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User: bentini

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  1. Re:I don't care on Fair Use is Not a Constitutional Right · · Score: 2, Insightful

    what kind of right it is. I think it's a right for me to take whatever belongs to me. I base my actions on my own personal values and morals. I don't care that I benefit from the current government. And am protected by them. And give my tacit consent by living here. You may disagree with my beliefs that I have the right to take your stuff. You may think it's a different case. I think it is, too. I'm right in my case. There may have once been a person who protested unjustness, and I'm just doing the same thing, because I don't think it's right for there to be laws against other people's stuff. So even though the duly elected officials have made numerous such laws, I intend to invoke civil disobedience because I want a new car. They won, and I plan to do the same.

    The proceeding was brought to you be the letters d, u and h, the number 1 and the writing style satire.

  2. Re:If its so easy . . . ? on How To Implement A Database Oriented File System · · Score: 2

    Because it changes things. Programs that wipe data no longer work, because the data no longer goes to the same place. Basically, it makes it harder to hack on the system and understand it.
    While it's great for performance, it changes how people understand filesystems. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just a change.

  3. Re:Old lesson... do unto others... applies here. on Laurence 'Green Card' Canter Has No Regrets · · Score: 2

    Are your parents Immanuel Kant and his theory of the moral imperative?

  4. Re:This can only work for some games on Platform Independent Gaming? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Exactly. This is why UNIX never caught on. There were certain parts (device drivers/platform dependent code) that couldn't be written in non-specific C. So even though a lot of the system code and applications were completely portable, the system never caught on and died a horrible death.
    This historical retrospective was brought to you by sarcasm.

  5. Re:ARGHGHH! on 34-byte Universal Machine · · Score: 1

    cs258?
    (you'll know what it means if it applies to you).

  6. Re:Garbage collector on Mopping Up Mozilla Memory Leaks · · Score: 1

    That's not legal C. Those aren't guaranteed to be valid pointers, so who cares if the compiler screws you?

  7. Re:Naming Conventions. on Server Naming Conventions? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On the subject of execs:
    I'm a student at Stanford, and one of my profs set up a lab a couple years back where each of the workstations was a logical operation. And, Xor, Nand, Or, Iff, etc.
    The server was called "gates", because each of these is a logic gate.
    Then, Bill Gates donated money and there was going to be a Gates Computer Science building.
    Needless to say, my prof lost his name pretty damn quickly, and old Bill was relented to.

  8. Re:Assembler on 16th IOCCC Winners Announced · · Score: 2

    Are I-caches smart enough to figure out when you modify the code? And wouldn't that make code that was slow as hell, because you have to flush the cache and pipeline?
    -Dan

  9. Re:...and more on Sun Files Suit Against Microsoft for Anti-Trust Violations · · Score: 2

    Interesting idea, but it's probably not worth it. Microsoft probably (hopefully) optimizes the source code so you couldn't compile it the same way.
    As a more major issue, that wouldn't even make you safe. If you care to learn a LOT quickly, read the speech "Reflections on Trusting Trust" by Ken Thompson delivered as his Turing Award lecture. It shows why access to the source code isn't even enough to know what it is that you're dealing with.

  10. Sure, but... on Chinese Explorers 'Discovered America'? · · Score: 2

    I'm sure that this is research of the highest caliber. And more importantly, it's the final nail in the coffin for nay-sayers who've refused to believe this. But the headline is misleading. The important point is not that Chinese discovered America, but that we can prove that the Chinese discovered America.
    What everyone else has been trying to say, but stumbling across is that, "When Columbus discovered America, it stayed discovered."

  11. Re:Please stop writing network apps in C! on OpenSSH Local Root Hole · · Score: 2

    SML/NJ is done at Bell Labs amongst other places. Fantastic. Try googling it.

    Will I still be able to compile my code in 15 years like I will with ANSI C or Fortran 90? I guess what I mean is are there set-in-stone ML standards that assure me that future tools will work with code I write now?

    Surprisingly enough... "Standard ML" is in fact STANDARD. ML has been around for a while, since at least the 80's and I believe before that. Will a compiler in the future still handle the same language? I hope not. I hope that ML remains vibrant. But will there exist compilers for this language in the future? Yes. There will. A lot of people like ML, especially the type of really smart people who port languages to new platforms well and efficiently.
    -Dan

  12. Re:Truth of article depends on who you know on The Problem Of Developing · · Score: 1

    Do you know where he said this? I heard him say it, but thought it wasn't his own.

  13. Languages on The Problem Of Developing · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hmm... I'm no expert, but neither, apparently, is this guy.
    A) All languages share a common runtime: Assembly. Just because I can run LISP and C on the same computer/runtime doesn't mean that they're similar. CS is all about abstraction. Of course you can have the same underlying structure, you can have different underlying structures too. That's the beauty of abstraction!
    B) Java and C# are not the logical successors to C/C++. They're more like a smalltalk with a C-syntax and some trade-offs for efficiency. In terms of providing system calls and API's that are cross-platform... Well, even more like smalltalk!!
    C) Remember, C++ started out as a preprocessor for C. Any "C++" code just became C code that was uglier to look at. The difference between procedural and object-oriented isn't that big a deal, other than it's often easier to think in OO and easier to implement a language that's procedural.
    For a more interesting observation about the same problem that comes from Rob Pike (big UNIX guy at Bell Labs, co-wrote the UNIX Programming Environment) go here: Systems Software Research Is Irrelevant. It makes many good points about how cs is more the same than different now as compare to 10, 15 even 20 years ago!

