> C is becoming a bloated mess of a language and shouldn't be used unless totally neccessary
I'd say nope. C is not bloated. It is the libraries that are bloated. C almost didn't change over the years.
C++ is bloated (well, have always been, but have seen its bloat increased a lot between 89 and 95) because they added ton of stuff to the language.
So, sorry, no. C is _NOT_ bloated. libc, Xlib, gtk, is but the langage itself is not. If they want to avoid C because it is bloated, then they throwed the baby with the bath water.
Sure, C is becomming an inadequate langage for many things. But moving to a portable assembly is ROTFL.
"Just think: unlimited registers, register naming, high-level looping constructs, a tool-based architecture, and object-based assembly programming. Amazing!"
Well. I do have a weird sense of humor (I, for instance, wrote the first[?] self-replicating INTERCAL program), but this seems like a practical joke.
'ifnoterrno' just sounds like a terrible opcode for me. 'defendnz' too.
and in, 'qcall lib/argcargv,(-:p72,i20)' you can see the smiley...
Unfortunately, it looks like those people are dead serious.
I thought only the [original incarnation of the] berlin project had this over-the-top NIH syndrom, do-all-in-assembly. Those guys push it even further. They also want to do the assembly themselves. A pity, because the graph library looks nice. They should release this with high-levels bindings (ie: with squeak, python or tom. As now, it looks like a False or Befunge interface. See http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/index.html for more info)
"To its founders, ZapMe had a noble vision defeated by a handful of naysaying activists opposed to any commercialism in schools and ready to jump to conclusions about the company's use of data about the students' computer use"
"It's heartbreaking for me," he said. "That opportunity we gave America's schools was taken away" by "a few people."
Do what you want, but I will have a drink tonight. If all privacy-fucking ideas (can anyone says digital convergence ?) could die this way...
One on 2. It is a binary digit. Getting a Pi decimal digit without computing the preceeding one is not (yet?) possible. Some people think that it is impossible (but getting the nth binary was thought impossible in the early 90's)
> Its seems strange to want to know the value of Pi down to some tiny decimal place, but it does have its uses, primarily in the field of space navigation
No at all. We are talking about the quadrillionth binary digit alone (ie: without the preceeding ones).
Pi digits are interesting (I'd say fascinating) in a few ways:
* For the exploration value.
* For the algorithmic challenge. Going further in Pi basically mean doing better algorithm. And I don't talk about micro-optimisation, I talk about radically different ways of doing things. Discovering that getting the nth binary of Pi was easier than getting every preceeding one, have been a major breakthrougt.
* At a theorical level, the idea is knowing things about number-universe (don't know how it is said in english), which are numbers that include everything (ie: numbers typed by infinite monkeys).
* Lastly, exploring numbers may give us insight about what reality is really is, and what may be hidden behind.
It is definitely not to get increased precision.
Cheers,
--fred
Btw, you should try to see 'Pi', the movie. Pretty good one.
> Even stranger was that the changes wouldn't take effect until GUI portion was loaded.
He was totally drunk at this part. He probably wrote this from memory. For instance, he said that he booted 'text mode' by using the 'v' key. Error, the 'v' key is for verbose. What he called 'text mode' was probably the 's' key, which is *single*user*.
In single user-mode, the system just boots and drops you to a shell. netinfgo is not even started.
Full booting without the GUI is not possible out of the box. Either you boot single user, and about nothing is configured (as expected), or you boot verbose, but end up in the GUI (from which you can go text mode by using '>console' as a user name).
To get rid of all the gui, you had to change/etc/ttys on NeXTstep / Mac OS X Server. Probably the same under OS X. In that case, all the services are started, as expected.
> However, if you make changes to your IP address/DNS/etc. settings, you are informed that you must restart for the changes to take effect. Even if this stuff is 'hard-wired' into the NetInfo setup, it should only require a re-HUP of NetInfo for this to change, not a restart.
Profound misunderstanding here. Netinfo only holds the information. re-HUP of netinfo make as much sense as saying re-HUP/etc/syslogd.conf (instead of systlogd) after changing it.
