It isn't necessarily stupid. Some function f() function can probably be implemented in multiple ways, where the different ways are optimal under different circumstances. You want to see some reference implementation, in order to understand the objective of f() above and beyond any written description (owing to the total lack of formal specifications). The malloc library is an excellent example. There are mallocs that are fast, there are mallocs that are secure, there are mallocs that are highly robust, there are mallocs that fix resource usage, there are mallocs that provide debugging information. There are no mallocs that do all of the above, and there are few programmers who would care to write their own specialist version without understanding the code that already comes close to what they want.
It would have been a bug, but not necessarily one that would have security implications, though that could be system-dependent. The summary mentions a specific malloc was used to get a segfault. Another malloc library may well not have faulted. That would only matter if it was possible via the buffer overflow to get yacc to do something (such as run your code) with privileges other than those you would ordinarily have had.
Now, looking at it just as a bug, if the yacc script overflowed the buffer, yacc can either stop cleanly or crash untidily. It has the same effect - nothing much happens - unless, for some weird reason, the kernel holds onto the memory. That would be a kernel bug, though, the yacc bug would merely be a catalyst for exposing it.
I wouldn't say everything. "A Clockwork Orange" and the Gor series are probably not suitable for most pre-teens (even though Amazon has the former on the pre-teen recommended reading list - I didn't bother looking much after that). I say most, because everyone is different and there may well be pre-teens who are intellectually and emotionally mature enough that these are acceptable. I won't rule out the possibility, I just don't think it very likely.
However, there are plenty of books which are edgy, intellectually demanding, and which push the reader to the limits which are ENTIRELY suitable and should be encouraged. Indeed, I would argue that if a novel can be read just once with everything gleaned from it, it wasn't worth the read. But what is challenging? Even advanced readers won't get everything they can out of a single read of, oh, Rab C. Nesbit's classic stories, because there are nuances that are subtle, but it's hardly something you'd give to a modern, sophisticated 12 year old - if you intend to live. Chances are, the kid could claim justifiable homicide, too. Hey, those're well-written stories, but not for that age-group and not for these times.
I definitely recommend "Citizen of the Galaxy" to older pre-teens. The Tripods series are also pretty good, though intended for younger readers. Spaceship Medic is excellent. I do not know why "Clockwork Orange" is on Amazon.com's list of recommended pre-teen sci-fi, or indeed why "Watership Down" is on the same list. The latter is certainly more appropriate, but hardly sci-fi! All the "Target" Doctor Who novels are worthy contenders for a holiday read, with the exception of "Doctor Who and the Zarbi", which has to be the worst novelization of all time. It's a decent enough episode on television, but the novel is ghastly.
If you include fantasy, then Alan Garner's classics (Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Moon of Gomrath, Owl Service, Elidor) are hard to beat for just about anyone. If you don't mind stories with a religious tone, then "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" and "A Wind in the Door" are good reads too. For very young readers, I would probably opt for "Smith of Wooten Major".
Technically, you are correct - platform-agnostic data transfer has been possible since Sun's earliest RPC implementations. However, this seems to be considerably lighter-weight (although so is Mount Everest) and because order is specified, it's going to be much simpler to pluck specific data out of a data stream. You don't need to have an order-agnostic structure and then an ordering layer in each language-specific library.
There have been all kinds of attempts to produce this sort of stuff. RPC, DCE, Corba, DCOM, etc, are programmatic interfaces and handle function calls, synchronization, etc. OPeNDAP is probably the closest to Google's architecture in that it is ONLY data. It's more sophisticated, as it handles much more complex data types than mere structures, but it has its own overheads issues. It isn't designed to scale to terabyte databases, although it DOES scale extremely well and is definitely the preferred method of delivering high-volume structured scientific data - at least when compared to the RPC family of methods, or indeed the XML family. I wouldn't use it for the kind of volume of data Google handles, though, you'd kill the servers.
I can see exceptional value in indexing, cataloguing and processing all articles in back issues of Wireless World (when it was still called that). There is an enormous wealth of information there on how radio technology improved, when and why. There is also a fantastic amount of information on how to achieve specific effects and how to restore old technology. Not to mention a few pieces on how to build a geostationary communications satellite.
