I believe you are mistaken. The term hacker has _always_ been defined as a computer expert or someone who is extremely adept at computer use.
No, it hasn't always been defined as that. First and foremost, there has not always been computers.
The derogatory term came about later. See below for actual definitions.
As explained in my post, which came "first" is of little value. A "pedagog" is no longer considered a slave, for example (although they might consider the wage they get to be similar).
Besides, do you really think I would have problems coming up with examples going in the opposite direction. If this was so obvious to everybody, you wouldn't have to argue it.
From Jargon File (4.3.0, 30 APR 2001) [jargon]:
Yes, exactly, that's ESR's "dictionary" I was talking about.
Strangely enough the FOLDOC entry seems to be mainly lifted straight out of the jargon file (but so is a lot of stuff there, and this entry even admits it, at the end...). It also makes the computer criminal meaning of hacker "deprecated", something real dictionaries don't do.
Tell me last time you found out that something was "deprecated" when looking it up in e.g Webster... It might tell you that something is "archaic", meaning nobody has uttered that phrase in 100 years, but it has already been put inside the dictionary, and therefore will never be removed (since people sometimes needs to work with old books). But "deprecated" is not something you will find in a real dictionary.
Can you now get it into your thick skull, that the word hacker can be used legitimately both about clever programmers and about computer criminals, about bored and tired programmers, and even about bad programmers (the Maryland definition), (and carpenters, vegetation removers, sword-fighters/roleplayers, cooks, golfers, etc...).
It's almost implausible how many otherwise intelligent people who take anything in jargon.txt has the truth and nothing but the truth. But, even if ESR thinks hacker means something else than it does, doesn't make it so. Hacker means a number of things, and none of the computer related interpretations has any "right" to be preferred, other than what is common usage. Of course, subgroups of the population can define their own "slang", and that is what jargon.txt is all about. It is a book documenting word-usage of people who usually have in common that they prefer "hacker" to mean only one thing. As such, it is not a good source of information on what "hacker" means.
Have you ever really tried overclocking an Intel 8086 to 3Ghz? It actually is pretty fast, but as it does not have any protected modes as they arrived in the 386, the only OS it can run is DOS. The dir command however is pretty fast.
Yes, I put it in a closed system of liquid nitrogen, streaming over the processor at about 30mph. My only problem nowadays is to find a good CPU-slower utility to play all those old DOS games.
the origin of the unix name is an obscure comic book by robert crumb from the 60's called "unochs" that richie kernighan, the inventor of unix, loved. the word "unix" in dutch literally means "tree based operating system". so why not call all those things unix ?
Please go on... It should teach people to stay skeptical at stuff they read on the Internet.
Awww, fuck. This is gonna turn into another GNU/Linux, GNU/Linux/Emacs, GNU/Linux/X11/X/QT/KDE bullshit debate, isn't it? Way to go. And on top of that, you've brought the Christians into it. Are you Republican, or dumb, or both?
At least we still have homosexuality, prostitution, third-world problems, racism, pollution, womens issues, unions, and why Donald Duck needs a bathing suit when he is always naked at the bottom anyway, to discuss, before Goodwins law ends it.
And for a deeply religious subject like UNIX vs. Linux vs. BSD, I have to say: the sum is more than the parts. You can't really break it up, and keep the same name.
Except for the fact that there is no such issue. There exists nothing that today can reasonably be called unix. Now, there might be a Linux vs BSD, but there certainly does not exist a Unix vs either of them.
It amuses me that you got 5 insightful on this one. It thought it would have to be a troll...
It amazes me that Slashbots can criticize players like Microsoft for ignoring standards when it suits them, then turn around and do exactly the same thing themselves.
It isn't necessarily the same people writing both kinds of complaints. Besides, this discussion isn't about standards, so you might try to understand the subject before you complain about not understanding the debatants... Get it? Done! Over to the real stuff...
If an OS is UNIX98 or POSIX compliant,
We aren't talking about unix98 or posix compliance, we are talking about using a registered trademark known as unix as a generic term for products that looks like it. Much as we use xerox for copiers, coke for pepsi, q-tips for any kind of short thingy with cotton at it ends, kleenex for any kind of paper-tissue, or refrigerator for cooling cabinets.
