's easy to dismiss BASIC, but a lot of people got their start with it.
- Synclavier: Jon Appelton, currently the head of Dartmouth's electroacoustic music program, developed this digital synth in '78 at New England Digital. It was widely used through the 90's.
- Networked Campus: Dartmouth adopted a "port for every pillow" philosophy in 1984 and wired the whole campus with appletalk. They got a lot of mileage out of that network.
- Required computers: Dartmouth has mandated computer ownership for all students since (i think) the class of '91. Having it mandatory means students can get financial aid for their computers, if necessary
- blitzmail: dartmouth wrote an email program in '84 (?). nothing amazing or groundbreaking, but the the widespread adoption of "blitz" in combination with the mandatory computers and ubiquitous networking had a huge effect on the campus social scene, and did a lot to bring dartmouth grads into the information age.

I'm sure there's more i'm missing here... anyone?

It is not true. Proof by counter-example.

Nobody - let me repeat, NOBODY - who knows anything about science will say that it is infallible. The whole POINT of the scientific method is that humands *do* make mistakes. If all our observations and conjectures were perfect, we wouldn't need the scentific method at all.

The reason I bring this up is because I'm hearing multiple arguments on Slashdot today that say something along the lines of, "Science is fact, religion is heresay." It's the typical "Pot, kettle, black" statement that I'm trying to run into the ground.

(Does it surprise anyone that *religions* have claimed "infallibility"? :) )

Nope. Many of the religious folks I know are absolute retards.

The difference between science now and science then is that we have a *lot* more observations under our belts and new tools for observations. The scientific method is the same.

Aye, but new, more advanced theories require new, more advanced tools. Just because a CPU is faster doesn't mean that the average speed of computing goes up. Sorry if I'm putting words in your mouth, I thought that was worth pointing out.


> Saying that "scientific studies prove atoms
> exist but the Bible doesn't prove squat" is a
> fallacy, plain and simple.

What, exactly, does the Bible prove? This is a pretty reasonable question to ask, I think.

Nothing. And that's my whole point. Neither side can prove anything.

That's a little strong, but it does tend to give fundamentalists the shivers. After all, the argument goes, why is an infallible, perfect, omniscient god's word so darned hard to read? For that matter, why are his products (us) so defective?

Orthodox religious folks scare me. They often contradict each other. Which is why logical folks need to step up to the plate a bit more often.



> The same goes for science. Theories arise to
> explain things that we're not sure about.
> They're not always right.
> Pot. Kettle. Black.

Not quite. Scientists *know* that most new hypothesis are, if not flat-out wrong, in need of improvement. That's what the scientific method is all about.

"Pot. Kettle. Black." refers to the folks here on Slashdot who claim that science is vastly superior to religion. The scientists I know take a much more... intelligent point of view, that is, "I might be right, I might be wrong." Interestingly enough, some religious folks I know say that, too.

The more "fundamentalist" religions work a different way: An explanation is presupposed. The "facts" are manipulated so they fit the explanation - or the explanation is so vague that any "fact" would fit. (Okay, that's a bit uncharitable - some religions DO change their dogma - but it's not far off from fundamentalist Christianity.)

Again, fundamentalist religions scare me, in orthodox. As far as facts being manipulated - I see where you are coming from, but I see it a little differently. Religions try and take their scriptures and apply it to the life they know in a way that makes sense to them. That's interpretation. They take what is given them (or what they "find") and apply it to what they know in ways they think are correct. I see the same in science.

And regarding logic in religion: Read this.

I found Phil's Sysdox to Thin OS X Clients to be quite useful.

# for ssh-agent (magic!)
# first check the ssh_agent_state temp file
export SSH_AGENT_STATE="/tmp/.ssh-agent-state.$USER"
if
[ -f "$SSH_AGENT_STATE" ]; # tempfile exists?
then
source "$SSH_AGENT_STATE";
if
[ ! -S "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ]; # socket writeable?
then
echo INFO: ssh-agent needs to be restarted
rm -f "$SSH_AGENT_STATE";
echo INFO: starting ssh-agent
ssh-agent -s | grep -v '^echo ' > "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
source "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
echo INFO: ssh-agent started [ $SSH_AGENT_PID ]
else
echo INFO: ssh-agent already running [ $SSH_AGENT_PID ]
ssh-add -l
fi
else # no tempfile, start the agent clean
echo INFO: starting ssh-agent
ssh-agent -s | grep -v '^echo ' > "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
source "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
echo INFO: ssh-agent started [ $SSH_AGENT_PID ]
ssh-add -l
fi

For those slashdotters like myself who found themselves asking a bajillion questions when C-Band was mentioned, check out the TVRO FAQ.

