Why not? A gallon of gas costs EU 6.24 here in The Netherlands (which is $9.73) and while SUVs were never that popular here (and their popularity is declining) I still see quite a few of them every day.
The only counter-argument I have heard to this that makes a bit of sense to me, is that distances in the US are much, much larger (typically) and people drive them more frequently.
Reasons are, among others, suburbs that are 50+ miles away from where people work. Except in the huge cities/city centers, there are not many high-rise buildings; thus, distances tend to increase. Also, America is built such that places can only be reached by car efficiently. The idea of going somewhere *not* by car is not just alien and un-American, but is also in fact impractical in a lot of cases. So, even if you could fix this mentality "problem" (if you want to call it that), there is the practical problem that a lot of places are simply inaccessible by bike, foot or public transportation, unless you have a serious death wish, a lot of extra time, and do not mind the exercise.
Most of this is not the case in the Netherlands. It's a tiny country to start with; people tend to live closer to where they work (because if they don't, they just get stuck in traffic jams half the day), and within cities moving by bike is pretty efficient (typically faster than by car because of the traffic).
So indeed, gas is almost $10/gallon here now. I, however, generally couldn't care less. But that's because I drive less than 8000 miles a year, as I live 2 km from where I work (so I go by bike unless it rains or something). For many Americans, this would be practically unthinkable and also really, in fact, depend on factors far beyond their control. For example, it's easy to say "so move closer to where you work". However, this is likely not affordable, except if you don't care to live in really shitty neighborhoods etc.
So, to summarize, I've learned it's not as simple as saying "It's still less than half what we pay so what are you complaining about".
Actually some countries use (allegedly) anonymized cell phone data to track traffic jams. This seems to work quite well. At least there have been several experiments and the idea seems promising.
I would consider this a completely legitimate use of the data. However I highly doubt that it is properly anonymized, but that's a different matter.
This could explain why such data was gathered in the first place. If you can still track particular users, it is not anonymized at all however.
If you think the USA is bad with regards to telephone taps and the like, try the Netherlands.
Last year, in the Netherlands 25,000 phones where tapped (for different periods of time). These are published numbers (I could link to them but the articles are in dutch only so, well..)
In the USA, the official numbers are somewhere around 2200 phone taps (in 2007).
But that's not all; keep in mind that the USA has over 300 million inhabitants. The Netherlands has only 16 million.
So either the USA government is doing a much better job of keeping even the fact that phones are tapped at all hidden from public scrutiny, or it really is much, much worse here (in this regard, at least).
This is confusing; the overview says the book is rated "7", however the review states somewhere halfway through:
If it weren't for that I'd have seriously thought about rating the book 9 instead of 8.
It makes quite a difference to me, as I would read "8" as "probably a good reference work if I need to know the basics about the subject", whereas "7" means something more like "the content is passable, but you probably might as well buy any other general introduction to the same topic".
That might potentially be relevant if Asus had announced that they explicitly won't support Vista. Asus has announced no such thing...
You do have a bit of a point there; however, Asus does sell its EEE PC's with (only) Linux or XP preinstalled. The option to have one with Vista preinstalled is glaringly missing, in a day and age where every other PC manufacturer is to all practical intents and purposes forced by Microsoft to deliver all its systems with Vista or (if they are willing to endanger their reduced-price OEM licensing deals) no Microsoft OS at all. So it is really not much of a stretch to state that they do not support it. It is also very likely that the same will be true for their desktop version because Vista would run like a dog on those machines, certainly if compared to XP, and Asus is obviously aware of that.
We're going to not introduce additional compatibilities, particularly in the driver model. Windows Vista was about improving those things.
Where "improving" should be read as "adding several layers of DRM protection"
So the next version of windows will have the same performance-boggling, customer-hostile driver model? Well, thanks for the advance warning, I suppose.
The very fact that long-time PC manufacturers are designing systems that "are not designed to run Vista" a year and a half after it has been released is about as significant news as you could possibly get, with regards to the PC market in any case.