And what "looks and smells" like Unix covers a wide range of ground, even Minix "looks and smells" a lot like Unix, but it simply doesn't have the capability of Linux let alone Solaris.
Read my lips: we are not talking about capabilities, we are talking about whether we should call things unix, despite the trademark. On the subject of capabilities, trust me, the original unix wasn't very powerful compared to minix either.
If anyone can come along and write an OS that has $ as its prompt and you can type ls to get a list of files, does that make it a Unix? No, there's more to it than that. And that's why the Unix(r) brand exists.
Yes, it takes more than that. No, that's not why the unix brand exists, and it is not why it's possible to trademark things in the first place.
The same reason that it seems the term "Hacker" is forever doomed to be considered a person who breaks into a computer despite the protests of true hackers and english language etymologists..
Huh? I've never heard this claim from anyone but Eric Raymond, and wannabe hackers having read too much in that "dictionary" of his. Please tell me of a respectable english language etymologist with the same stubborn view.
It should be quite noticeable by now, that "hacker" has been used of computer criminals for at least 15 years, both in mainstream media, and lot's of other places. To insist that it really means something else, is as stupid as insisting that "mouse" does not mean that thingy you move the pointer around the screen with, but in reality is a small rodent.
But in fact it is really much more stupid. Because the rodent interpretation of "mouse" is much older, and therefore somewhat more "correct", if you insist on age as the only criterium, which is also absurd, considering the amoung of latin and greek words we misuse everyday ("idiot" being one example, it does not mean what you think it does, neither does for example "pedagog").
And furthermore, hack means a lot of other things, all of which are much more common in daily usage, than the computer-related interpretation. If you should insist on only one meaning of "hack", it should probably be to either remove vegetation, or chop at something.
Because the public has accepted calling it "UNIX". As much as we'd like to change names to avoid confusion,
I can't imagine anyone becoming less confused, if you started calling the unix-clone family/tradition of OS'es collectively as something besides unix, such as multics, polyx, donuts, or cheese. But if you really think so, go ahead, and ignore anyone that looks weirdly at you when you talk about hacking some new cheese features.
Surely there must be a market for 'Grade B' LCD monitors, for precisely this sort of low life expectancy sort of usage?
Yes, that's the market you would normally buy your LCD. Two or three dead pixels is usually considered good enough to sell to us consumers for full price. Trouble is, there is not 'Grade A' market, or at least, it's very expensive...
Now, unless you really wanna go with a monitor that has at least 3 dead pixels, then...
What would stop any new hardware companies cropping up that would build hardware for non palladium enhanced systems?
Cost of systems produced...
if there is such a market as/. seems to show then it should be profitable, or else there is no market for it.
Slashdot contains mostly of armchair idelogists. If you can get a new palladium PC for a few hundred dollars, or spend 5-10 times as much for a niche product, then few are going to consider not getting the cheap one.
I'm not saying that everyone should spend money they don't have, but if they are really against palladium, it might be nice to spend more time doing other things than sitting in front of a computer.
The question is, would that be allowed to be sold inside the borders or the United Corporations of America? I would doubt it.
I would be very surprised if it couldn't. Just as you can buy non-copyright-crippled audio and video equipment (real professionals need that), you would be able to buy non-palladium-riddled computer equipment (real professionals need that). It would also be much more expensive than the consumer stuff.
Palladium is about screwing the consumer, not destroying the economy.
Oh, and so my letter can serve me a web page as it crosses the Gobi desert?
Why not? Now, I agree that it would be completely useless, unless it also had a GPS and a wireless networking connection, and some sensors to see if it had been opened or damaged, so it could send you useful information about it's current state. It was also intended as a farfetched example, in case you have no sense of humor or reality.
How about not doing any such wrong-headed thing, and give your envelope a url instead, if you must. The things you want
to do with an envelope just do not resemble the things an IP stack wants to do with a web host. In short, an envelope is not
a web host, so does not need a web address, let alone a public one.