Other old journals will likewise have a lot of valuable information in them. Archaeologists discover a lot through searching their own journals, discovering lost and forgotten reports of discoveries. Mathematicians routinely publish in arcane and super-obscure journals, making what is known far more extensive than what is known to be known.
NASA has to pay - or trade - for the use of anything not strictly within their department, even if it is a national asset. Governments are run by accountants, who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
I am impressed, and you can pass on the thanks of myself and virtually all other sane individuals with an interest in space exploration. The two absolutely critical components of a probe are the propellants and the electricity generators (usually, but not always, some form of nuclear decay). Pioneers 10 and 11 probably lost contact through power loss, rather than through radiation damage to the electronics or other failure. Replacing the RTGs might, theoretically, be possible, by sending out a robot with a spare, and there would definitely be a LOT of geek value to that, but building new deep space probes with life-expectancies in excess of 30 years would likely be more cost-effective.
(Now, if anyone happens to have a suitable RTG and a sub-ether electronic thumb to flag down a passing flying saucer, this might be a good opportunity to freak out NASA...)
You're right, we no longer build them like we used to. Viking 1 lasted 6+ years, the Voyager and Pioneer probes all lasted decades despite extreme radiation. In contrast, there is a next-to-zero chance this probe will survive the Martian winter (no idea when that is, though). Yes, the probe is downloading data on automatic, the programs are about as tested as they're going to get, and the batch files the probe is running through will take a long time to complete, but Mars is a dangerous environment. It's not as geologically inactive as had been thought, the dust devils are nasty devils, and very little is understood about the polar regions. Some of those are events NASA can't deal with. A tremor would likely damage or destroy the probe. Even if the probe survived, it would not be pointing at Earth and would likely have no means to correct itself to do so.
(The Giotto probe that flew into Halley's Comet got blasted by pea-sized lumps of rock but had software designed to cope with such a contingency, and the armour to withstand it. Two layers of kevlar, interleaved with two layers of anti-meteorite shielding.)
NASA has grown poorer, is rushing these missions as much as possible, and can't afford to build systems as robustly as they should, but more importantly, missions have become tougher and involve more hazardous environments.
There are thousands of things NASA wants to do, but costs keep going up and funding (in real terms) keeps going down. The costs of buying time on the Deep Space Array, renting a control room, paying for the mission specialists with the skills needed, etc, costs a lot more than running tourist centres. The Government doesn't want facts, it wants PR stunts.
You should know by now I hate to admit the limits of my knowledge.:) I don't know the answer, but I can take a guess at what the answer presumably addresses.
I would imagine it depends on the composition of the winds and the relative strengths. In the case of strengths, that will fall off with the square of the distance. The distances are very large, but so are both the individual sources and the number of those sources. However, it is likely the composition that is the key. The winds are comprised of charged particles. You will be most familiar with two common charged particles - alpha particles (helium nuclei) and beta particles (electrons). Alpha particles in principle do the most damage (they have the greatest electrical charge and the greatest momentum) but are stopped by even a thin piece of paper. Beta particles can pass through considerably tougher barriers, but do much less damage per strike.
(A human is far more likely to suffer severe damage swallowing something that emits alpha particles than emits beta, which is why medical scanners use beta-emitting tracers. The PET scan looks for positron emissions, hence the name, and positrons are beta. PET scans are not risk-free, but they're safe enough.)
The question then becomes one of what the solar winds are comprised of, compared to the galactic winds. Is the sun safer because the winds it emits are more easily absorbed, even though they are technically stronger within the heliosphere than the galactic winds?
It's the boundary where the charged particles that make up the solar wind get blasted by the galactic wind. Somewhere on the perimeter of the galaxy, there will be a similar shock boundary where the galactic winds become too faint and get ripped sway by the intergalactic winds. The solar winds are supposed to offer considerable protection from the galactic winds and I seem to recall hearing that probes that go outside of the heliopause will need far more extensive shielding from radiation to handle the conditions they will meet.
It's easier to have just one heavy maths function and one trivial maths function than two heavy maths functions, so division is easiest implemented as multiplication with the inverse of one of the two numbers, inverses being relatively trivial in exponential notation. As only computers operate this way, the grandparent poster is obviously an artificial intelligence.