The only reason when you might have considered it less relevant, would have been if the systems where not selling well at all. So, have you bothered to check Amazons Bestsellers in Computers & PC Hardware list lately? (Amazon being by far the largest online reseller that sells Apple, Asus EEE PC as well as Vista laptops?). The list updates hourly, but currently the first Vista laptop is at spot number 4. The Asus EEE PC used to be at 1 for over a week, and I guess the only reason why it currently isn't, is because they are out of stock everywhere. So it's currently in second place, flanked by Macbooks at place 1 and 3. So basically Microsofts margins are getting squeezed here from two directions at once: Apple at the high end, EEE PC's at the low end.
Exactly, I wondered the same thing, its just trolling, it would almost be as relevant if [..]
You must have missed the memo, but Microsoft does not want you to be able to buy XP anymore. Everyone is supposed to move to Vista. So it is *most definitely* newsworthy if manufacturers are introducing *new products* a year and a half (!!) after Vista has been released to the public, *and they explicitly do not support the newest Microsoft OS at all*, although they do support the previous version - even though you're not even supposed to be able to buy that version anymore, at least not without jumping through all kinds of hoops. Hello? I consider this to be extremely newsworthy.
It's not designed to run Vista, therefore it does not necessitate any reference to Vista, it probably wouldnt run Ubuntu very well either, or OSX...
The EEE Laptops run Ubuntu just fine. I would be very surprised if these desktop versions wouldn't. Whether you could turn them into a Hackintosh is kindof a moot point IMO, but probably you could, at least if OS X happens to support the specific hardware they used. Please "get the facts" first next time, thanks.
I don't requires that much disk storage space, I could get by on 40 gigs and 80 would never run out of disk space for my purposes, make an 80 gig SSD that would sell for less than 200 USD and I will use my disk platters for target practice...
Exactly, my current notebook (3 years old) only has a 60 GB disk, and even then I have split it into 2x30 GB so I can run both Linux and Windows XP. I've never had a problem related to lack of space. OK, you can't keep huge movie or music collections on it, but seeing as how laptop sound quality is typically rock bottom anyway (the soundcard as well as built-in speakers), I don't normally use it to play music.
30 GB is apparently plenty to store whatever software I need for work (which is quite a range of applications) as well as some games and movies in case I'm traveling for a couple of days.
Clearly I'm not using it as my "only" computer though. In that case 60 GB definitely would not suffice, by far.
Hard drives have entered terabytes territory, and you think 256GB SSD drives are "large enough"?
For notebooks? Absolutely. Even most new notebooks are not shipped with 250 GB HD's by default yet (although it is usually an option for a couple dozen extra bucks).
However, if it takes 2 years until this technology becomes mainstream, you may by that time well be right.
On the other hand, hard disk prices are really really low. By the time SSD is only about 2x more expensive I'd most definitely start considering it, since that would still mean paying "only" some $150. That should well be worth the performance increase as compared to, say, spending double the amount of $$'s on a faster CPU or what-have-you. Currently it's more like 15x as expensive though, so for now I'll stick with regular harddisks.
An interesting question, but honestly doesn't it seem like a good idea to wait a month or two longer and see what terminal kinds of apps come out of the iPhone SDK & app store?
Yes, because it would be so convenient to have a terminal application on a phone that doesn't have a keyboard.
"something could be done with completion", yeah come on, just imagine a terminal app working that way for a second....done? OK, then let's be serious again now.
I guess one could buy a bluetooth keyboard to go with the iPhone, but if you have to drag that around as well you probably might as well settle for an EEE PC as mentioned elsewhere in this topic, at about 1/5th the cost. Admittedly it doesn't have 3G (but then, neither does the iPhone, as of yet), but I'm sure one could buy a USB 3G dongle including a data plan from a carrier of your choice for much less than the monthly iPhone rates.
Much as I like the design of the iPhone, there is such a thing as taking it too far.
Don't extensions run on some kind of VM or something? People yell at Windows for all of its stability problems, and practically everything in a modern web browser behaves like it's single-threaded?
I agree about the singlethreaded thing. Apart from that: no, extensions can't run in some kind of VM. If they did, they would not be able to modify the browser in interesting ways (as this in many cases needs r/w access to internal browser state; this would not be available if you run it in a "sandbox" or VM.
You can pretty much have the exact same argument about Linux kernel modules: the kernel refuses to load modules that are compiled for the wrong (=a different) kernel version. Now, you could say, modules should not be able to crash the kernel, right? Well...if you could limit the interface between kernel and modules in such a way that modules would probably run about 5x slower, needs twice the amount of code to write *and* be unable to do a lot of things that would be interesting because the strict interface does not allow this, then yes. If we don't want to make that sacrifice (and in fact we don't), the smarter way is to only allow modules to be loaded that are actually at least compiled against the correct kernel version.