I have no idea why you are bringing the web into this. I can't for the hell of it think I've mentioned webservers anywhere. And an url would be completely useless for an envelope. Why would you want an URL for it? So that you could post information about it on a webserver at the other side of the globe. Hell, I can give all my envelopes an URL today, and it would serve absolutely no purpose (just as I could give them a number, which would serve no purpose either).
What you want is a unique way to address it, and connect to it, and while URL's do that in theory, in practice they work by connecting to a server, and you would still need a unique address for the (proxy-)server to connect to the envelope. This could be an IP-address, a phone-number, or any other such identifier. But it could not be a pathname on a server. So why do you need that (proxy-)server there at all?
Now, go back and read your own post critically.
Which of your ideas requires an IP address and wouldn't work perfectly well with a url?
All of them, with the exception of those inside my house, which could have local addresses, which could be accessed by going through a proxy (or "main pc" inside the house). But nowhere in my post did I single out IP as the solution to everything. IP is one possible address scheme. So is phone-numbers. And there are probably others.
URL's are not a useful alternative. They are for pathnames on a server, and not for addressing individual devices.
My question is simply, why does every appliance need an IP address?
It doesn't. But in many cases it would be useful. How about an IP address for each envelope you put in the mail, so you can easily track them without relying on your local postal service?
Rather, why do they need a public one. I can see
starting the dishwasher from my PC (via a timer or task scheduler or some such), but I don't see any need to start it from
outside my house.
I certainly see a need to control many other things from outside the house. For example, I want to cook my dinner before I arrive, and wash my clothes, ready to be hung up when I get home, without rotting inside the washing machine. And naturally, I want to control my car enginge heater (I'm from Norway), and lot's of other things. How about remotely starting your VCR to record a TV-show? A good argument for the dishwasher is hard to come up with, though... I am quite convinced that we will see a lot of useful applications of this soon, but whether it's going to be IP is certainly debatable. A more likely answer will be something sent over the standard cell-phone net.
My complaint is that your toaster doesn't need to be networked. Maybe I'm missing something, but I
honestly can't think of 100 things that I own that I'd allocate IP addresses.
Then think harder. Almost everything I own that is electric (and some things that are not) should be controllable remotely by some means. Forgot to turn off the light? Log in from wherever you are and turn it off remotely. Forgot to lock your door? And so on... Of course, security is important, especially in the last example:-)
I understand adding more addresses, and I understand that network usage is growing, but the 32 bit number didn't cover
every human on the planet 100 times over 20 years ago like a 40 bit address would now. Add an octet or two, we need more
addresses, but quadrupling the length of the address is just a pain in the ass for anybody who needs to remember a few
addresses, and it's overkill.
Yes, but they are much simpler to remember than simply 128 bits. Because for most practical purposes, those bits are there to simplify routing, and so, anyone that has to work with them routinely (i.e. network admins) will already remember the first umpty bits as common for their provider, the next dumpty as common for their company, and the last few bits will be just as hard (or easy) to remember as it is now. And in many cases, you don't even have to type the first umpty or umptydumpty bits, because they are implied...
Exactly when did slashdot become a site for script-kiddies?
Is this what "linux enthusiasts" are doing nowadays? Man, I get really annoyed. I thought I would consider myself a "linux enthusiast" too, but now I am not so sure anymore. Fuck you dumb script-kiddies who fucks up our reputation. Go ddos someone else for a less worthwile cause!
I see nothing here I couldn't easily find on google if I wanted to. Why would I want to go to your website to find (a possibly obsolote) version of the MySQL manual when I could go to mysql.com and get the new one? Why do we need yet another web-mirror of information that is already available everywhere?
Because of design by contract the code is pretty much self documenting.
Yeah, right!
Design by contract won't make your code any more self-documenting than design by committee.
If you want self-documenting code, write something ridicoulusly simple. If you are doing something hard, you need explanation beside the code (unless you assume that everyone reading the code will be a domain expert, but in that case I wouldn't call it self-documenting).
Eiffel isn't even designed to be self-documenting. It is designed to facilitate run-time (and in some very few cases: static) checking of program invariants, preconditions and postconditions. This will help for correctness, but not much for documentation. In many cases, the code will be easier to understand without them. (Not that I would recommend it, I do like DbC, but only as means to correctness, not as documentation).
