Thanks. I thought "fork bomb" was short enough already, while being much more descriptive. Might as well call it "fb" if you want to describe it as something that completely ruins computing and networks for a lot of people.
The end statements are just redundant fluff, the indention is enough to delineate blocks. Python is beautiful.
Unfortunately, this isn't so simple in the real world. When different people edit the source on different editors and operating systems, you may end up with blocks that look aligned but aren't. This is generally due to mixing spaces and tab characters. The end statement does take up space and visual attention, but it makes the syntax more robust against such glitches.
BTW, Python's use of the colon is mostly redundant fluff. It serves a function for one-liners "if this: do_that" but if this is what you want, you might as well go back to the butt-ugly C syntax with its semicolons and braces.
the language looks pretty impressive: the ease of python/matlab with the speed of fortran/c.
My two favourite languages since about 2000 have been Python and Fortran, so you can imagine my joy of finding Julia. Of course it's not a perfect solution for everything, and I still prefer Python for most tasks that are not compute heavy. This is mostly due to the plethora of libraries available by default.
On the issue of ease, Julia's syntax actually borrows heavily from Fortran, and thus avoids most of the whitespace thing.
None of mainstream languages make automatic use of multiple cores and GPU - explicit provisions must be made by programmer to parallelize part of the program, often with error prone semantics and a separate language like OpenCL.
Automatic parallelization for CPUs has been around for a good while (e.g. Fortran 90), so the parallelization per se should not be a huge issue. You need sensible semantics for these concepts, such as vector types, so the compiler can assume things about parallelism.
Julia and Rust have some intriguing parallelisation mechanisms. [...] I simple write code for 1 processor, and run that on many data sets in parallel
I haven't found Julia's parallelism very efficient, but maybe it's just my lack of coding skills. Then again my work is rather parallel by nature (independent pixels), so I simply run several processes using shell scripts.
For example, it would be nice if something like map() were always parallelized as it kind of assumes independent data points, but there are still other considerations like memory management. Julia's pmap() seems to have too much overhead to be of any help, especially when the separate processes scale so well.
Julia is a pretty scientific language with a simple syntax based on Fortran and Python. It has things like union(A, B) for sets. Non-ascii keywords sound like a terrible idea. I expect you know LaTeX and understand why it uses ascii, even though the end results are pretty symbols.
Gentoo doesn't use systemd by default. It follows many BSD philosophies but instead uses the Linux kernel and GNU libraries to make the best of both worlds.
This. I'd expect real nerds/geeks to stay away from such commercial sheeple events. The proper time/place/style for fun and celebrations is when you feel like it, not when other people tell you.
The lack of active maintenance is primarily caused by a small detail like a prison sentence.
This is open source, so it shouldn't be anything more than a detail. Hans isn't the only one with the interest and abilities to develop ReiserFS. OTOH, the same ideas are being developed further in other filesystems such as btrfs, so there's no reason to stick with Reiser forever.
Some still do use reiserFS, and not reiser4 even, just waiting for ext4 to get as good at recovering from the journal in the event of power outage, but then the ext people gave up and passed their flame to Btrfs which has an ever worse reputation.
This. The only major problem with ReiserFS for me is the lack of active maintenance, resulting in the lack of TRIM support, for example. This is the only reason why I now have to use ext4. (TRIM in JFS is buggy, and other suitable filesystems are more unstable/experimental.)
For a little perspective, I've used ReiserFS since it came out as the first journaling FS in mainline Linux around 2.4.0 or 2.4.1. I also remember when ext4 came out, and for a long while it was mind-numbingly slow. Then again, its whole point is being the safe choice among more experimental filesystems.
Only if I get a headache I may take some Acetaminophen or Ibuprofen, but that's it.
Ibuprofen is also useful for reducing inflammation and lowering fever. I've been specifically prescribed ibuprofen after wisdom tooth operations for the former reason, though I didn't need anything for the pain. Fever is another useful bodily response you may need to limit at times.
Acetaminophen is great if you really want liver damage.
I got a Master's from Helsinki as well, and the word among professors was that they just had to force Linus to write something passable for thesis. He is not that academic.