We do live in 2008, right?
Last time I checked, yes. Your point being that software composition problems are just supposed to somehow magically solve themselves these days?
So yes, while compatibility checking is a good idea for the functioning of the plugin, there is no reason why Firefox should be allowed to crash due to a faulty plugin.
This is not feasible, because plugins are able to change internally used structures of the browser. Given the non-(memory-)managed programming environment in which the browser runs (as far as I know), this pretty much makes it impossible to keep plugins from crashing the browser. Or, to be more precise, the interfaces between browser and plugin could be made more strict and limited, thus (in the ideal case) making it impossible to crash the browser, but this would pretty much reduce the potential for plugins to do anything really interesting very close to zero.
Sure you can disable the mechanism that checks whether plugins are compatible.
However, as is to be expected with major version changes, lots of API's will likely have changed, so if the plugins happen not to crash outright, they might fail in subtle ways that you don't discover until it's much too late.
This is pretty much exactly why the mechanism is there in the first place.
So if you do this, don't complain about "bugs" regarding crashes, memory leaks and pretty much any other problems you may experience with Firefox. There likely will be a lot, if you go down this road.
Apple is selling exactly the same hardware for twice as much.
Really. Can you please spec me out a Dell or HP 13" notebook similar to the $1200 MacBook. Ah, that's right, the 13" Dell XPS (the only 13" they sell) is actually more like $1400. Whoopsie.
I'd probably agree if you're talking about the 15" models (MacBook Pro) though. Although it's even then obviously not "the same hardware". Try to compare that to prices of the high-quality (formerly known as) Thinkpad line by Lenovo. You'll find it is not much cheaper, if at all.
Well I'm coding for an embedded linux environment in C and C++, so java tools won't help. I am more interested in the tools that can generate a call-stack and trace through the execution path to show you how a null-pointer dereference might come about. I was looking at Klockwork Insight, but the price tag is practically my salary for the number of licenses we would need. Has anyone worked with that tool specifically?
Someone please mod the parent up as it's the original poster clarifying his question.
I have not used this particular tool so I have no idea. (basically, beyond valgrind and gdb/ddd my knowledge of C debugging tools is pretty outdated)
It sounds like what you're looking for is not necessarily *static* checking (checking that happens at compile time). If you want to get better debugging information in the case that crashes occur at runtime, you are probably looking for "instrumentation" of the existing program, so that a tool can gather information about it at runtime (similar to a profiler or normal debugger). Or do you really want to feed it the source code only (without actually running the program) and tell you about potential paths that might lead to null-pointer access? Considering it's embedded software, you probably want the checking to be static, i.e. outside of the embedded device itself?
In the case of C, static checking of null-pointer access is impossible in the general case, because C uses a flat, unprotected (within the process itself) memory model and allows pointer math, which means someone could be doing complex pointer math and no amount of static checking is going to save you in that case. If you are willing to ignore such "borderline" cases, search for "c null pointer reference static checking" and you'll find quite some papers about this, which generally means there's bound to be some tools implementing those ideas. If your code involves lots of pointer math to improve efficiency, I think you'll find that most static checkers are unlikely to do a very good job. I'm afraid I can't help you with pointers to specific tools, as it's been at least 5 years since I last wrote any C code:(
In any case if you're considering to buy a tool, just send an e-mail to the tool supplier and tell them you would want to test the tool. Surely if you're considering to pay them about a programmers annual salary they should be willing to let you test the tool first, for that amount of $$.
There's also valgrind [valgrind.org], for Linux users, and mudflap [gnu.org], for gcc users. [..] valgrind is a very good runtime memory checker,
It most certainly is, but it's not a static checker;) It detects problems at runtime, so only when they actually occur. It does not tell you about *potential* memory leaks that are only triggered in corner cases that you happen not to check.
Such tools work in a very similar way to what is already being done in many modern language compilers (such as javac). Basically, they implement semantic checks that verify whether the program makes sense, or is likely to work as intended in some respect. For example, they will check for likely security flaws, memory management/leaking or synchronisation issues (deadlock, access to shared data outside critical sections, etc.), or other kind of checks that depend on whatever domain the tool is intended for.