Sure, writing down assertions will in some cases help you in how to use an interface, or help you with other underlying assumptions in the code, making it easier to change something without breaking it. But it will never tell you anything about what the code is supposed to do, why it's supposed to do that, and why this way has been chosen to do it.
Now, go re-read your Eiffel book, and come back evangelizing it when you understand it's purpose!
I would say that the real value of tools like this is that they teach you a lot about regexps and scripting. Because that's what you have to do to run them on a large project.
You have to have scripts that deduct from coding style the author of each part of the project, and then invokes the code-checking tool with the right options to catch the types of errors that particular programmer is likely to make, but not giving 1999 false positives for each real error.
Ok, I'm playing the devils advocate here, but I can't say I have found much value in using e.g. flexelint on a large project where most code isn't written by myself. Sure, it finds errors, but the time I'm looking at false positives could just as well have been spent testing or debugging, or refactoring, or redisigning, or...
Sure, I still do some static testing, but to be really useful, it needs to be done from the start. Putting it in your build system is not such a bad idea, at least if your project doesn't already take a day to compile...
If it's in a constructor, both you and the compiler should know equally well whether it's initialized. Of course, this being java, it's always initialized to null (unless you've already initialized it to something else of course), so the test is kind of pointless when compared to a C/C++-checker, but being null might still be an error if you didn't intend it, and if you want it to be null, you can initialize it explicitly.
The fix is of course to remove the check. Then you don't read uninitialized memory. Why would you want the check in a constructor anyway?
If you dont see the difference between socialistworker.org and a child pornography site, you need to give your head a shake. Some things really are black and white.
No, they aren't. It would not be too terrible if socialistworker.org posted "and here are some pictures to clarify why we are against child-pornography...". Just like they could say "and here are some pictures to explain why we are against war in Iraq..." (and do). Of course, the former is illegal under current law, and they will not do it.
But if I posted a link to kiddyporn.com (assuming such a site existed, and contained child porn, which I suppose is not the case), then the state of PA could block slashdot. In that case, I am sure slashdot editors would be more than happy to filter my post, but that is not really the point, is it?
To further explain why things are not black and white. Please tell me, how you can simply look at a picture and tell me whether someone is under-age. Sure, there are ways of telling in the extreme case (Another example. I've downloaded a lot of porn from kazaa. Now, as it happens, a lot of that porn has filenames like xxx-lolita-10yo-groupfuck.jpg, or something similar (even though that wasn't what I searched for, but I rarely check the filename). Would it be illegal to watch that movie? No, of course not, it is a clip from a well-known porn movie, using actors in their thirties, not 10 year old children.
Should we block kazaa then, because it gives the impression of distributing child porn? Surely, I have never found anything that should be classified as child porn, although I must admit that once I stumbled upon something that easily could be confused with it.
But all this is getting away from the real point. The problem is not that we can't see the difference between child porn, and what not else. The problem is that we have to trust someone else, with their own (possibly hidden) agendas to do that for us. And no-one can check that decision. It doesn't really matter if I can see the difference, what matters is that it's illegal for me (or you) to check that the sensors are doing the right thing. And not just in PA, it would be illegal to check it from anywhere in the world!
I think this over-estimates the use of much of psychology and under-estimates the ability of humans to understand what they have created.
I agree. The correct way to fix this, is to have an input-checker that checked for sane input. Not to have a psychologist that could let the machine speak about it's childhood... To fix the car so that it can't be destroyed by pushing the brake and the gas at the same time, would require a mechanical device to make that impossible, not a builtin computer program analyzing driver actions, and making the car guess what might be intended.
I have yet to see humans create something completely new that they cannot understand.
Then you can't possibly have worked on a large project (and this is certainly not limited to software). If something is designed/built by 10 teams of 2-10 people, you would have a hard time finding someone with a complete understanding of it. And the fact is that this is happening all the time. Examples: a modern airplane, a large building, any large software project, modern weapon systems, a particle accelerator, a medical ultrasound machine, a home pc, need I go on?
This is a nice touch, but remember that it's only security by obscurity. If you have physical access to the machine, you can just as well boot from a floppy, or remove the harddisk and put it into some other computer booting from another disk.