The reason why a reboot is required is that the various configuration are made at boot time, based on info extracted from the netinfo database. He probably could skip the reboot by relaunching the correct scripts.
The best thing about netinfo is that it is hierarchical, ie: that you can have network-level configuration on a 'master server', whith every little bit customised in your local net-info database.
There exist a port of netinfo for linux. Lost the pointer, but I may dig it up if needed...
> New humans come into existence through the sharing of another body, and thus they have a fundamental right to the use of "their" host.
Do they ? First, you should tell me at which week does an embryon become human. You should also tell me where such fundamental right is defined. Last time I checked, human beeing have equal rights at birth. But before ?
Based on your thinking, abortion would be illegual even if there is danger for the life of the woman:
> Now, if that new life really was a real and imminent threat to the life of the host (kind of like violating the terms of the "joint ownership", so to speak), then there is a justification for aborting the new human.
The opposite holds. If a woman endanged a foetus, then the would be a justification for 'aborting' the host.
> You're probably angry at this, but don't get angry at me. This is biology, pure and simple.
No, it is not. It is based on your conception of what a 'human' is, and wether an embryon should be considered as human. And this, my friend, is *not* biological at all. It is ethic or religious, but definitely not biological.
Btw, I don't really like your 'biological' way of thinking (reminds me of many nasty things that have been allowed in the past because of 'biological' reasons), in particular:
Woman's "fundamental function of reproduction", "a woman is NOT totally a sovereign entity", "This is biology, pure and simple".
I thought this kind of archaic thinking was disapearing. Looks it gets a +3 Insightfull on slashdot. Sad.
> If you want to know why just about every game has bucketloads of crap fmv to wade through, blame Myst.
Mmm. I would blame Myst for the lack of humor, lack of characters, lack of explanations, lack of feedback.
But I would blame the 7th guest for the full motion video. There is a *very* interesting read about trilobyte/7th guest/11th hour/Tender Loving Care/software development/ego/death march projects at http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-tri/.
Repeating myself, it worth the read. Great depth. Quite long. Read it.
> why were Myst and Riven ``notoriously controversial?'
Because Myst was an adventure games with no characters and feraturing only "nice" static graphics.
Myst had a very good athmosphere. *If* you liked it, you would like it much. Everything is very very logical, and is pretty immersive. Myst was plesant to people *not* attracted to traditional adventure games. But, well, compared to a *real* adventure game (say Zork or Day of the Tentacle), it is was so different that many adventure gamers just hated it.
Personally, I loved Myst because it was well thought and very original. The problem is that, after its success, everyone (including Cyan) thought that making nice graphics and impossible to understand plot was what adventure gamers wanted, so, basically, quality of traditional adventure games just went downhill (Riven was a big pile of shit, IMHO. Much less logical than Myst was, and without the novellty factor). Every moron under the sun, tried to duplicate Myst by merging lame puzzles with ugly 3D graphics.
And, as an aggraving point, Myst totally lacked humor, so did all those boring sequels and myst-wannabees...
> Though luck - maybe we just kill some PIDs at random and hope for the best.
You missed the whole point. PIDs are created by the process server (the process server make, among other things, the translation between PIDs and task ports. [So for instance, you can have a process server that will make a single PID space among several hosts [ports are network-transparent], like beowulff does, but without beeing root, or needing to reboot -- in theory]).
If there is no process server, then there is no UNIX emulation layer, then you wil have troubles starting netscape.
Anyway, kill is an unix tool too, using the unix APIs, so it is good that he don't see task not registered with the process server...
> If all services are provided by other servers how can I code anything? Try to read file? Sorry fs server is not running. Try to setup alarm? Sorry time server is not running.
Under linux: "try to read a file ? Sorry fs is not mounted" or "try to setup alarm ? Sorry, clock driver is not compiled into the kernel". Very same thing. Note that, in those case, you have to be root, and maybe, reboot.
> Want a working microkernel OS with source? Darwin. And you know what? If the Free Software Foundation collapses tomorrow from the weight of its hubris, no one will be any wiser for it but many will be the better for it.