Basically, the Napoleonic code worked like a cross between a court martial and a Congressional inquiry. The stated objective was to get to the truth of the matter by means of inquisitors. The problem with the system is that it was designed by militaristic megalomaniacs in the Roman era and perfected by a militaristic megalomaniac in France. Inquisitor-based justice is more easily abused than other forms, to the point where the word "inquisition" has entered the English language in a very negative sense.
The Anglo-Saxon system was basically invented by Alfred the Great (the only king of England to earn the title of "great", such was his achievements) but was merged to some degree from Danelaw, the Danish legal system brought over by Nordic invaders. This legal code asserted certain rights and certain responsibilities for all. This was properly codified under the Magna Carta, which asserted limits to power, the right of an individual to a trial by peers, the right of an individual to not be convicted on unsubstantiated testimony, the prohibition of fines or penalties which denied a person their livelihood and the diplomatic immunity of foreign merchants except at times of war. In all cases, though, it was a trial between a prosecutor and a defendant in which the event in question was less important than whether the defendant should be punished. (Prior to King Alfred, law was whatever the elders or the local leaders decided it was, it was not uniform and there were no established rights or bounds. Prior to the Magna Carta, rulers could not be held to account for abuse of power, and even afterwards it was rare, but in theory it withdrew much immunity from Barons, Lords and the King himself. Each layer asserted stronger rights with stronger bounds and stronger protections.)
Really, a future legal system needs to borrow ideas from both. It's unsound to prosecute a case before establishing what the facts of the case are. Facts should be studied in a more neutral light, only getting into the spin doctoring once the jury knows what is being spun. The Anglo-Saxon system, by being very formalized and definite in rights, works wonderfully if the jury is swayed more on an intellectual basis than an emotional one, far more so than the Napoleonic system. It is easy to corrupt, though, if information is denied and one side plays dirty.
In England, you'll sometimes see a mix of the two concepts, where there is a public inquest followed by a trial, where the inquest establishes the facts and the trial then prosecutes on the basis of those facts. That's a good arrangement - not perfect, but a lot better than most.
If you trace far enough in that direction, you (almost always) eventually reach a star. There are only a handful of places in the sky where there are "holes" big enough to see the light from the first galaxies.
This gets me onto another train of thought. Maps of early cosmic radiation tend to be based heavily on extrapolation and calculation, rather than direct observation, because there simply isn't enough sky that does not have any stars, gas clouds, nebulae, pulsars, magnetars, black holes, quasars, etc, to get a directly measurable reading. Everything I've listed will emit and/or absorb and/or lens electromagnetic radiation, including early background. You can get an adequate low-res map by just measuring directly (as the early experimentors did), but you can't get an accurate, high-definition map of what was actually there without some sort of adaptation. You can't assume it's all evenly modified, as you can see gas clouds in one direction, stars in another, and (most important) holes to the very early Universe in yet others. Clearly, the three cases will result in different degrees and types of alteration from the "true" historic values, so to get the "true" historic values, you must subtract out as much of the later noise as you sensibly can.
...I hope they have excellent lawyers and maybe a few heavily-armed grunts. International Star Registry is bound to go after them, but with luck the lawyers will figure out a way to counter-sue ISR for all the money it has. The grunts? Well, technically, they'd be there because rich people don't like stopping being rich and definitely don't like their revenue stream drying up and might do something really stupid. OJ doesn't pay anything of his fine because his money is overseas and/or otherwise unreachable.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't necessarily stupid. Some function f() function can probably be implemented in multiple ways, where the different ways are optimal under different circumstances. You want to see some reference implementation, in order to understand the objective of f() above and beyond any written description (owing to the total lack of formal specifications). The malloc library is an excellent example. There are mallocs that are fast, there are mallocs that are secure, there are mallocs that are highly robust, there are mallocs that fix resource usage, there are mallocs that provide debugging information. There are no mallocs that do all of the above, and there are few programmers who would care to write their own specialist version without understanding the code that already comes close to what they want.
Now, looking at it just as a bug, if the yacc script overflowed the buffer, yacc can either stop cleanly or crash untidily. It has the same effect - nothing much happens - unless, for some weird reason, the kernel holds onto the memory. That would be a kernel bug, though, the yacc bug would merely be a catalyst for exposing it.