It would probably be more useful if you could state which kind of problem you are trying to solve and which tools you are considering to buy. That way, people who have experience with them could suggest which work best:)
Here's the answer. She's trying to solve a human problem with a technical solution. It won't work. If she has to use a suspect windows computer, there's no software that will guarantee it's clean. It can't be done.
You are absolutely right, which pretty much ends this discussion right there.
Normally I'd suggest to do a complete Windows reinstall (assuming you have to run Windows), or install Linux, but you can't trust a Linux machine either, if others have physical access to them (and they know what they're doing).
In any case this is a completely moot point for the exact reasons you mentioned.
Assuming the real (non-tech) problem at hand here cannot easily be addressed, I'd suggest maybe buying an Asus EEE PC (since they're not too expensive and relatively easy to carry with you all the time). In addition, buy an USB stick or SD-card, and only store your data on those. They will easily fit in your wallet. But yeah, buying new hardware to work around this problem does not sound like a real solution, to be frank.
whether this can possibly be claimed to be an accident *dons tinfoil hat*.
But seriously, removing the code that seeds a random number generator? I can hardly imagine making such a change by accident. I may just lack a sufficiently colorful imagination, though.
(or, before resorting to conspiracy theories, we should probably ask ourselves first, "can this possibly be explained by simple stupidity?"
The last thing they want is people going "wtf, microsofts site is broken!"
I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there, and will make my point by quoting someone's post in a reddit thread (that's about MSDN search, or rather the MSDN website in general, sucking):
The problem is with your assumption that Microsoft cares about their web site. They don't. They wish that it didn't exist and that they didn't have to take care of it. They wish the internet didn't exist, and that if you want to talk to other people you use Microsoft software and a Microsoft proprietary protocol. They do this all the time. Old links in old Microsoft software to Microsoft's website no longer work because they keep moving things. MSDN search is broken and awful.
It appears that Microsoft's web site is being maintained by amateurs, rather than a huge corporation whom you would hope know what they are doing. I would posit that you should never ascribe to incompetence that which can be more completely explained by malice. The same principle probably can be applied to their use of Flash.
Actually, I think it is. But apart from discussing that point, which will probably lead us nowhere, let's look at this practically.
If you would know exactly what your freenet node is currently storing, first of all this would completely defeat the plausible deniability feature of freenet. The point is that, since you don't know what content you're hosting, and in addition it is very hard to prove whether *you* requested the content that's on your node or whether it is just there because it was proxied to someone else. This is one of the defining features of the project, taking it away would more or less render it completely pointless.
But yes, I certainly see your point and think it's the biggest problem that Freenet faces.
2: Apple are quite happy to let you rip their music to cd, and then to mp3. It's no different, and sounds no different from ripping a bought music cd.
You're right! How gracious of apple to ALLOW you to transfer a piece of your property to another piece of your property! Its almost like we're PAYING thing for this or something.
You forgot to mention that what he says is not even true regardless: it definitely *does* sound different from a bought music CD, because you have first decompressed a lossy format and converted it to CD-audio, then ripped that again (potentially also lossy because of how CD-audio ripping works), and compressed it into another, different lossy format (mp3). So please don't tell me it sounds "no different" from a bought music CD, because it *does* sound different.
I'm not even mentioning the time and writable CD's you'd have to waste by writing the files to CD first, then ripping those into MP3 once again.
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The only counter-argument I have heard to this that makes a bit of sense to me, is that distances in the US are much, much larger (typically) and people drive them more frequently.
Reasons are, among others, suburbs that are 50+ miles away from where people work. Except in the huge cities/city centers, there are not many high-rise buildings; thus, distances tend to increase. Also, America is built such that places can only be reached by car efficiently. The idea of going somewhere *not* by car is not just alien and un-American, but is also in fact impractical in a lot of cases. So, even if you could fix this mentality "problem" (if you want to call it that), there is the practical problem that a lot of places are simply inaccessible by bike, foot or public transportation, unless you have a serious death wish, a lot of extra time, and do not mind the exercise.
Most of this is not the case in the Netherlands. It's a tiny country to start with; people tend to live closer to where they work (because if they don't, they just get stuck in traffic jams half the day), and within cities moving by bike is pretty efficient (typically faster than by car because of the traffic).