Not that it isn't useful, though. Most sysadmins do give their users physical access to their desktop (or laptop) computers. But then the users are, at least to some degree, trusted...
Re:And for the obligatory...
on
RAMdisk RAID?
·
· Score: 1
Show me a disk that is faster than a gigabit ethernet
I'll be happy to show you a gigabit ethernet that is slower than a disk...
Gigabit ethernet really doesn't live much up to it's promise, mostly because it is still ethernet which fragments everything into 1500 byte packets. Either, you loose network speed, or you saturate one CPU on each side of the link doing nothing but feed/read the networking card. Seems to me to be a relatively stupid way of using your new spiffy multiprocessor machine.
On the other hand, yes, there exist networking solutions that are clearly faster than any disk you can buy.
I'm still trying to figure what this has to do with what I was talking about.
This: Obvious too is the fact that the native code version won't run anywhere but the target machine.
What I was saying had two main parts:
Java's claim to "run anywhere" is very far from the truth. Any nontrivial java program is likely to only run on the exact same version of JDK as it was compiled upon.
In real life, it's not really hard to recompile. Since java gives exactly the same kind of problems, except that they occur at runtime instead of compile-time, are harder to debug, and never documented anywhere, I fail to see what the big advantage of "run anywhere" is.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it hasn't always been defined as that. First and foremost, there has not always been computers.
The derogatory term came about later. See below for actual definitions.
As explained in my post, which came "first" is of little value. A "pedagog" is no longer considered a slave, for example (although they might consider the wage they get to be similar).
Besides, do you really think I would have problems coming up with examples going in the opposite direction. If this was so obvious to everybody, you wouldn't have to argue it.
From Jargon File (4.3.0, 30 APR 2001) [jargon]:
Yes, exactly, that's ESR's "dictionary" I was talking about.
Strangely enough the FOLDOC entry seems to be mainly lifted straight out of the jargon file (but so is a lot of stuff there, and this entry even admits it, at the end...). It also makes the computer criminal meaning of hacker "deprecated", something real dictionaries don't do.
Tell me last time you found out that something was "deprecated" when looking it up in e.g Webster... It might tell you that something is "archaic", meaning nobody has uttered that phrase in 100 years, but it has already been put inside the dictionary, and therefore will never be removed (since people sometimes needs to work with old books). But "deprecated" is not something you will find in a real dictionary.
Can you now get it into your thick skull, that the word hacker can be used legitimately both about clever programmers and about computer criminals, about bored and tired programmers, and even about bad programmers (the Maryland definition), (and carpenters, vegetation removers, sword-fighters/roleplayers, cooks, golfers, etc...).
It's almost implausible how many otherwise intelligent people who take anything in jargon.txt has the truth and nothing but the truth. But, even if ESR thinks hacker means something else than it does, doesn't make it so. Hacker means a number of things, and none of the computer related interpretations has any "right" to be preferred, other than what is common usage. Of course, subgroups of the population can define their own "slang", and that is what jargon.txt is all about. It is a book documenting word-usage of people who usually have in common that they prefer "hacker" to mean only one thing. As such, it is not a good source of information on what "hacker" means.
Yes, I put it in a closed system of liquid nitrogen, streaming over the processor at about 30mph. My only problem nowadays is to find a good CPU-slower utility to play all those old DOS games.
After all, iLoo was already trademarked by Apple, the new toilet from Microsoft will be called Microsoft Shit 1.0.
Please go on... It should teach people to stay skeptical at stuff they read on the Internet.
At least we still have homosexuality, prostitution, third-world problems, racism, pollution, womens issues, unions, and why Donald Duck needs a bathing suit when he is always naked at the bottom anyway, to discuss, before Goodwins law ends it.
Except for the fact that there is no such issue. There exists nothing that today can reasonably be called unix. Now, there might be a Linux vs BSD, but there certainly does not exist a Unix vs either of them.
It amazes me that Slashbots can criticize players like Microsoft for ignoring standards when it suits them, then turn around and do exactly the same thing themselves.
It isn't necessarily the same people writing both kinds of complaints. Besides, this discussion isn't about standards, so you might try to understand the subject before you complain about not understanding the debatants... Get it? Done! Over to the real stuff...