You are interstingly stupid.
First, without the FSF, there would probably never be any 'Darwin' (because there would have been no GNU/Linux, hence the concept of having a system with free (as beer) avalaible source would still be alien)
Second, some of us value more the freedom to the free-as-beer. For us, Darwin don't fit the bill.
Third, if FSF dispear tomorrow, then I can continue to use GPL'ed code. I can continue to use GPL'ed derived code.
If apple disapear tomorrow, you cannot continue developing and extending darwin. Unlucky boy.
Fourth, thinking that Darwin can be a replacement for the Hurd at a technical level (a working microkernel OS) shows a profond misunderstanding of what The Hurd is trying to achieve (a multi-server microkernel).
> Keep politics out of software. That way lies idiocy.
> The fact that "it's a microkernel" doesn't make everything magically pluggable.
Mmm. The 'scheduler' example of the previous poster was infortunate, but in a broad sense, everything is pluggable in a Hurd *system*. Scheduler was a bad example because it is done at the micro-kernel level, (like memory managment) so is only as pluggable as the micro-kernel designers decided it was.
I agree with you that micro-kernel per-see don't give anything more modular, but a multi-server system will be totally pluggable, in the sense that you can replace any server by your own, or add as much servers as you want (they won't be 'second-class citizen'. Hey, try to add a system call to linux !)
It won't magically solve all the world-problems, it will be probably of an unmanagable complexity, but it it damn cool.
> I disagree. The point about how there is no simple way to add new features into the kernel is a crock:
It depends what 'simple' means.
> I understand the use of modules and this seems to be a modular way to add features
Yes. Modules are modular. But loaded modules become part of the kernel. So when you want to extend the _system_ for, say, a new network protocol, you end up extending the _kernel_.
As a comparison, under The HURD, you don't need to be root to extend the system. You don't even have a way to crash it when extending it (well, you shouldn't,:-) )
A comparison would be the development of a server (like ftpd, or dhcpd) under non protected OS (MSDOS, Win31, win95, Mac OS) and Linux. Under the former, you can crash the os while developing. Under the later, you cannot crash the os. You don't need to reboot. You don't need to be root (but you won't bind to privilegied ports).
> Bottom line: how accurate is this article?
Much more accurate than I thought when I started reading it.
I suggest that you read a bit about the Hurd (start at official site). It can do really amazing things that will never be possible under linux. It worth the read, even if only for the intellectual entertainement.
You can run many things on darwin, including a X server. Using Darwin instead of linux/NetBSD make a lot of sense, for instance if you want to hack Mac OS X later.
Oh. Certainly not. There is something called 'diversification' that is used to cover risk. That means that an *investor* (by opposition to a *speculator*) will buy stocks with different risks factors.
Slashdot Mirror
> > But moving to a portable assembly is ROTFL.????
:-)
Meant funny as hell. Seeing anyone enthousiast on GUI programming in assembly reminds me my great 1985 Macintosh programming tales.
Cheers,
--fred
> C is becoming a bloated mess of a language and shouldn't be used unless totally neccessary
I'd say nope. C is not bloated. It is the libraries that are bloated. C almost didn't change over the years.
C++ is bloated (well, have always been, but have seen its bloat increased a lot between 89 and 95) because they added ton of stuff to the language.
So, sorry, no. C is _NOT_ bloated. libc, Xlib, gtk, is but the langage itself is not. If they want to avoid C because it is bloated, then they throwed the baby with the bath water.
Sure, C is becomming an inadequate langage for many things. But moving to a portable assembly is ROTFL.
Cheers,
--fred
"Just think: unlimited registers, register naming, high-level looping constructs, a tool-based architecture, and object-based assembly programming. Amazing!"
Well. I do have a weird sense of humor (I, for instance, wrote the first[?] self-replicating INTERCAL program), but this seems like a practical joke.
'ifnoterrno' just sounds like a terrible opcode for me. 'defendnz' too.
and in, 'qcall lib/argcargv,(-:p72,i20)' you can see the smiley...
Unfortunately, it looks like those people are dead serious.
