That's right. On ARM all memory access must be word-aligned (where "word" is 32-bits). Accessing misaligned words will require some extra instructions (~5 instructions instead of 1), where the x86 would be the same instructions but slower. The compiler would generally know when the instructions are needed and generate them only when needed. If you take a pointer and coerce it to be misaligned then pass that to a function which dereferences it you can catch the compiler by surprise and most likely create a runtime exception.
This is a counterexample to what I originally claimed, so I concede.
Reading more carefully, it looks that the man isn't being arrested for exploiting a glitch (having his winnings refused would have been a sufficient response for that); he was arrested for demonstrating specific knowledge about something that appears to be a carefully-concealed easter egg. That suggests very strongly that he is in fact party to fraud.
You have roughly six million programmers who've had to write portable C++ rolling on the floor laughing right now. Merely getting their software to work on 64-bit CPUs as well as 32-bit has been hugely painful for a number of projects I'm aware of which have done stupid things that only worked on a 32-bit CPU and broke as soon as you recompiled the code for 64-bit.
I'm glad to have provided entertainment for so many. And I've seen things like (*((short*)&pointer)) way too often - it dies the death it deserves when you recompile for AMD64. And yet... it will probably work if you recompile for ARM.
Porting a C++ program from x86 to ARM doesn't require any programming at all - you just select a different target and recompile. Perfect CPU port every time.
Not true. Memory alignment requirements, endianness, primitive sizes (eg 32bit vs 64bit pointers), inline assembly etc almost always come into play with non-trivial applications.
Not in this case. Memory alignment, endianness, and primitive sizes match (we are talking specifically about x86 and ARM - please let me know if I don't have my facts straight). Assembly code is not C++ code - of course you'll have to port it! Embedding it in C++ file using non-standard language extensions doesn't change that fact.
Porting is often very hard work, but C++ does code does not change just because of going from one 32-bit word-aligned low-endian target to another. When it needs to be changed in order to port the program it is because of other reasons.
If you have C/C++ code, porting it to ARM should be a huge deal. Yes there will be some differences, yes, there will be bugs - but in terms of effort its manageable. And more importantly, every single vendor has to do this effort, so Microsoft doesn't have to do anything.
Because Microsoft are saying this now, with no product that anyone can "buy" right now (or even soon), this probably means the audience for this news is *Developers* (the single intelligent word that Mr Balmer has uttered in the last 20 years, so good, he had to say it multiple times for it be considered a quote). They are now selling the ARM architecture to developers. If the developers buy this story, the applications will follow.
And of course, some developers will be more prepared than others. Don't expect an ARM version of Photoshop anytime soon, but an ARM version of Firefox is something that could be cranked out very easily.
You have it backwards. Dealing with the underlying CPU architecture is handled comletely by the compiler, and not in the code at all. Porting a C++ program from x86 to ARM doesn't require any programming at all - you just select a different target and recompile. Perfect CPU port every time. The difficulty of porting a program to another device is in all the differences other than the CPU - mainly the differences in the available software environment (system calls, DirectX, OpenGL, Cocoa,.Net, etc.) and possibly different peripherals.
It might help if the US got some sort of international support and helped the countries who most people believed needed helping, instead of unilaterally invading the ones with the most natural resources. Just saying.
I'm not sure if it was strictly "unilateral", but your point is still very valid. In fact, here in Africa a typical response to hearing about the US invasions in the middle east was "why aren't they liberating Zimbabwe instead, where the locals actually want to be liberated?".
I used to be one as well - after being burned enough times I never bought a game without first getting a working cracked version. Then that became too much of a hassle. Fortunately about the same time as publishers started switching to DRM there has also been a rise in good games being sold without DRM or copy protection (high profile examples: Good Old Games, World of Goo, the Humble Bundles and the Indie Bundles). Now I don't even consider buying a game unless I can use it on my own terms.
If the cable proves that Tsvangirai is working with foreign governments to subvert Mugabe, shouldn't the people of Zimbabwe know that? It seems like it would be in their interest to know.