If an OS is UNIX98 or POSIX compliant,
We aren't talking about unix98 or posix compliance, we are talking about using a registered trademark known as unix as a generic term for products that looks like it. Much as we use xerox for copiers, coke for pepsi, q-tips for any kind of short thingy with cotton at it ends, kleenex for any kind of paper-tissue, or refrigerator for cooling cabinets.
And what "looks and smells" like Unix covers a wide range of ground, even Minix "looks and smells" a lot like Unix, but it simply doesn't have the capability of Linux let alone Solaris.
Read my lips: we are not talking about capabilities, we are talking about whether we should call things unix, despite the trademark. On the subject of capabilities, trust me, the original unix wasn't very powerful compared to minix either.
If anyone can come along and write an OS that has $ as its prompt and you can type ls to get a list of files, does that make it a Unix? No, there's more to it than that. And that's why the Unix(r) brand exists.
Yes, it takes more than that. No, that's not why the unix brand exists, and it is not why it's possible to trademark things in the first place.
Huh? I've never heard this claim from anyone but Eric Raymond, and wannabe hackers having read too much in that "dictionary" of his. Please tell me of a respectable english language etymologist with the same stubborn view.
It should be quite noticeable by now, that "hacker" has been used of computer criminals for at least 15 years, both in mainstream media, and lot's of other places. To insist that it really means something else, is as stupid as insisting that "mouse" does not mean that thingy you move the pointer around the screen with, but in reality is a small rodent.
But in fact it is really much more stupid. Because the rodent interpretation of "mouse" is much older, and therefore somewhat more "correct", if you insist on age as the only criterium, which is also absurd, considering the amoung of latin and greek words we misuse everyday ("idiot" being one example, it does not mean what you think it does, neither does for example "pedagog").
And furthermore, hack means a lot of other things, all of which are much more common in daily usage, than the computer-related interpretation. If you should insist on only one meaning of "hack", it should probably be to either remove vegetation, or chop at something.
Because the public has accepted calling it "UNIX". As much as we'd like to change names to avoid confusion,
I can't imagine anyone becoming less confused, if you started calling the unix-clone family/tradition of OS'es collectively as something besides unix, such as multics, polyx, donuts, or cheese. But if you really think so, go ahead, and ignore anyone that looks weirdly at you when you talk about hacking some new cheese features.
Yes, that's the market you would normally buy your LCD. Two or three dead pixels is usually considered good enough to sell to us consumers for full price. Trouble is, there is not 'Grade A' market, or at least, it's very expensive...
Now, unless you really wanna go with a monitor that has at least 3 dead pixels, then...
Cost of systems produced...
if there is such a market as /. seems to show then it should be profitable, or else there is no market for it.
Slashdot contains mostly of armchair idelogists. If you can get a new palladium PC for a few hundred dollars, or spend 5-10 times as much for a niche product, then few are going to consider not getting the cheap one.
I'm not saying that everyone should spend money they don't have, but if they are really against palladium, it might be nice to spend more time doing other things than sitting in front of a computer.
The question is, would that be allowed to be sold inside the borders or the United Corporations of America? I would doubt it.
I would be very surprised if it couldn't. Just as you can buy non-copyright-crippled audio and video equipment (real professionals need that), you would be able to buy non-palladium-riddled computer equipment (real professionals need that). It would also be much more expensive than the consumer stuff.
Palladium is about screwing the consumer, not destroying the economy.
Why not? Now, I agree that it would be completely useless, unless it also had a GPS and a wireless networking connection, and some sensors to see if it had been opened or damaged, so it could send you useful information about it's current state. It was also intended as a farfetched example, in case you have no sense of humor or reality.
How about not doing any such wrong-headed thing, and give your envelope a url instead, if you must. The things you want to do with an envelope just do not resemble the things an IP stack wants to do with a web host. In short, an envelope is not a web host, so does not need a web address, let alone a public one.
I have no idea why you are bringing the web into this. I can't for the hell of it think I've mentioned webservers anywhere. And an url would be completely useless for an envelope. Why would you want an URL for it? So that you could post information about it on a webserver at the other side of the globe. Hell, I can give all my envelopes an URL today, and it would serve absolutely no purpose (just as I could give them a number, which would serve no purpose either).