I thought only the [original incarnation of the] berlin project had this over-the-top NIH syndrom, do-all-in-assembly. Those guys push it even further. They also want to do the assembly themselves. A pity, because the graph library looks nice. They should release this with high-levels bindings (ie: with squeak, python or tom. As now, it looks like a False or Befunge interface. See http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/index.html for more info)
Cheers,
--fred
"In gathering this information, they set off alarms all over the world, and yet, it seems that this is an accceptable practice in the eyes of the law"
I wonder which law timothy thinks the Internet is under. In particular in conjunction with the words 'all over the world'...
Cheers,
--fred
What the f*** is a 'Homecoming King' ?
I read the article, and still have no clue about this. It render all the article and discussion really poetic, but a little weird...
Anyone cares to explain it, or post a link ?
Cheers,
--fred
"To its founders, ZapMe had a noble vision defeated by a handful of naysaying activists opposed to any commercialism in schools and ready to jump to conclusions about the company's use of data about the students' computer use"
"It's heartbreaking for me," he said. "That opportunity we gave America's schools was taken away" by "a few people."
Do what you want, but I will have a drink tonight. If all privacy-fucking ideas (can anyone says digital convergence ?) could die this way...
Cheers,
--fred
Original announce of the algorithm
A page with a lot of info/links
Colin Percival pageThe real info about the PiHex project (Probably in the natinal post article too, but I can't access it)
Cheers,
--fred
> only about 1 in 10 people...
One on 2. It is a binary digit. Getting a Pi decimal digit without computing the preceeding one is not (yet?) possible. Some people think that it is impossible (but getting the nth binary was thought impossible in the early 90's)
Cheers,
--fred
> Its seems strange to want to know the value of Pi down to some tiny decimal place, but it does have its uses, primarily in the field of space navigation
No at all. We are talking about the quadrillionth binary digit alone (ie: without the preceeding ones).
Pi digits are interesting (I'd say fascinating) in a few ways:
* For the exploration value.
* For the algorithmic challenge. Going further in Pi basically mean doing better algorithm. And I don't talk about micro-optimisation, I talk about radically different ways of doing things. Discovering that getting the nth binary of Pi was easier than getting every preceeding one, have been a major breakthrougt.
* At a theorical level, the idea is knowing things about number-universe (don't know how it is said in english), which are numbers that include everything (ie: numbers typed by infinite monkeys).
* Lastly, exploring numbers may give us insight about what reality is really is, and what may be hidden behind.
It is definitely not to get increased precision.
Cheers,
--fred
Btw, you should try to see 'Pi', the movie. Pretty good one.
> Even stranger was that the changes wouldn't take effect until GUI portion was loaded.
/etc/ttys on NeXTstep / Mac OS X Server. Probably the same under OS X. In that case, all the services are started, as expected.
He was totally drunk at this part. He probably wrote this from memory. For instance, he said that he booted 'text mode' by using the 'v' key. Error, the 'v' key is for verbose. What he called 'text mode' was probably the 's' key, which is *single*user*.
In single user-mode, the system just boots and drops you to a shell. netinfgo is not even started.
Full booting without the GUI is not possible out of the box. Either you boot single user, and about nothing is configured (as expected), or you boot verbose, but end up in the GUI (from which you can go text mode by using '>console' as a user name).
To get rid of all the gui, you had to change
Cheers,
--fred
> However, if you make changes to your IP address/DNS/etc. settings, you are informed that you must restart for the changes to take effect. Even if this stuff is 'hard-wired' into the NetInfo setup, it should only require a re-HUP of NetInfo for this to change, not a restart.
/etc/syslogd.conf (instead of systlogd) after changing it.
Profound misunderstanding here. Netinfo only holds the information. re-HUP of netinfo make as much sense as saying re-HUP
The reason why a reboot is required is that the various configuration are made at boot time, based on info extracted from the netinfo database. He probably could skip the reboot by relaunching the correct scripts.
The best thing about netinfo is that it is hierarchical, ie: that you can have network-level configuration on a 'master server', whith every little bit customised in your local net-info database.