So indeed, gas is almost $10/gallon here now. I, however, generally couldn't care less. But that's because I drive less than 8000 miles a year, as I live 2 km from where I work (so I go by bike unless it rains or something). For many Americans, this would be practically unthinkable and also really, in fact, depend on factors far beyond their control. For example, it's easy to say "so move closer to where you work". However, this is likely not affordable, except if you don't care to live in really shitty neighborhoods etc.
So, to summarize, I've learned it's not as simple as saying "It's still less than half what we pay so what are you complaining about".
Actually some countries use (allegedly) anonymized cell phone data to track traffic jams. This seems to work quite well. At least there have been several experiments and the idea seems promising.
I would consider this a completely legitimate use of the data. However I highly doubt that it is properly anonymized, but that's a different matter.
This could explain why such data was gathered in the first place. If you can still track particular users, it is not anonymized at all however.
If you think the USA is bad with regards to telephone taps and the like, try the Netherlands.
Last year, in the Netherlands 25,000 phones where tapped (for different periods of time). These are published numbers (I could link to them but the articles are in dutch only so, well..)
In the USA, the official numbers are somewhere around 2200 phone taps (in 2007).
But that's not all; keep in mind that the USA has over 300 million inhabitants. The Netherlands has only 16 million.
So either the USA government is doing a much better job of keeping even the fact that phones are tapped at all hidden from public scrutiny, or it really is much, much worse here (in this regard, at least).
It makes quite a difference to me, as I would read "8" as "probably a good reference work if I need to know the basics about the subject", whereas "7" means something more like "the content is passable, but you probably might as well buy any other general introduction to the same topic".
But what if it turns out it falls sideways?
You do have a bit of a point there; however, Asus does sell its EEE PC's with (only) Linux or XP preinstalled. The option to have one with Vista preinstalled is glaringly missing, in a day and age where every other PC manufacturer is to all practical intents and purposes forced by Microsoft to deliver all its systems with Vista or (if they are willing to endanger their reduced-price OEM licensing deals) no Microsoft OS at all. So it is really not much of a stretch to state that they do not support it. It is also very likely that the same will be true for their desktop version because Vista would run like a dog on those machines, certainly if compared to XP, and Asus is obviously aware of that.
Where "improving" should be read as "adding several layers of DRM protection"
So the next version of windows will have the same performance-boggling, customer-hostile driver model? Well, thanks for the advance warning, I suppose.
The very fact that long-time PC manufacturers are designing systems that "are not designed to run Vista" a year and a half after it has been released is about as significant news as you could possibly get, with regards to the PC market in any case.
The only reason when you might have considered it less relevant, would have been if the systems where not selling well at all. So, have you bothered to check Amazons Bestsellers in Computers & PC Hardware list lately? (Amazon being by far the largest online reseller that sells Apple, Asus EEE PC as well as Vista laptops?). The list updates hourly, but currently the first Vista laptop is at spot number 4. The Asus EEE PC used to be at 1 for over a week, and I guess the only reason why it currently isn't, is because they are out of stock everywhere. So it's currently in second place, flanked by Macbooks at place 1 and 3. So basically Microsofts margins are getting squeezed here from two directions at once: Apple at the high end, EEE PC's at the low end.
You must have missed the memo, but Microsoft does not want you to be able to buy XP anymore. Everyone is supposed to move to Vista. So it is *most definitely* newsworthy if manufacturers are introducing *new products* a year and a half (!!) after Vista has been released to the public, *and they explicitly do not support the newest Microsoft OS at all*, although they do support the previous version - even though you're not even supposed to be able to buy that version anymore, at least not without jumping through all kinds of hoops. Hello? I consider this to be extremely newsworthy.
The EEE Laptops run Ubuntu just fine. I would be very surprised if these desktop versions wouldn't. Whether you could turn them into a Hackintosh is kindof a moot point IMO, but probably you could, at least if OS X happens to support the specific hardware they used. Please "get the facts" first next time, thanks.
Exactly, my current notebook (3 years old) only has a 60 GB disk, and even then I have split it into 2x30 GB so I can run both Linux and Windows XP. I've never had a problem related to lack of space. OK, you can't keep huge movie or music collections on it, but seeing as how laptop sound quality is typically rock bottom anyway (the soundcard as well as built-in speakers), I don't normally use it to play music.