And just in case your wondering what TVRO stands for, here is a description of TVRO from the FAQ's introduction:

"TVRO is an acronym that stands for TeleVision Receive Only. Generally speaking, TVRO is the satellite distribution system for delivering programming to cable TV headends and systems."

Also, here are some interesting facts I gathered from googling around and reading the FAQ:

C-Band video is studio quality, it blows away cable and DSS/DISH satellite systems.

Commercial PPV stations like HBO are available but need decryption hardware.

Channels are leaving C-Band and switching to digital broadcasts, so the availability of C-Band channels is dropping.

Non-commercial much less homogenized content is available via satellite.

Shoot, I'll be kicking myself for a long time about not being the among the first to post a response to this article. There are many good construction kits and games (created with the kits) still coming out today. I finished creating a kit in 2000 and have been upgrading it to the present day -- currently on version 1.3.1. The most popular program I'm aware of is Game Maker by Mark Overmars. It's free and you're free to distribute your games created in it. My own program is the Scrolling Game Development Kit. It's not only free, but open source / GPL. The kits are out there and a few people are using them, but I bet they could be a lot more popular -- I just don't know how. As computers get faster and cooler, kits are getting easier to make and use and can do more interesting things. I wish I had had the Scrolling Game Development Kit when I was growing up :-).

http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/index.htm l has a nice free game maker. Very slick and little or no scripting/coding required. One of the guys at work here has been playing with this with his son.

From he NANAE FAQ

[Rule #0: Spam is theft.]

Rule #1: Spammers lie.
Rule #2: If you think a spammer is telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.

(Krugel's Corollary: Spammer lies are really stupid.)

"Opt-In Marketing" hits Rule #1, Rule #2 and the corollary - in its name alone. And by getting that far with just its name, I'd say that trips Rule #3 to boot.

There's a fascinating thread in news.admin.net-abuse.email ("COURT: Opt in Marketing vs [SPEWS, SPAMHAUS, SPAMCOP, QUEST(sic), COVISTA and Steve Linford(of Idaho?)]" about what Scelson's up to. This article in nanae provides an interesting perspective.

Between Scelson biting off more than he can chew (and what a coincidence, now showing up on the press's radar), and Alan Ralsky being sued by Verizon, this could be a long, hot summer for the spammers.

Me? I'm keeping a bag of popcorn handy whenever I read nanae. Seeing these two go down in court will be a delight. I can only hope a certain Mr. Haberli is next on the docket. That'd be three major spam rings in serious d00d00.

The following two are the only ones relevant:

• Parsing Techniques—A Practical Guide
• Parsing Resources

Stepan Kasal

Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide
Flexible Parsing
Workshop on The Evaluation of Parsing Systems
Robust Parsing
Parsing Resources

Probably the last one on that list would be the most useful starting place...

No... this is how it's supposed to look :-(
(using Netscape 4.7)

The point of the article wasn't that UL owes the community a binary distro. The point was that they would be more successful with a binary distro.

UnitedLinux wants a standard that will run all linux apps. But how can a developer who may be using RedHat or Slackware or Debian, know if the app will run on UL? The good folks of UnitedLinux could limit themselves to distributing apps that run by accident. Or rewrite them so they do run for the initial ditribution. But then the customer may want to use program XYZ on a platform that they were told was designed to allow a binary to run on any linux distro--unfortunately it won't because the developers of the program don't want to fork over the money for a copy of UnitedLinux.

Basically all you have is another incompatible flavor of linux -- only this one will be delivered under a couple of different names ala Suse UL, or Caldera UL. Neato Neato. It's not about unity, it's merely clever name that sounds pleasant, but it's just another ugly division.

I suspect it will be as successful as the Open Software Foundation attempt to battle Sun/ATT. They created a unified unix which OSF. Or I guess I could go on to name a gaggle of other failed attempts, if you want to pick nits with this one. But it's past my bed time :)

O'Reilly's book is great. OpenSSH is magnificent. But it's SSH Agent that's the breath of life for all that, bringing it within reach for Joe Moron's grannie too.

I just stumbled upon a truly great Cocoa app, SSH Agent.