There exist a port of netinfo for linux. Lost the pointer, but I may dig it up if needed...
Cheers,
--fred
> New humans come into existence through the sharing of another body, and thus they have a fundamental right to the use of "their" host.
Do they ? First, you should tell me at which week does an embryon become human. You should also tell me where such fundamental right is defined. Last time I checked, human beeing have equal rights at birth. But before ?
Based on your thinking, abortion would be illegual even if there is danger for the life of the woman:
> Now, if that new life really was a real and imminent threat to the life of the host (kind of like violating the terms of the "joint ownership", so to speak), then there is a justification for aborting the new human.
The opposite holds. If a woman endanged a foetus, then the would be a justification for 'aborting' the host.
> You're probably angry at this, but don't get angry at me. This is biology, pure and simple.
No, it is not. It is based on your conception of what a 'human' is, and wether an embryon should be considered as human. And this, my friend, is *not* biological at all. It is ethic or religious, but definitely not biological.
Btw, I don't really like your 'biological' way of thinking (reminds me of many nasty things that have been allowed in the past because of 'biological' reasons), in particular:
Woman's "fundamental function of reproduction", "a woman is NOT totally a sovereign entity", "This is biology, pure and simple".
I thought this kind of archaic thinking was disapearing. Looks it gets a +3 Insightfull on slashdot. Sad.
Cheers,
--fred
> To say that Kasparov is no longer #1 is a bit rash;
Saying he is not #1 after beeing beaten in championship is, IMHO, a bit stupid.
> he'll rise again.
Then he'll be #1 again. But, dear Anne Marie, how do you know ? You are not using your own personal time machine for karma whoring, I hope ?
Cheers,
--fred
Mmm. I would blame Myst for the lack of humor, lack of characters, lack of explanations, lack of feedback.
But I would blame the 7th guest for the full motion video. There is a *very* interesting read about trilobyte/7th guest/11th hour/Tender Loving Care/software development/ego/death march projects at http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-tri /.
Repeating myself, it worth the read. Great depth. Quite long. Read it.
Cheers,
--fred
> why were Myst and Riven ``notoriously controversial?'
Because Myst was an adventure games with no characters and feraturing only "nice" static graphics.
Myst had a very good athmosphere. *If* you liked it, you would like it much. Everything is very very logical, and is pretty immersive. Myst was plesant to people *not* attracted to traditional adventure games. But, well, compared to a *real* adventure game (say Zork or Day of the Tentacle), it is was so different that many adventure gamers just hated it.
Personally, I loved Myst because it was well thought and very original. The problem is that, after its success, everyone (including Cyan) thought that making nice graphics and impossible to understand plot was what adventure gamers wanted, so, basically, quality of traditional adventure games just went downhill (Riven was a big pile of shit, IMHO. Much less logical than Myst was, and without the novellty factor). Every moron under the sun, tried to duplicate Myst by merging lame puzzles with ugly 3D graphics.
And, as an aggraving point, Myst totally lacked humor, so did all those boring sequels and myst-wannabees...
Cheers,
--fred
> Though luck - maybe we just kill some PIDs at random and hope for the best.
You missed the whole point. PIDs are created by the process server (the process server make, among other things, the translation between PIDs and task ports. [So for instance, you can have a process server that will make a single PID space among several hosts [ports are network-transparent], like beowulff does, but without beeing root, or needing to reboot -- in theory]).
If there is no process server, then there is no UNIX emulation layer, then you wil have troubles starting netscape.
Anyway, kill is an unix tool too, using the unix APIs, so it is good that he don't see task not registered with the process server...
> If all services are provided by other servers how can I code anything? Try to read file? Sorry fs server is not running. Try to setup alarm? Sorry time server is not running.
Under linux: "try to read a file ? Sorry fs is not mounted" or "try to setup alarm ? Sorry, clock driver is not compiled into the kernel". Very same thing. Note that, in those case, you have to be root, and maybe, reboot.
Cheers,
--fred
> Want a working microkernel OS with source? Darwin. And you know what? If the Free Software Foundation collapses tomorrow from the weight of its hubris, no one will be any wiser for it but many will be the better for it.