What you want is a unique way to address it, and connect to it, and while URL's do that in theory, in practice they work by connecting to a server, and you would still need a unique address for the (proxy-)server to connect to the envelope. This could be an IP-address, a phone-number, or any other such identifier. But it could not be a pathname on a server. So why do you need that (proxy-)server there at all?
Now, go back and read your own post critically.
Which of your ideas requires an IP address and wouldn't work perfectly well with a url?
All of them, with the exception of those inside my house, which could have local addresses, which could be accessed by going through a proxy (or "main pc" inside the house). But nowhere in my post did I single out IP as the solution to everything. IP is one possible address scheme. So is phone-numbers. And there are probably others.
URL's are not a useful alternative. They are for pathnames on a server, and not for addressing individual devices.
It doesn't. But in many cases it would be useful. How about an IP address for each envelope you put in the mail, so you can easily track them without relying on your local postal service?
Rather, why do they need a public one. I can see starting the dishwasher from my PC (via a timer or task scheduler or some such), but I don't see any need to start it from outside my house.
I certainly see a need to control many other things from outside the house. For example, I want to cook my dinner before I arrive, and wash my clothes, ready to be hung up when I get home, without rotting inside the washing machine. And naturally, I want to control my car enginge heater (I'm from Norway), and lot's of other things. How about remotely starting your VCR to record a TV-show? A good argument for the dishwasher is hard to come up with, though... I am quite convinced that we will see a lot of useful applications of this soon, but whether it's going to be IP is certainly debatable. A more likely answer will be something sent over the standard cell-phone net.
My complaint is that your toaster doesn't need to be networked. Maybe I'm missing something, but I honestly can't think of 100 things that I own that I'd allocate IP addresses.
Then think harder. Almost everything I own that is electric (and some things that are not) should be controllable remotely by some means. Forgot to turn off the light? Log in from wherever you are and turn it off remotely. Forgot to lock your door? And so on... Of course, security is important, especially in the last example :-)
I understand adding more addresses, and I understand that network usage is growing, but the 32 bit number didn't cover every human on the planet 100 times over 20 years ago like a 40 bit address would now. Add an octet or two, we need more addresses, but quadrupling the length of the address is just a pain in the ass for anybody who needs to remember a few addresses, and it's overkill.
Yes, but they are much simpler to remember than simply 128 bits. Because for most practical purposes, those bits are there to simplify routing, and so, anyone that has to work with them routinely (i.e. network admins) will already remember the first umpty bits as common for their provider, the next dumpty as common for their company, and the last few bits will be just as hard (or easy) to remember as it is now. And in many cases, you don't even have to type the first umpty or umptydumpty bits, because they are implied...
Is this what "linux enthusiasts" are doing nowadays? Man, I get really annoyed. I thought I would consider myself a "linux enthusiast" too, but now I am not so sure anymore. Fuck you dumb script-kiddies who fucks up our reputation. Go ddos someone else for a less worthwile cause!
Yes, and yes.
I see nothing here I couldn't easily find on google if I wanted to. Why would I want to go to your website to find (a possibly obsolote) version of the MySQL manual when I could go to mysql.com and get the new one? Why do we need yet another web-mirror of information that is already available everywhere?
Design by contract won't make your code any more self-documenting than design by committee.
If you want self-documenting code, write something ridicoulusly simple. If you are doing something hard, you need explanation beside the code (unless you assume that everyone reading the code will be a domain expert, but in that case I wouldn't call it self-documenting).
Eiffel isn't even designed to be self-documenting. It is designed to facilitate run-time (and in some very few cases: static) checking of program invariants, preconditions and postconditions. This will help for correctness, but not much for documentation. In many cases, the code will be easier to understand without them. (Not that I would recommend it, I do like DbC, but only as means to correctness, not as documentation).
Sure, writing down assertions will in some cases help you in how to use an interface, or help you with other underlying assumptions in the code, making it easier to change something without breaking it. But it will never tell you anything about what the code is supposed to do, why it's supposed to do that, and why this way has been chosen to do it.