It provides a global ssh-agent environment, manages keys on the agent, auto-adds them if so requested, generates keypairs, and so on. And it's stunningly well executed. A must-have!

1. Write simple code in a language that the course instructors had thought up themselves: SL (Simple Language)
   
2. Load an interpreter which was written using the UU_AG attribute grammar system, which in turn is written in Haskell (you first had to load UU_AG in Hugs98 (a Haskell interpreter).
   
3. The interpreter would produce SSM code.
   
4. You could then load the SSM code in a SSM java program, where you could see the result of your SL program.
   

1. Write simple code in a language that the course instructors had thought up themselves: SL (Simple Language)
   
2. Load an interpreter which was written using the UU_AG attribute grammar system, which in turn is written in Haskell (you first had to load UU_AG in Hugs98 (a Haskell interpreter).
   
3. The interpreter would produce SSM code.
   
4. You could then load the SSM code in a SSM java program, where you could see the result of your SL program.
   

1. Write simple code in a language that the course instructors had thought up themselves: SL (Simple Language)
   
2. Load an interpreter which was written using the UU_AG attribute grammar system, which in turn is written in Haskell (you first had to load UU_AG in Hugs98 (a Haskell interpreter).
   
3. The interpreter would produce SSM code.
   
4. You could then load the SSM code in a SSM java program, where you could see the result of your SL program.
   

for those familiar with SKI combinatorial expressions and Lambda terms it is always a fun thing to see that I can be expressed in S and K by:
Ix = SKzx = Kx(zx) = x

But did you know that you can reduce the language to one-combinator?!

X = lambda f.fS(lambda xyz.x)
K => XX
S => X(XX)

The proof to this particular variation of a one-combinator basis for Lambda-terms was first published by Fokker, University of Utrecht The Netherlands, and shows that among several variations of one-combinator basis Lambda terms his is the shortest.

for those familiar with SKI combinatorial expressions and Lambda terms it is always a fun thing to see that I can be expressed in S and K by:
Ix = SKzx = Kx(zx) = x

But did you know that you can reduce the language to one-combinator?!

X = lambda f.fS(lambda xyz.x)
K => XX
S => X(XX)

The proof to this particular variation of a one-combinator basis for Lambda-terms was first published by Fokker, University of Utrecht The Netherlands, and shows that among several variations of one-combinator basis Lambda terms his is the shortest.

I found this slashdot interview interesting because i am myself interested in functional programming. I would have loved a comparison of lisp with ocaml or haskell. lisp and scheme are great for teaching tools because of their simple syntax.

I usually use haskell for academic purposes, no real life application done yet. It has a very cool type system that can infer the type of your functions without declarations. Polymorphism is supported as well as parametric types. You can code incrementally using a shell (hugs, ghci) and when you are done you can use an optimizing compiler (ghc).

It's infix syntax is very powerful because you can change the precedence rules as you wish and define operators from new characters. For example:
infixl <**> 5
a <**> b = some_function a b
This way you can define a kind of embedded language inside haskell, look for example HaXML, a library to manipulate XML and Utrecht Parser combinators..

I would be very pleased if Ken could make some comparisons of lisp with modern functional programming languages.

This cluster is relatively small: 133 nodes. At my university they had a 250-node cluster up for a day during the lustrumcluster project. They wanted to have a 365-node cluster (the number of years that the university exists), but had trouble getting enough machines. A friend of mine (who was a member of the group that built it) told me that it equaled an 99Ghz intel machine (they used 250 intel machines with procs around 400 Mhz)

So, this cluster is relatively small :-)

--

This cluster is relatively small: 133 nodes. At my university they had a 250-node cluster up for a day during the lustrumcluster project. They wanted to have a 365-node cluster (the number of years that the university exists), but had trouble getting enough machines. A friend of mine (who was a member of the group that built it) told me that it equaled an 99Ghz intel machine (they used 250 intel machines with procs around 400 Mhz)

So, this cluster is relatively small :-)

--

Small followup:

Bzzzzt. Sorry, thanks for playing though. Its is a possesive pronoun; pronouns aren't modified by the genetive ending ('s). If we apply your 'logic' than it should be he's instead of his and I's instead of mine, and so forth.

The 'logic' you mentioned would apply more in (here I'll use some technical terms, since you seem to value that) agglutinating languages (such as many Finno-Ugric languages), or in polysynthetic languages (such as most Eskimo languages), but it generally doesn't apply in inflectional languages (such as most Western European languages), and can't apply in isolating languages (such as Chinese).