Tsvangirai is the world's most famous anti-Mugabe activist. Working with foreign governments to subvert Mugabe is the reason he was elected. It was practically his entire election campaign. That is not news to anyone. The matter at hand is not whether Tsvangirai supports Mugable, but rather that Morgan publicly says that sanctions are bad but personally feels that they have merit. In reality, the sanctions suck, but are there for a reason. I doubt that this revelation is likely to alter the opinions of any followers or detractors.
This is a great option for those who would want such a thing. And, upon further consideration, I think that I might just be such a person. Having each appliation synched to its own release schedule rather than to the operating system's sounds is very practical. Also, I like the name.
"The Pirate Bay Co-Founder... and alleged rapist... has started a new project which will provide a decentralized p2p based..."
That should be a new meme. Simply put "an alleged rapist" after every reference to anyone at all, until that particular vector of character assassination becomes meaningless.
It's important to ensure that your subject actually is an alleged rapist though - otherwise you're just being inaccurate and libellous. The trick is to tell someone (a friend sitting next to you at the time will do) that the subject is a rapist, thus permanently transforming the subject into an alleged rapist even if the person you told is fully aware of the meme. It's safe to then clarify that the subject is not actually a rapist, since there is no such thing as "a formerly-alleged rapist".
This idea is inspired by Godwin (an alleged rapist) and his well-known counter-meme, Godwin's Law.
Well-said. Why would anyone hope for a Supreme Court precedent that you are liable for damages based on a some obscure software patent even after changing your software to avoid infringing the patent? Because we dislike Microsoft and want them to lose out of spite? No, thank you. I would much rather have Microsoft win this one.
They do. If you read any of them, you'd realize that they put out the names of civilians who act as informants. I'm sure that doesn't put anyone at risk, nope none at all.
They do? I couldn't find any names when I looked through them. Could you provide a line number where I can see an example for myself?
I realise that you were probably joking, but SA really is a correct and official abbreviation for South Africa. The same abbreviation is also used by Saudi Arabia, San Antonio and the Salvation Army, among others.
What you're referring to is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, which uses ZA instead of the usual SA purely to avoid a naming conflict.
Well-spotted. It appears that this particular supercomputer gets faster the longer it is left running. Clearly the reason that it ran faster with Linux than with Windows was because in the latter case it needed to be restarted after every Patch Tuesday, thus limiting the potential speed increase to 6.88 zettaflops.
The open source weak spot has always been the infighting, eventual lawsuits, splitting and renaming, remember that old saying about too many cooks in the kitchen?
Exactly the same as with closed source, for exactly the same reasons.
Frankly I'm a little surprised - since in my experience employees are more or less slaves in the US. The entire legal structure seems set up for whatever is easiest and cheapest for employers to do whatever they wish. Employees can sue, and that is often the de-facto suggestion whenever anyone in the US has a problem, but frankly a lot of situations could be avoided if they had a strong legal framework like every other developed country.
No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.
Actually, here in the third world employees are guaranteed a certain amount of holiday time, sick leave and maternity leave. Firing employees requires giving them 3 month notice with full pay (although it is possible to hire with a temporary probation period, which IIRC is at most 6 months) and is subject to appeal at labour court if disputed. Oh, and don't even think about discriminating (unless it is to comply with employment equity regulations).
For how long can a session be hijacked anyway? If you close your browser, is the seesion instantly invalidated? Or only after like 5 minutes? I mean, in that case, Blacksheep could scream all it wants, and you'll still be a potential victim even if it warned you and you closed your browser (or tab).
As long as the hijacker keeps using your session the session will stay alive, even if you close your browser. But if you actually log out of the website then the hijacker gets kicked off too. So if Blacksheep tells you that someone's on your account then log out of Facebook immediately. Or, better yet, check that your email address hasn't been changed while the other guy's been on your account, then log out.
Perhaps there's some cause and effect going on there. Companies that are more responsive to customer demands and concerns are, in my experience, more trusted by the customers. Perhaps the banks have already figured out how to compete and just don't realize it yet because being competitive cuts into profit margins.
Being uncompetitive is far more profitable until competition comes and ruins everything.
isn't the Android Market supposed to be more open than the App store?
Absolutely! It's amazing what you can do and still be more open than the App store.