This. He finished his Master's way after Linux was already popular, and he'd been working on it instead of academic stuff. Later, as he received his honorary doctorate, he said it's the only sensible way of getting a doctorate.
People save it, so there is never enough in circulation to be of any use causing a paradox of thrift.
It's a question of balance. If you have no food and a ton of BTC, you'll probably exchange some to stay alive.
Currently (pun intended), Bitcoin is used by relatively few people, and its unit value is expected to increase, as its total amount represents more and more real-world value. Thus people save disproportionate amounts of it as an investment. At some point there might be a balance as the adoption curve flattens out, and the investment aspect will be less attractive, so people will use it like any currency.
As any computer systems engineer knows, it's all about compute and storage. This article is about compute. But storage has been vastly improved for all of us.
It's also about I/O and cache/memory management. While computers give us faster storage, it sits across the I/O of our physical senses. Having "a good memory" is like having tons of cache on your CPU die, and for a lot of things this is more important than raw compute.
Unicode in code is for people that do not understand what they are doing.
This. To me it's the same argument as keeping domain names in plain ASCII -- portability. If I cannot type a domain name on any random keyboard, then it has no place on the _inter_net. Code should be similarly universal for a number of reasons, even if it's restricted to one organization; it's like math notation.
(My native language has a few non-Latin characters and I also use Hanzi occasionally, but I like having some common ground with other people.)
Bitcoin isn't debt-based like most fiat currencies, and it isn't inflated at all like fiat. So it should be a more natural fit for banking systems that don't involve interest.
It's funny we're here discussing this on the web, which was conceived for scientists to share their publications more easily. "Just put the PDF online" is so 1990s, yet we're still not doing it enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks. I thought "fork bomb" was short enough already, while being much more descriptive. Might as well call it "fb" if you want to describe it as something that completely ruins computing and networks for a lot of people.
The end statements are just redundant fluff, the indention is enough to delineate blocks. Python is beautiful.
Unfortunately, this isn't so simple in the real world. When different people edit the source on different editors and operating systems, you may end up with blocks that look aligned but aren't. This is generally due to mixing spaces and tab characters. The end statement does take up space and visual attention, but it makes the syntax more robust against such glitches.
BTW, Python's use of the colon is mostly redundant fluff. It serves a function for one-liners "if this: do_that" but if this is what you want, you might as well go back to the butt-ugly C syntax with its semicolons and braces.
the language looks pretty impressive: the ease of python/matlab with the speed of fortran/c.
My two favourite languages since about 2000 have been Python and Fortran, so you can imagine my joy of finding Julia. Of course it's not a perfect solution for everything, and I still prefer Python for most tasks that are not compute heavy. This is mostly due to the plethora of libraries available by default.
On the issue of ease, Julia's syntax actually borrows heavily from Fortran, and thus avoids most of the whitespace thing.
None of mainstream languages make automatic use of multiple cores and GPU - explicit provisions must be made by programmer to parallelize part of the program, often with error prone semantics and a separate language like OpenCL.
Automatic parallelization for CPUs has been around for a good while (e.g. Fortran 90), so the parallelization per se should not be a huge issue. You need sensible semantics for these concepts, such as vector types, so the compiler can assume things about parallelism.
If you want smooth video playback on any platform and choose to use Flash, you're doing it wrong.
Julia and Rust have some intriguing parallelisation mechanisms. [...] I simple write code for 1 processor, and run that on many data sets in parallel
I haven't found Julia's parallelism very efficient, but maybe it's just my lack of coding skills. Then again my work is rather parallel by nature (independent pixels), so I simply run several processes using shell scripts.
For example, it would be nice if something like map() were always parallelized as it kind of assumes independent data points, but there are still other considerations like memory management. Julia's pmap() seems to have too much overhead to be of any help, especially when the separate processes scale so well.
Julia is a pretty scientific language with a simple syntax based on Fortran and Python. It has things like union(A, B) for sets. Non-ascii keywords sound like a terrible idea. I expect you know LaTeX and understand why it uses ascii, even though the end results are pretty symbols.