30 GB is apparently plenty to store whatever software I need for work (which is quite a range of applications) as well as some games and movies in case I'm traveling for a couple of days.
Clearly I'm not using it as my "only" computer though. In that case 60 GB definitely would not suffice, by far.
For notebooks? Absolutely. Even most new notebooks are not shipped with 250 GB HD's by default yet (although it is usually an option for a couple dozen extra bucks).
However, if it takes 2 years until this technology becomes mainstream, you may by that time well be right.
On the other hand, hard disk prices are really really low. By the time SSD is only about 2x more expensive I'd most definitely start considering it, since that would still mean paying "only" some $150. That should well be worth the performance increase as compared to, say, spending double the amount of $$'s on a faster CPU or what-have-you. Currently it's more like 15x as expensive though, so for now I'll stick with regular harddisks.
Yes, because it would be so convenient to have a terminal application on a phone that doesn't have a keyboard.
"something could be done with completion", yeah come on, just imagine a terminal app working that way for a second....done? OK, then let's be serious again now.
I guess one could buy a bluetooth keyboard to go with the iPhone, but if you have to drag that around as well you probably might as well settle for an EEE PC as mentioned elsewhere in this topic, at about 1/5th the cost. Admittedly it doesn't have 3G (but then, neither does the iPhone, as of yet), but I'm sure one could buy a USB 3G dongle including a data plan from a carrier of your choice for much less than the monthly iPhone rates.
Much as I like the design of the iPhone, there is such a thing as taking it too far.
I agree about the singlethreaded thing. Apart from that: no, extensions can't run in some kind of VM. If they did, they would not be able to modify the browser in interesting ways (as this in many cases needs r/w access to internal browser state; this would not be available if you run it in a "sandbox" or VM.
You can pretty much have the exact same argument about Linux kernel modules: the kernel refuses to load modules that are compiled for the wrong (=a different) kernel version. Now, you could say, modules should not be able to crash the kernel, right? Well...if you could limit the interface between kernel and modules in such a way that modules would probably run about 5x slower, needs twice the amount of code to write *and* be unable to do a lot of things that would be interesting because the strict interface does not allow this, then yes. If we don't want to make that sacrifice (and in fact we don't), the smarter way is to only allow modules to be loaded that are actually at least compiled against the correct kernel version.
Last time I checked, yes. Your point being that software composition problems are just supposed to somehow magically solve themselves these days?
This is not feasible, because plugins are able to change internally used structures of the browser. Given the non-(memory-)managed programming environment in which the browser runs (as far as I know), this pretty much makes it impossible to keep plugins from crashing the browser. Or, to be more precise, the interfaces between browser and plugin could be made more strict and limited, thus (in the ideal case) making it impossible to crash the browser, but this would pretty much reduce the potential for plugins to do anything really interesting very close to zero.
Sure you can disable the mechanism that checks whether plugins are compatible.
However, as is to be expected with major version changes, lots of API's will likely have changed, so if the plugins happen not to crash outright, they might fail in subtle ways that you don't discover until it's much too late.
This is pretty much exactly why the mechanism is there in the first place.
So if you do this, don't complain about "bugs" regarding crashes, memory leaks and pretty much any other problems you may experience with Firefox. There likely will be a lot, if you go down this road.
Really. Can you please spec me out a Dell or HP 13" notebook similar to the $1200 MacBook. Ah, that's right, the 13" Dell XPS (the only 13" they sell) is actually more like $1400. Whoopsie.
I'd probably agree if you're talking about the 15" models (MacBook Pro) though. Although it's even then obviously not "the same hardware". Try to compare that to prices of the high-quality (formerly known as) Thinkpad line by Lenovo. You'll find it is not much cheaper, if at all.
Someone please mod the parent up as it's the original poster clarifying his question.
I have not used this particular tool so I have no idea. (basically, beyond valgrind and gdb/ddd my knowledge of C debugging tools is pretty outdated)
It sounds like what you're looking for is not necessarily *static* checking (checking that happens at compile time). If you want to get better debugging information in the case that crashes occur at runtime, you are probably looking for "instrumentation" of the existing program, so that a tool can gather information about it at runtime (similar to a profiler or normal debugger). Or do you really want to feed it the source code only (without actually running the program) and tell you about potential paths that might lead to null-pointer access? Considering it's embedded software, you probably want the checking to be static, i.e. outside of the embedded device itself?