"It's" is more technically correct

If you'd like to learn some accurate technical things about languages, I suggest you check out what the Linguists say: http://www.linguistlist.org. Afterall, they spend a bit more time thinking about this kind of stuff, and they use a little more empirical data than their own opinions.

Chris

Small followup:

Bzzzzt. Sorry, thanks for playing though. Its is a possesive pronoun; pronouns aren't modified by the genetive ending ('s). If we apply your 'logic' than it should be he's instead of his and I's instead of mine, and so forth.

The 'logic' you mentioned would apply more in (here I'll use some technical terms, since you seem to value that) agglutinating languages (such as many Finno-Ugric languages), or in polysynthetic languages (such as most Eskimo languages), but it generally doesn't apply in inflectional languages (such as most Western European languages), and can't apply in isolating languages (such as Chinese).

"It's" is more technically correct

If you'd like to learn some accurate technical things about languages, I suggest you check out what the Linguists say: http://www.linguistlist.org. Afterall, they spend a bit more time thinking about this kind of stuff, and they use a little more empirical data than their own opinions.

Chris

SLab is an excellent multitrack recorder/mixer. It is not up to snuff with ProTools yet (though no program is on any platform).

Other Linux audio related links include (sorry if some links are bad, I haven't updated this list in awhile):

Multitrack audio recording/mixing:
Ardour
Slab
Snd

Midi Sequencing:
Jazz++
Rosegarden
Brahms (I THINK this is a sequencer)

Sound editing / effects processing:
MixViews
ecasound

Audio creation (synth emulators):
Ultramaster RS-101 and Juno6 CSound
Cecilia (requires Csound)

Notation:
Lilypond
Rosegarden
Mup

Awesome pages with links to everything you wanted to know about Linux audio:
Applications for Open Sound System
Sound and MIDI software for Linux

As interesting as the idea is, LaTeX is not a good broadcast format for the web. For one, it assumes pagination. For another, it would need a fair amount more horsepower to render, unless you pare away much of its power. (TeX/LaTeX can be a programming language all its own; compare the difference between PDF and Postscript)

LaTeX's true strength over HTML (or any other flavor of SGML) is in authoring. The language, the syntax is well-suited to manual editing. Consider seeing this in a text editor:

<thought>Where is my attach&eacute; case?</thought> he wondered.

versus this:

\thought{Where is my attach\'e case?} he wondered.

Of course, the best way to read LaTeX is with xdvi, but at least it is possible to read untypeset prose without the constant mental stops imposed by the verboseness of *ML syntax.

This is why I think LaTeX (or at least a well-defined subset thereof) would better fit a role as a source language for *ML documents. The Hyperlatex program already makes this possible, for HTML at least. (A generic LaTeX-to-SGML converter would be much more useful-- but alas, it appears such a program has yet to be written)

It's GNU, and it's there already. And it's as "portable" as the original author describes.

--
this post was brought to you by Andreas Fuchs.

thanks to _dewman_

thanks to dapozza-

thanks to Wizard of OS

I finally got it to compile on my system.

I was unable to get it to run at all under KDE (audio, but no video) and it segfaults about 1/3 of the time in Gnome

On a 550MHz box with 128 megs of ram, it still has about 1/5 second lag between the video and audio (enough to be annoying) and a lot of visual defects when there is movement on the screen.

I'm wondering if anyone has contacted the guy who wrote the windows .dll file? I'd bet he wouldn't mind giving up the source for a linux version, or cooperating with someone on that.

A good first effort, but for a machine as slow as mine or slower, it's not really usable at this time. Great to see any progress in this area though, as far as I'm concerned.

________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"

Because the site is /.-ed (and I knew this link 2 days ago) I created a mirror. I don't know if my provider likes the website /.-ed, but we'll see about that later :)

The link is: http://www.warande.uu.nl/~jverelst/xmps/
Have fun!!

I found a great programming tool for the Mindstorms system - RCX Command Center. It is a simple C-like programming language (actually, the language is 'Not Quite C') that will teach the basic concepts of variables, subroutines & functions, loops, etc. It's not as powerful as LegOS, but is easier to learn and much more convenient (one-touch compile, download and run), and comes with a programming tutorial.
I think that learning to program by controlling lego robots would be a fun, challenging and rewarding process that your kids will love!

for a fewl like me, who just bangs out notes for fun, it's kinda cool to grab a midi file from the net, covert it to sheet music, and bang away.