1. There is no reason to have anything rinning as root
I'm afraid you just misspelled "rimming".
No. I mean, you probably do, but the correct answer is still "No".
Yup. I got my first cell phone in 1995 when they were just about becoming mainstream, after a few years of association with rich suits.
Gentoo doesn't use systemd by default. It follows many BSD philosophies but instead uses the Linux kernel and GNU libraries to make the best of both worlds.
a backdoor may be used by ... a paedophile?
I see what you did there. Insert seal of approval.
This. I'd expect real nerds/geeks to stay away from such commercial sheeple events. The proper time/place/style for fun and celebrations is when you feel like it, not when other people tell you.
The lack of active maintenance is primarily caused by a small detail like a prison sentence.
This is open source, so it shouldn't be anything more than a detail. Hans isn't the only one with the interest and abilities to develop ReiserFS. OTOH, the same ideas are being developed further in other filesystems such as btrfs, so there's no reason to stick with Reiser forever.
Some still do use reiserFS, and not reiser4 even, just waiting for ext4 to get as good at recovering from the journal in the event of power outage, but then the ext people gave up and passed their flame to Btrfs which has an ever worse reputation.
This. The only major problem with ReiserFS for me is the lack of active maintenance, resulting in the lack of TRIM support, for example. This is the only reason why I now have to use ext4. (TRIM in JFS is buggy, and other suitable filesystems are more unstable/experimental.)
For a little perspective, I've used ReiserFS since it came out as the first journaling FS in mainline Linux around 2.4.0 or 2.4.1. I also remember when ext4 came out, and for a long while it was mind-numbingly slow. Then again, its whole point is being the safe choice among more experimental filesystems.
I didn't expect a hovercraft full of motherfucking snakes!
Only if I get a headache I may take some Acetaminophen or Ibuprofen, but that's it.
Ibuprofen is also useful for reducing inflammation and lowering fever. I've been specifically prescribed ibuprofen after wisdom tooth operations for the former reason, though I didn't need anything for the pain. Fever is another useful bodily response you may need to limit at times.
Acetaminophen is great if you really want liver damage.
I got a Master's from Helsinki as well, and the word among professors was that they just had to force Linus to write something passable for thesis. He is not that academic.
This. He finished his Master's way after Linux was already popular, and he'd been working on it instead of academic stuff. Later, as he received his honorary doctorate, he said it's the only sensible way of getting a doctorate.
This. For surface independence, try developing plasma levitation instead.
People save it, so there is never enough in circulation to be of any use causing a paradox of thrift.
It's a question of balance. If you have no food and a ton of BTC, you'll probably exchange some to stay alive.
Currently (pun intended), Bitcoin is used by relatively few people, and its unit value is expected to increase, as its total amount represents more and more real-world value. Thus people save disproportionate amounts of it as an investment. At some point there might be a balance as the adoption curve flattens out, and the investment aspect will be less attractive, so people will use it like any currency.
On the other hand, it makes sense to pay nitrates for your after-sunset electricity.
As any computer systems engineer knows, it's all about compute and storage. This article is about compute. But storage has been vastly improved for all of us.
It's also about I/O and cache/memory management. While computers give us faster storage, it sits across the I/O of our physical senses. Having "a good memory" is like having tons of cache on your CPU die, and for a lot of things this is more important than raw compute.
Unicode in code is for people that do not understand what they are doing.
This. To me it's the same argument as keeping domain names in plain ASCII -- portability. If I cannot type a domain name on any random keyboard, then it has no place on the _inter_net. Code should be similarly universal for a number of reasons, even if it's restricted to one organization; it's like math notation.
(My native language has a few non-Latin characters and I also use Hanzi occasionally, but I like having some common ground with other people.)
Bitcoin isn't debt-based like most fiat currencies, and it isn't inflated at all like fiat. So it should be a more natural fit for banking systems that don't involve interest.
It's funny we're here discussing this on the web, which was conceived for scientists to share their publications more easily. "Just put the PDF online" is so 1990s, yet we're still not doing it enough.