In the case of C, static checking of null-pointer access is impossible in the general case, because C uses a flat, unprotected (within the process itself) memory model and allows pointer math, which means someone could be doing complex pointer math and no amount of static checking is going to save you in that case. If you are willing to ignore such "borderline" cases, search for "c null pointer reference static checking" and you'll find quite some papers about this, which generally means there's bound to be some tools implementing those ideas. If your code involves lots of pointer math to improve efficiency, I think you'll find that most static checkers are unlikely to do a very good job. I'm afraid I can't help you with pointers to specific tools, as it's been at least 5 years since I last wrote any C code
In any case if you're considering to buy a tool, just send an e-mail to the tool supplier and tell them you would want to test the tool. Surely if you're considering to pay them about a programmers annual salary they should be willing to let you test the tool first, for that amount of $$.
It most certainly is, but it's not a static checker
Such tools work in a very similar way to what is already being done in many modern language compilers (such as javac). Basically, they implement semantic checks that verify whether the program makes sense, or is likely to work as intended in some respect. For example, they will check for likely security flaws, memory management/leaking or synchronisation issues (deadlock, access to shared data outside critical sections, etc.), or other kind of checks that depend on whatever domain the tool is intended for.
:)
It would probably be more useful if you could state which kind of problem you are trying to solve and which tools you are considering to buy. That way, people who have experience with them could suggest which work best
You are absolutely right, which pretty much ends this discussion right there.
Normally I'd suggest to do a complete Windows reinstall (assuming you have to run Windows), or install Linux, but you can't trust a Linux machine either, if others have physical access to them (and they know what they're doing).
In any case this is a completely moot point for the exact reasons you mentioned.
Assuming the real (non-tech) problem at hand here cannot easily be addressed, I'd suggest maybe buying an Asus EEE PC (since they're not too expensive and relatively easy to carry with you all the time). In addition, buy an USB stick or SD-card, and only store your data on those. They will easily fit in your wallet. But yeah, buying new hardware to work around this problem does not sound like a real solution, to be frank.
Well, since you had to ask let me spell it out for you:
goatse dot cx
tubgirl.jpg
etc.
etc.
whether this can possibly be claimed to be an accident *dons tinfoil hat*.
But seriously, removing the code that seeds a random number generator? I can hardly imagine making such a change by accident. I may just lack a sufficiently colorful imagination, though.
(or, before resorting to conspiracy theories, we should probably ask ourselves first, "can this possibly be explained by simple stupidity?"
I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there, and will make my point by quoting someone's post in a reddit thread (that's about MSDN search, or rather the MSDN website in general, sucking): The problem is with your assumption that Microsoft cares about their web site. They don't. They wish that it didn't exist and that they didn't have to take care of it. They wish the internet didn't exist, and that if you want to talk to other people you use Microsoft software and a Microsoft proprietary protocol.
They do this all the time. Old links in old Microsoft software to Microsoft's website no longer work because they keep moving things. MSDN search is broken and awful.
It appears that Microsoft's web site is being maintained by amateurs, rather than a huge corporation whom you would hope know what they are doing. I would posit that you should never ascribe to incompetence that which can be more completely explained by malice. The same principle probably can be applied to their use of Flash.
Actually, I think it is. But apart from discussing that point, which will probably lead us nowhere, let's look at this practically.
If you would know exactly what your freenet node is currently storing, first of all this would completely defeat the plausible deniability feature of freenet. The point is that, since you don't know what content you're hosting, and in addition it is very hard to prove whether *you* requested the content that's on your node or whether it is just there because it was proxied to someone else. This is one of the defining features of the project, taking it away would more or less render it completely pointless.
But yes, I certainly see your point and think it's the biggest problem that Freenet faces.
You forgot to mention that what he says is not even true regardless: it definitely *does* sound different from a bought music CD, because you have first decompressed a lossy format and converted it to CD-audio, then ripped that again (potentially also lossy because of how CD-audio ripping works), and compressed it into another, different lossy format (mp3). So please don't tell me it sounds "no different" from a bought music CD, because it *does* sound different.
I'm not even mentioning the time and writable CD's you'd have to waste by writing the files to CD first, then ripping those into MP3 once again.