Now, go re-read your Eiffel book, and come back evangelizing it when you understand it's purpose!
Thanks for the recommendation!
Ahh, then I guess I would fill in a bugreport, maybe... :-)
You have to have scripts that deduct from coding style the author of each part of the project, and then invokes the code-checking tool with the right options to catch the types of errors that particular programmer is likely to make, but not giving 1999 false positives for each real error.
Ok, I'm playing the devils advocate here, but I can't say I have found much value in using e.g. flexelint on a large project where most code isn't written by myself. Sure, it finds errors, but the time I'm looking at false positives could just as well have been spent testing or debugging, or refactoring, or redisigning, or...
Sure, I still do some static testing, but to be really useful, it needs to be done from the start. Putting it in your build system is not such a bad idea, at least if your project doesn't already take a day to compile...
The fix is of course to remove the check. Then you don't read uninitialized memory. Why would you want the check in a constructor anyway?
No, they aren't. It would not be too terrible if socialistworker.org posted "and here are some pictures to clarify why we are against child-pornography...". Just like they could say "and here are some pictures to explain why we are against war in Iraq..." (and do). Of course, the former is illegal under current law, and they will not do it.
But if I posted a link to kiddyporn.com (assuming such a site existed, and contained child porn, which I suppose is not the case), then the state of PA could block slashdot. In that case, I am sure slashdot editors would be more than happy to filter my post, but that is not really the point, is it?
To further explain why things are not black and white. Please tell me, how you can simply look at a picture and tell me whether someone is under-age. Sure, there are ways of telling in the extreme case (Another example. I've downloaded a lot of porn from kazaa. Now, as it happens, a lot of that porn has filenames like xxx-lolita-10yo-groupfuck.jpg, or something similar (even though that wasn't what I searched for, but I rarely check the filename). Would it be illegal to watch that movie? No, of course not, it is a clip from a well-known porn movie, using actors in their thirties, not 10 year old children.
Should we block kazaa then, because it gives the impression of distributing child porn? Surely, I have never found anything that should be classified as child porn, although I must admit that once I stumbled upon something that easily could be confused with it.
But all this is getting away from the real point. The problem is not that we can't see the difference between child porn, and what not else. The problem is that we have to trust someone else, with their own (possibly hidden) agendas to do that for us. And no-one can check that decision. It doesn't really matter if I can see the difference, what matters is that it's illegal for me (or you) to check that the sensors are doing the right thing. And not just in PA, it would be illegal to check it from anywhere in the world!
I agree. The correct way to fix this, is to have an input-checker that checked for sane input. Not to have a psychologist that could let the machine speak about it's childhood... To fix the car so that it can't be destroyed by pushing the brake and the gas at the same time, would require a mechanical device to make that impossible, not a builtin computer program analyzing driver actions, and making the car guess what might be intended.
I have yet to see humans create something completely new that they cannot understand.
Then you can't possibly have worked on a large project (and this is certainly not limited to software). If something is designed/built by 10 teams of 2-10 people, you would have a hard time finding someone with a complete understanding of it. And the fact is that this is happening all the time. Examples: a modern airplane, a large building, any large software project, modern weapon systems, a particle accelerator, a medical ultrasound machine, a home pc, need I go on?
This is a nice touch, but remember that it's only security by obscurity. If you have physical access to the machine, you can just as well boot from a floppy, or remove the harddisk and put it into some other computer booting from another disk.
Not that it isn't useful, though. Most sysadmins do give their users physical access to their desktop (or laptop) computers. But then the users are, at least to some degree, trusted...
I'll be happy to show you a gigabit ethernet that is slower than a disk...
Gigabit ethernet really doesn't live much up to it's promise, mostly because it is still ethernet which fragments everything into 1500 byte packets. Either, you loose network speed, or you saturate one CPU on each side of the link doing nothing but feed/read the networking card. Seems to me to be a relatively stupid way of using your new spiffy multiprocessor machine.
On the other hand, yes, there exist networking solutions that are clearly faster than any disk you can buy.
This: Obvious too is the fact that the native code version won't run anywhere but the target machine.
What I was saying had two main parts:
Understand now?