LilyPond

Haskore would best be described as a `music representation formalism', and not a music notation program. If you want to produce music notation, you should consider lilypond which, incidentally, has an input grammar that closely resembles the grammar of Haskore.

As for SCSI comparison, my Adaptec 2920 does only 10 Mb/s; need I try? ;)

Here's your first scale in LilyPond (scale.fly):

c d e f g a b c

For more information, see LilyPond user's manual (170k).

If that's all really too difficult, there's still hope. As a separate project, work is underway to build a GUI (GTK+) frontend to LilyPond. Check out Denemo: denemo.sourceforge.net. Still in its early stages, but already usable.

There was a discussion on the SCORE mailing list the other day about how rhythm, pitch and ornaments can be typed-in (of course) most efficiently. People tend to prefer seperating them: all pitches first then the rhythm, then marks.

Of course, when you're not using your favourite text editor(TM) for entry, but some integrated notation software, you may find yourself to be back in the eternal computing fields from hell. From the SCORE mailing list:

&gt BTW has anyone ever answered Yes to "Save this staff of input to a file?"

All the time. If there's a crash while entering, say, the 19th staff of a 20 stave score, all those temp files can recreate your losses much faster then completely retyping. This still happens to me maybe a half dozen times per year.

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

LilyPond also features MIDI output and comes with a separate program (midi2ly) for converting MIDI to LilyPond's input language. However, trying to convert MIDI to sheet music is a rather useless undertaking, IME. Rich MIDI lacks lots of notation features, such as accents, ties (as opposed to a note of double length), chords vs. voices, clefs, grouping into staffs (two voices on one staff, or each on its own), voices that switch staffs, beaming, arpeggios (vs quickly played notes) grace notes and ornaments in general, flageolets, fingering, enharmonics. So, if you want a real nice score, you'll have to edit the resulting score by hand, anyway. It is this editing that takes most of the time, not the entry of plain notes (that is, if you can touch type).

As a separate project, work is underway to build a GUI (GTK+) frontend to LilyPond. Check out Denemo: denemo.sourceforge.net. Still in its early stages, but already usable.

RoseGarden is basically an orphaned project. To quote Elliot Lee: "It isn't going anywhere any time soon." The last post on the Rosegarden mailing list is dated december, 6 1999. There are 2 branches. The first one is the X11 program, and hasn't changed much since the time Han-Wen named LilyPond as a pun on Rosegarden three years ago. They are also doing a complete ground-up rewrite of the package (slated to be 3.0), using Client/Server architecture, CORBA, GUILE, C++ and GTK. This all means that noone is working on the usable 2.x sources, and 3.x doesn't even compile. 2.x doesn't have any LilyPond support, but it is planned for 3.x

Jan.

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

it's perfectly trivial to write a single function template

And that is precisely my point: a function template takes up 5 lines of code, and using it another 2 (constructing the list, iterating). Contrast that with the one line python.

that's a sevenfold increase in code size.

Multiply the amount that you do loops over two element lists in a 50000 line program.

That's a lot of preventable complexity.

If you use windows try Mark Overmar's RCX control center. It's a keen IDE with a bunch of other kewl features like remote control, var watches, and more!

Actually, there already is an effort to "open source" music... check out:

Mutopia

It's an effort to "freely distribute" music by using LilyPond's music definition language. The motivation is to "free" music written by composers who are no longer alive, so it makes little sense for some corporate body to still hold the copyright. However, the stuff here is only classical so far... I suppose more variety will be included when LilyPond gets more complete. Not sure how the Mutopia philosophy would fit with contemporary music, though (ie. those whose composers are still around). I suppose they'd have to "open-source" it themselves for this to be legal.

Whoops. Make that sci.math.
sci.math: 0^0
Ryan

But while we're speaking hypothetically, combine the coke machine with a finger daemon (like so - or try finger coke@l.gp.cs.cmu.edu) and what do you get? The Coca Cola weather service!

Even more fun - maybe you could telnet in from your Playstation to the coke machine and start a multiplayer contest... the possibilities are endless! :)

Oh, and yes, I forgot to put TM and (R), but Coke, Coca Cola and Playstation are trademarks of ... wait a minute, this is fair use of trademarks, for dummies, even. Nyah, nyah, nyah!