However, there are plenty of books which are edgy, intellectually demanding, and which push the reader to the limits which are ENTIRELY suitable and should be encouraged. Indeed, I would argue that if a novel can be read just once with everything gleaned from it, it wasn't worth the read. But what is challenging? Even advanced readers won't get everything they can out of a single read of, oh, Rab C. Nesbit's classic stories, because there are nuances that are subtle, but it's hardly something you'd give to a modern, sophisticated 12 year old - if you intend to live. Chances are, the kid could claim justifiable homicide, too. Hey, those're well-written stories, but not for that age-group and not for these times.
The Mayans might have. (ref: Same article as parent)
If you include fantasy, then Alan Garner's classics (Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Moon of Gomrath, Owl Service, Elidor) are hard to beat for just about anyone. If you don't mind stories with a religious tone, then "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" and "A Wind in the Door" are good reads too. For very young readers, I would probably opt for "Smith of Wooten Major".
There have been all kinds of attempts to produce this sort of stuff. RPC, DCE, Corba, DCOM, etc, are programmatic interfaces and handle function calls, synchronization, etc. OPeNDAP is probably the closest to Google's architecture in that it is ONLY data. It's more sophisticated, as it handles much more complex data types than mere structures, but it has its own overheads issues. It isn't designed to scale to terabyte databases, although it DOES scale extremely well and is definitely the preferred method of delivering high-volume structured scientific data - at least when compared to the RPC family of methods, or indeed the XML family. I wouldn't use it for the kind of volume of data Google handles, though, you'd kill the servers.
Given how evil Google can be at times, we can assume they are working in base 13.
...that he try flying over Greece or Turkey. It's just as stupid as trying for Australia, but the ending will be quicker and less painful.
Other old journals will likewise have a lot of valuable information in them. Archaeologists discover a lot through searching their own journals, discovering lost and forgotten reports of discoveries. Mathematicians routinely publish in arcane and super-obscure journals, making what is known far more extensive than what is known to be known.
NASA has to pay - or trade - for the use of anything not strictly within their department, even if it is a national asset. Governments are run by accountants, who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
(Now, if anyone happens to have a suitable RTG and a sub-ether electronic thumb to flag down a passing flying saucer, this might be a good opportunity to freak out NASA...)
I think it's a typo, and E/PO should really be C3PO
(The Giotto probe that flew into Halley's Comet got blasted by pea-sized lumps of rock but had software designed to cope with such a contingency, and the armour to withstand it. Two layers of kevlar, interleaved with two layers of anti-meteorite shielding.)
NASA has grown poorer, is rushing these missions as much as possible, and can't afford to build systems as robustly as they should, but more importantly, missions have become tougher and involve more hazardous environments.
There are thousands of things NASA wants to do, but costs keep going up and funding (in real terms) keeps going down. The costs of buying time on the Deep Space Array, renting a control room, paying for the mission specialists with the skills needed, etc, costs a lot more than running tourist centres. The Government doesn't want facts, it wants PR stunts.
I would imagine it depends on the composition of the winds and the relative strengths. In the case of strengths, that will fall off with the square of the distance. The distances are very large, but so are both the individual sources and the number of those sources. However, it is likely the composition that is the key. The winds are comprised of charged particles. You will be most familiar with two common charged particles - alpha particles (helium nuclei) and beta particles (electrons). Alpha particles in principle do the most damage (they have the greatest electrical charge and the greatest momentum) but are stopped by even a thin piece of paper. Beta particles can pass through considerably tougher barriers, but do much less damage per strike.
(A human is far more likely to suffer severe damage swallowing something that emits alpha particles than emits beta, which is why medical scanners use beta-emitting tracers. The PET scan looks for positron emissions, hence the name, and positrons are beta. PET scans are not risk-free, but they're safe enough.)
The question then becomes one of what the solar winds are comprised of, compared to the galactic winds. Is the sun safer because the winds it emits are more easily absorbed, even though they are technically stronger within the heliosphere than the galactic winds?
It's the boundary where the charged particles that make up the solar wind get blasted by the galactic wind. Somewhere on the perimeter of the galaxy, there will be a similar shock boundary where the galactic winds become too faint and get ripped sway by the intergalactic winds. The solar winds are supposed to offer considerable protection from the galactic winds and I seem to recall hearing that probes that go outside of the heliopause will need far more extensive shielding from radiation to handle the conditions they will meet.