You are interstingly stupid.
First, without the FSF, there would probably never be any 'Darwin' (because there would have been no GNU/Linux, hence the concept of having a system with free (as beer) avalaible source would still be alien)
Second, some of us value more the freedom to the free-as-beer. For us, Darwin don't fit the bill.
Third, if FSF dispear tomorrow, then I can continue to use GPL'ed code. I can continue to use GPL'ed derived code.
If apple disapear tomorrow, you cannot continue developing and extending darwin. Unlucky boy.
Fourth, thinking that Darwin can be a replacement for the Hurd at a technical level (a working microkernel OS) shows a profond misunderstanding of what The Hurd is trying to achieve (a multi-server microkernel).
> Keep politics out of software. That way lies idiocy.
You seem to be pretty knowledgable on idiocy.
Cheers,
--fred
> The fact that "it's a microkernel" doesn't make everything magically pluggable.
Mmm. The 'scheduler' example of the previous poster was infortunate, but in a broad sense, everything is pluggable in a Hurd *system*. Scheduler was a bad example because it is done at the micro-kernel level, (like memory managment) so is only as pluggable as the micro-kernel designers decided it was.
I agree with you that micro-kernel per-see don't give anything more modular, but a multi-server system will be totally pluggable, in the sense that you can replace any server by your own, or add as much servers as you want (they won't be 'second-class citizen'. Hey, try to add a system call to linux !)
It won't magically solve all the world-problems, it will be probably of an unmanagable complexity, but it it damn cool.
Cheers,
--fred
> I disagree. The point about how there is no simple way to add new features into the kernel is a crock:
:-) )
It depends what 'simple' means.
> I understand the use of modules and this seems to be a modular way to add features
Yes. Modules are modular. But loaded modules become part of the kernel. So when you want to extend the _system_ for, say, a new network protocol, you end up extending the _kernel_.
As a comparison, under The HURD, you don't need to be root to extend the system. You don't even have a way to crash it when extending it (well, you shouldn't,
A comparison would be the development of a server (like ftpd, or dhcpd) under non protected OS (MSDOS, Win31, win95, Mac OS) and Linux. Under the former, you can crash the os while developing. Under the later, you cannot crash the os. You don't need to reboot. You don't need to be root (but you won't bind to privilegied ports).
> Bottom line: how accurate is this article?
Much more accurate than I thought when I started reading it.
I suggest that you read a bit about the Hurd (start at official site). It can do really amazing things that will never be possible under linux. It worth the read, even if only for the intellectual entertainement.
Cheers,
--fred
See http://www.darwinfo.org/
You can run many things on darwin, including a X server. Using Darwin instead of linux/NetBSD make a lot of sense, for instance if you want to hack Mac OS X later.
Cheers,
--fred
You messed the capitalisation of NeXTstep a couple of time...
FoundationKit was part of EOF, hence was avalaible under NEXTSTEP 3.2
> EOF = Enterprise Object Framework - an Object-to-Relational Database adapter layer (very very good.)
And _NOT_ present on Mac OS X. Developers are very upset.
Cheers,
--fred
> ( and that soft, female voice that says: "Your printer is out of paper.")
:-)
She still say it to me. And 'Paper is jammed in your printer'
Mmmm.
Cheers,
--fred
> That assumes he didn't sell any at a higher price, which he could have done.
In case of options, I would be very surprised that he could exercise that soon.
Btw, it looks like he have common stock, at the 6th december and an extra bonus of 12,952 the 31th december (of more than 2.5 M$ !)
Today, he still have $5,489,000. If everyone had the same kind of deal, it looks like he could sell since the 7th june (ie: after 6 month).
Sources:
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/l/lnux.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/66/6386.html
Cheers,
--fred
> you have to believe in your investment
Oh. Certainly not. There is something called 'diversification' that is used to cover risk. That means that an *investor* (by opposition to a *speculator*) will buy stocks with different risks factors.
Cheers,
--fred
Parent post have 'Moderation Totals:Offtopic=2, Total=2.' Uh ?