Jokes aside, Google has a degree of responsibility over the apps that they sell to you. It's perfectly reasonable for them to refuse to sell an app which is specifically designed to be installed without the knowledge or consent of the phone's regular user and who's purpose is to spy on the regular user (with costing the owner money from extra SMSs as a side effect), as that can easily be considered illegal. If you really want this program on your phone then Android is open enough to let you install it, but you'll have to get it from somewhere other than Android Market.
Its about time that a lot of people on slashdot realised that money doesn't grow on trees and what they enjoy on the net eventually has to be paid for by someone. If putting up with a short advert means I can continue to enjoy a lot of free sites then thats fine by me and I suspect a lot of other people.
I don't know about you, but whenever I put up a free website I pay for it myself and don't expect to be compensated. However, wanting one's website to be passively self-sustaining is a reasonable desire, and ultimately there's nothing wrong with putting some ads up. Please realise that, in general, even "people on slashdot" aren't necessarily opposed to the existance of advertising, but are rather opposed to advertisers trying to prevent the ads from being ignored. By all means have ads on DVDs but dont make them unskippable. Have ads on your website, but don't make them unblockable. Expecting that visiters should watch even a short ad "as payment for the privilage" of looking at your site is extremely obnoxious.
I personally believe that if Microsoft were to release an official, properly working standalone edition of IE6 then people wouldn't have reason to cling to the old version just because they need it for a particular case. They could even brand it as "Microsoft Intranet Viewer" or something.
And this is newsworthy.... how? DOS is still Microsoft's property, regardless of how thoroughly reverse engineered it has become. This is like dedicating an article to YouTube making a video unavailable because a record label said take it down.
Well, MS-DOS is Microsoft's property. DOS in general is, surprisingly enough, something that Microsoft doesn't have all that much control over other than through their own implementation. DOSBox is in the clear from that angle.
My guess is that it was rejected because DOSBox is a user-programmable platform like Flash, so it breaks the walled-garden paradigm that Apple works hard to maintain.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right. On ARM all memory access must be word-aligned (where "word" is 32-bits). Accessing misaligned words will require some extra instructions (~5 instructions instead of 1), where the x86 would be the same instructions but slower. The compiler would generally know when the instructions are needed and generate them only when needed. If you take a pointer and coerce it to be misaligned then pass that to a function which dereferences it you can catch the compiler by surprise and most likely create a runtime exception. This is a counterexample to what I originally claimed, so I concede.
Reading more carefully, it looks that the man isn't being arrested for exploiting a glitch (having his winnings refused would have been a sufficient response for that); he was arrested for demonstrating specific knowledge about something that appears to be a carefully-concealed easter egg. That suggests very strongly that he is in fact party to fraud.
You have roughly six million programmers who've had to write portable C++ rolling on the floor laughing right now. Merely getting their software to work on 64-bit CPUs as well as 32-bit has been hugely painful for a number of projects I'm aware of which have done stupid things that only worked on a 32-bit CPU and broke as soon as you recompiled the code for 64-bit.
I'm glad to have provided entertainment for so many. And I've seen things like (*((short*)&pointer)) way too often - it dies the death it deserves when you recompile for AMD64. And yet... it will probably work if you recompile for ARM.
Porting a C++ program from x86 to ARM doesn't require any programming at all - you just select a different target and recompile. Perfect CPU port every time.
Not true. Memory alignment requirements, endianness, primitive sizes (eg 32bit vs 64bit pointers), inline assembly etc almost always come into play with non-trivial applications.
Not in this case. Memory alignment, endianness, and primitive sizes match (we are talking specifically about x86 and ARM - please let me know if I don't have my facts straight). Assembly code is not C++ code - of course you'll have to port it! Embedding it in C++ file using non-standard language extensions doesn't change that fact.
Porting is often very hard work, but C++ does code does not change just because of going from one 32-bit word-aligned low-endian target to another. When it needs to be changed in order to port the program it is because of other reasons.
Well, this depends on their target audience.
If you have C/C++ code, porting it to ARM should be a huge deal. Yes there will be some differences, yes, there will be bugs - but in terms of effort its manageable. And more importantly, every single vendor has to do this effort, so Microsoft doesn't have to do anything.
Because Microsoft are saying this now, with no product that anyone can "buy" right now (or even soon), this probably means the audience for this news is *Developers* (the single intelligent word that Mr Balmer has uttered in the last 20 years, so good, he had to say it multiple times for it be considered a quote). They are now selling the ARM architecture to developers. If the developers buy this story, the applications will follow.