I wanna LaTeX renderer for Firefox! Aaaaaargh!
It's easier to have just one heavy maths function and one trivial maths function than two heavy maths functions, so division is easiest implemented as multiplication with the inverse of one of the two numbers, inverses being relatively trivial in exponential notation. As only computers operate this way, the grandparent poster is obviously an artificial intelligence.
I imagined I read it, so that's +i.
Basically, the Napoleonic code worked like a cross between a court martial and a Congressional inquiry. The stated objective was to get to the truth of the matter by means of inquisitors. The problem with the system is that it was designed by militaristic megalomaniacs in the Roman era and perfected by a militaristic megalomaniac in France. Inquisitor-based justice is more easily abused than other forms, to the point where the word "inquisition" has entered the English language in a very negative sense.
The Anglo-Saxon system was basically invented by Alfred the Great (the only king of England to earn the title of "great", such was his achievements) but was merged to some degree from Danelaw, the Danish legal system brought over by Nordic invaders. This legal code asserted certain rights and certain responsibilities for all. This was properly codified under the Magna Carta, which asserted limits to power, the right of an individual to a trial by peers, the right of an individual to not be convicted on unsubstantiated testimony, the prohibition of fines or penalties which denied a person their livelihood and the diplomatic immunity of foreign merchants except at times of war. In all cases, though, it was a trial between a prosecutor and a defendant in which the event in question was less important than whether the defendant should be punished. (Prior to King Alfred, law was whatever the elders or the local leaders decided it was, it was not uniform and there were no established rights or bounds. Prior to the Magna Carta, rulers could not be held to account for abuse of power, and even afterwards it was rare, but in theory it withdrew much immunity from Barons, Lords and the King himself. Each layer asserted stronger rights with stronger bounds and stronger protections.)
Really, a future legal system needs to borrow ideas from both. It's unsound to prosecute a case before establishing what the facts of the case are. Facts should be studied in a more neutral light, only getting into the spin doctoring once the jury knows what is being spun. The Anglo-Saxon system, by being very formalized and definite in rights, works wonderfully if the jury is swayed more on an intellectual basis than an emotional one, far more so than the Napoleonic system. It is easy to corrupt, though, if information is denied and one side plays dirty.
In England, you'll sometimes see a mix of the two concepts, where there is a public inquest followed by a trial, where the inquest establishes the facts and the trial then prosecutes on the basis of those facts. That's a good arrangement - not perfect, but a lot better than most.
Memorizing the digits of transcendental numbers simply doesn't apply to the repair of elecronics or microelectronics. Ohhhhh, THAT sort of PI....!
Provide the name in encrypted, uuencoded form, then at some (safe) later date, provide the decryption key.
Linus found the kernel bug causing that and provided a patch. (Slashdot ran a story a while ago about it.) You may need to upgrade to a newer kernel.
This gets me onto another train of thought. Maps of early cosmic radiation tend to be based heavily on extrapolation and calculation, rather than direct observation, because there simply isn't enough sky that does not have any stars, gas clouds, nebulae, pulsars, magnetars, black holes, quasars, etc, to get a directly measurable reading. Everything I've listed will emit and/or absorb and/or lens electromagnetic radiation, including early background. You can get an adequate low-res map by just measuring directly (as the early experimentors did), but you can't get an accurate, high-definition map of what was actually there without some sort of adaptation. You can't assume it's all evenly modified, as you can see gas clouds in one direction, stars in another, and (most important) holes to the very early Universe in yet others. Clearly, the three cases will result in different degrees and types of alteration from the "true" historic values, so to get the "true" historic values, you must subtract out as much of the later noise as you sensibly can.
...I hope they have excellent lawyers and maybe a few heavily-armed grunts. International Star Registry is bound to go after them, but with luck the lawyers will figure out a way to counter-sue ISR for all the money it has. The grunts? Well, technically, they'd be there because rich people don't like stopping being rich and definitely don't like their revenue stream drying up and might do something really stupid. OJ doesn't pay anything of his fine because his money is overseas and/or otherwise unreachable.