  14. Re:Why will this be any better? on Hope for MIPS, From Toshiba · · Score: 2

    Well, MIPS has been 64-bit a lot longer than Intel. This isn't like announcing a new ISA, or a new microarchitecture, or really anything other than moving a chip with some ISA extensions to a smaller process for the embedded market.

  15. Re:This is the way it should have been. on Google Allows Sponsored Rankings...In Ads · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, it's even better than you describe it. The highest paying customers are probably shown first. However, they also factor in how good the pages are (as judged by how many people click-through the links), so the most popular pages are shown first, even over money. Therefore, if I search for a product name: say, purify (a program to check C code dynamically), and there are 10 people who have paid more than that company to sell products branded purify that are not at all what I or anyone else want (spam spam spam spam), it still won't show up.
    They've instituted a safeguard so not only is spamming not useful, it's barely an option. The items that people are most often interested in are the ones that you'll see most prominently.
    Go Google!

  16. Re:Search Directory on Google Allows Sponsored Rankings...In Ads · · Score: 2

    Yeah. That's worked out so well for Altavista.

    Altavista started as a research project, much like Google. When it first came out, it was undeniably the best search engine on the web, much like google. Not only did it become useful, it was based on awesome technology (alphas and 64-bit hardware, hell yeah!), much like google( they use clustering).
    However, Altavista was made at Digital, which can't market. Google has a profitable business set up around remaining lean and employing some of the most brilliant people in computer science.
    Does that sound like the type of organization that would turn to being a yellow pages?
    BTW, Google does use the open directory AS a phonebook/yahoo style directory. They're SUPPORTING Open Source without having the ability to close that later. Don'tyou think they'd be starting their own directory now if they wanted to do that later?
    Trust me, Google is by nerds, for nerds. And since it's privately owned (and making money), it's going to stay that way.

  17. Re:Wouldn't be the same on Cringely: OS X on Intel · · Score: 2

    MMX, SSE, SSE2 are the same thing as Altivec, more or less. You could use that.
    -Dan

  18. Re:Misleading BSD Article on Slashback: Switchover, EULA, Perspectives · · Score: 2

    Yeah, it's not like there's any difference in how the most primitive integers are stored in different architectures/file formats.
    Oh, wait...

  19. Re:Intel's approach on Inside Intel · · Score: 2

    Unfortunately, at least two of your goals are counterproductive. Memory sucks. It's the bottleneck in modern systems. How then do you get around it? Transfer less data from memory into cache. If you think about it, however, RISC went against this. The designers of RISC (one of whom is the president of my university, I hold no ill will) saw that Memory was becoming so big that code size doesn't matter. Well, now it does. With a CISC instruction set, you can move a lot less data from memory into your instruction cache.
    Looks like there are advantages to CISC, huh?
    This is why, for instance, the JVM has variable-length byte-codes.
    And production costs are pretty low, just not for the latest and greatest. Most of the costs of the latest and greatest, however, more so than production is IP.
    And how would you suggest that Intel, as a processor/chipset manufacturer improve memory speed? they don't have the resources (mainly intellectual) to contribute much.
    Also, faster clockspeeds seem to be working for Intel. Obviously the P4 isn't great yet, but it has at least one killer feature (hyperthreading/SMT) turned off yet. And it's scaling more incredibly than any processor we've seen before.
    -Dan

  20. I'm happy I get to write this. on What if Harry Potter 5 Was an E-Book? · · Score: 1

    YHBT. YHL. HAND.

  21. Re:really stupid requirements on What Makes a Powerful Programming Language? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    *sigh* This is slashdot, so I doubt that anyone's going to take notice of this, but...
    this paper explains why people want to ADD operator overloading to Java. Oh, and this isn't just some hack, this is Guy Steele. He has been heavily involved in the design and/or standaradization of C, Lisp and Java. Yeah. He's smart.
    People want Operator Overloading as a choice in language design. All the other objections to Overloading in this thread has been about C++ overloading. You don't need to have constructors or whatever or not being able to find out what the call actually is. That's a limitation of the language, not the concept.
    -Dan

  22. Re:Hmmm... on Google Programming Contest · · Score: 1

    Post on slashdot so a bunch of geeks *with programming skills* will enter?
    Chyeah, right.
    They might get some good programming coming from here....

  23. Re:Even Better on What Kind of Books do You Want? · · Score: 1

    I'm the guy's son. Damn fine book. It's now in its second edition, heavily updated. As well as presenting both timeless and timely solutions. A great first book in the set of computer science books that aren't just about one thing. Really gets you thinking about the entirety of the problem in a comprehensive manner.

  24. iPod killer? on Incredible Shrinking PC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This thing sure has the potential to be an iPod killer. Not only do you get to have all your music, you get to have all your workspace and all your files with you, wherever you go. I just plug it into another computer and that computer instantly acts as a dumb terminal into my own computer. That sounds like a really great idea!
    What does this do, you may ask, other than act as a penis-size indicator without a screen? Well, if I want, I can run it as a personal server that's small. If I want the portability of a laptop without the size, I can have one docking station for it at home and one at the office, and play mp3's on it in the car during my drive between. (If it's a pc, then somebody can make a panel you put on it that will give you an lcd to select files and an audio output). If it's reasonbly priced if/when it comes out, I'll definitely get one if only for the fun use factor!

  25. Re:Maybe I'm missing something... on Red Hat Network for the Masses · · Score: 4, Funny

    60 dollars per year *IS* 5 dollars per month. The 240 dollars per year is the old service. The improvement is the fact that some people know how to manipulate units.

    (Note: This isn't a flame. It *would* have been a flame if I had added that last night I showed his girlfriend that I also knew how to manipulate digits.)