And of course, some developers will be more prepared than others. Don't expect an ARM version of Photoshop anytime soon, but an ARM version of Firefox is something that could be cranked out very easily.
You have it backwards. Dealing with the underlying CPU architecture is handled comletely by the compiler, and not in the code at all. Porting a C++ program from x86 to ARM doesn't require any programming at all - you just select a different target and recompile. Perfect CPU port every time. The difficulty of porting a program to another device is in all the differences other than the CPU - mainly the differences in the available software environment (system calls, DirectX, OpenGL, Cocoa, .Net, etc.) and possibly different peripherals.
It might help if the US got some sort of international support and helped the countries who most people believed needed helping, instead of unilaterally invading the ones with the most natural resources. Just saying.
I'm not sure if it was strictly "unilateral", but your point is still very valid. In fact, here in Africa a typical response to hearing about the US invasions in the middle east was "why aren't they liberating Zimbabwe instead, where the locals actually want to be liberated?".
I used to be one as well - after being burned enough times I never bought a game without first getting a working cracked version. Then that became too much of a hassle. Fortunately about the same time as publishers started switching to DRM there has also been a rise in good games being sold without DRM or copy protection (high profile examples: Good Old Games, World of Goo, the Humble Bundles and the Indie Bundles). Now I don't even consider buying a game unless I can use it on my own terms.
PC users do have a much higher rate of theft than console users; there tends to be more dishonesty there. So I can understand the concern.
Wait - do you mean that having a PC increases your chance of being burgled, or that people at a higher burglary-risk are also more likely to own a PC?
If the cable proves that Tsvangirai is working with foreign governments to subvert Mugabe, shouldn't the people of Zimbabwe know that? It seems like it would be in their interest to know.
Tsvangirai is the world's most famous anti-Mugabe activist. Working with foreign governments to subvert Mugabe is the reason he was elected. It was practically his entire election campaign. That is not news to anyone. The matter at hand is not whether Tsvangirai supports Mugable, but rather that Morgan publicly says that sanctions are bad but personally feels that they have merit. In reality, the sanctions suck, but are there for a reason. I doubt that this revelation is likely to alter the opinions of any followers or detractors.
This is a great option for those who would want such a thing. And, upon further consideration, I think that I might just be such a person. Having each appliation synched to its own release schedule rather than to the operating system's sounds is very practical. Also, I like the name.
He is fighting against it. The government is cracking down because if fears guys like him and Jim Bell.
That... does not follow at all.
"The Pirate Bay Co-Founder ... and alleged rapist ... has started a new project which will provide a decentralized p2p based ..."
That should be a new meme. Simply put "an alleged rapist" after every reference to anyone at all, until that particular vector of character assassination becomes meaningless.
It's important to ensure that your subject actually is an alleged rapist though - otherwise you're just being inaccurate and libellous. The trick is to tell someone (a friend sitting next to you at the time will do) that the subject is a rapist, thus permanently transforming the subject into an alleged rapist even if the person you told is fully aware of the meme. It's safe to then clarify that the subject is not actually a rapist, since there is no such thing as "a formerly-alleged rapist".
This idea is inspired by Godwin (an alleged rapist) and his well-known counter-meme, Godwin's Law.
Are turtle necks really that hot?
They are very hot. That's why those of us who live in warmer climates prefer more open necklines, such as v-necks or T-shirts, to avoid heatstroke.
Well-said. Why would anyone hope for a Supreme Court precedent that you are liable for damages based on a some obscure software patent even after changing your software to avoid infringing the patent? Because we dislike Microsoft and want them to lose out of spite? No, thank you. I would much rather have Microsoft win this one.
They do. If you read any of them, you'd realize that they put out the names of civilians who act as informants. I'm sure that doesn't put anyone at risk, nope none at all.
They do? I couldn't find any names when I looked through them. Could you provide a line number where I can see an example for myself?
I realise that you were probably joking, but SA really is a correct and official abbreviation for South Africa. The same abbreviation is also used by Saudi Arabia, San Antonio and the Salvation Army, among others.
What you're referring to is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, which uses ZA instead of the usual SA purely to avoid a naming conflict.
2.57 petaflops per second
floating point operations per second per second?
Well-spotted. It appears that this particular supercomputer gets faster the longer it is left running. Clearly the reason that it ran faster with Linux than with Windows was because in the latter case it needed to be restarted after every Patch Tuesday, thus limiting the potential speed increase to 6.88 zettaflops.
The open source weak spot has always been the infighting, eventual lawsuits, splitting and renaming, remember that old saying about too many cooks in the kitchen?
Exactly the same as with closed source, for exactly the same reasons.
Frankly I'm a little surprised - since in my experience employees are more or less slaves in the US. The entire legal structure seems set up for whatever is easiest and cheapest for employers to do whatever they wish. Employees can sue, and that is often the de-facto suggestion whenever anyone in the US has a problem, but frankly a lot of situations could be avoided if they had a strong legal framework like every other developed country. No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.
Actually, here in the third world employees are guaranteed a certain amount of holiday time, sick leave and maternity leave. Firing employees requires giving them 3 month notice with full pay (although it is possible to hire with a temporary probation period, which IIRC is at most 6 months) and is subject to appeal at labour court if disputed. Oh, and don't even think about discriminating (unless it is to comply with employment equity regulations).
For how long can a session be hijacked anyway? If you close your browser, is the seesion instantly invalidated? Or only after like 5 minutes? I mean, in that case, Blacksheep could scream all it wants, and you'll still be a potential victim even if it warned you and you closed your browser (or tab).
As long as the hijacker keeps using your session the session will stay alive, even if you close your browser. But if you actually log out of the website then the hijacker gets kicked off too. So if Blacksheep tells you that someone's on your account then log out of Facebook immediately. Or, better yet, check that your email address hasn't been changed while the other guy's been on your account, then log out.
Perhaps there's some cause and effect going on there. Companies that are more responsive to customer demands and concerns are, in my experience, more trusted by the customers. Perhaps the banks have already figured out how to compete and just don't realize it yet because being competitive cuts into profit margins.
Being uncompetitive is far more profitable until competition comes and ruins everything.
isn't the Android Market supposed to be more open than the App store?
Absolutely! It's amazing what you can do and still be more open than the App store.
Jokes aside, Google has a degree of responsibility over the apps that they sell to you. It's perfectly reasonable for them to refuse to sell an app which is specifically designed to be installed without the knowledge or consent of the phone's regular user and who's purpose is to spy on the regular user (with costing the owner money from extra SMSs as a side effect), as that can easily be considered illegal. If you really want this program on your phone then Android is open enough to let you install it, but you'll have to get it from somewhere other than Android Market.
Its about time that a lot of people on slashdot realised that money doesn't grow on trees and what they enjoy on the net eventually has to be paid for by someone. If putting up with a short advert means I can continue to enjoy a lot of free sites then thats fine by me and I suspect a lot of other people.
I don't know about you, but whenever I put up a free website I pay for it myself and don't expect to be compensated. However, wanting one's website to be passively self-sustaining is a reasonable desire, and ultimately there's nothing wrong with putting some ads up. Please realise that, in general, even "people on slashdot" aren't necessarily opposed to the existance of advertising, but are rather opposed to advertisers trying to prevent the ads from being ignored. By all means have ads on DVDs but dont make them unskippable. Have ads on your website, but don't make them unblockable. Expecting that visiters should watch even a short ad "as payment for the privilage" of looking at your site is extremely obnoxious.
I personally believe that if Microsoft were to release an official, properly working standalone edition of IE6 then people wouldn't have reason to cling to the old version just because they need it for a particular case. They could even brand it as "Microsoft Intranet Viewer" or something.
And this is newsworthy.... how? DOS is still Microsoft's property, regardless of how thoroughly reverse engineered it has become. This is like dedicating an article to YouTube making a video unavailable because a record label said take it down.
Well, MS-DOS is Microsoft's property. DOS in general is, surprisingly enough, something that Microsoft doesn't have all that much control over other than through their own implementation. DOSBox is in the clear from that angle.
My guess is that it was rejected because DOSBox is a user-programmable platform like Flash, so it breaks the walled-garden paradigm that Apple works hard to maintain.