What I did was perform a coup on the release process, and now I look at every warning before I release a new version. Sure, I end up doing the work, but at least I don't foist crap on the world.
Took me forever to figure out what I was doing. That bit about it always seeming to happen after a breakaway ended up being the key difference, though, because whenever the breakaway conditions came up, I was writing to player->movelist[6].x and player->movelist[6].y when I'd only declared the arrays to have 6 movelist elements to begin with. Not too far down on the player struct was player->strength, so that turned ou to be the problem.
Um... all because you're using C doesn't mean you can't use abstraction, and the use of 6 is pretty inexcusable. Even K&R had #define!!
My advice: if this is how you code, stay away from Perl.
Actually, this is not 100% true. When you cast a reference to a subclass type, the interpreter performs a necessary runtime check not required in C:
import java.util.*;
class foo {
public static void int main(String args[]) {
Vector bar = new Vector();
bar.add(new Integer(666));
Integer x = (Integer)bar.elementAt(0);// pesky run-time check
}
IIRC, there are a couple of other run-time checks as well. A quick look through the opcodes in the Java virtual machine should help you spot them.
And as for optimzations you can do better at compile time, try register allocation!!! I know Java people don't think about this, since they think they live in a stack-based world, but last time I checked, picking optimal registers was still an NP-complete problem, which is expensive on CPU's with lots of registers (meaning everything except the x86).
It may seem like compilers don't need static optimizations, but I think that has more to do with the lack of high-performance compilers for anything other than FORTRAN than the worthlessness static compilation.
When I used to work in a warehouse, everything was marked fragile. Heavy, metal things without movable parts were marked fragile. Crates of cereal were marked fragile.
You can't treat everything as if it was easily breakable, so we basically treated everything as if it wasn't. Not ideal, but I don't really see any alternative as long as those labeling boxes are dishonest in an attempt to retrieve special treatment.
That said, why should I donate my spare cycles to a project that will only help those who can afford to pay.
While I mostly agree with you, remember that patents are actually good in some regards. First, the information in the patents must be made public. Second, they do expire eventually.
If I was a person dying of AIDS in Brazil, unable to afford the drugs that would keep me alive, I might not be so impressed with this argument, but the research will eventually be moved into the public domain (assuming they follow the typical route and patent the related technology, and Disney doesn't get patent law changed to extend them to 2.73E4 years).
Well, we could stop bending over and grabbing our ankles to protect the interests of big business for starters.
Fine. Quit buying their stuff. Next?
Oh wait, what, that's not good enough? You want to force other people to have to accept your ban on big business? Your choice isn't enough?
And if I choose not to spend billions on a bailout of the inefficient airline industry? It's not capitalism that I am opposed to, it is when the government spends tax dollars propping up allegedly for-profit businesses, and then people like you seem to think that if I oppose this that I'm forcing some sort of consumer choice down your throat. Get over your bad self.
Of course, the real problem is that we do unpopular actions worldwide.
Tell me, your confused blathering makes you real unpopular with intelligent people. Does that give us the right to deal with you in Bin Laden's manner? How about we just institute public caning to help guide some of our weaker citizens?
According to your reasoning, this approach is justified.
Huh? My reasoning is this: if you don't care what people think about you, don't be surprised if they don't like you. My point is not that killing is justified - that's your point. Rather I hold that one cannot defeat hatred with violence, and that the problem is hatred.
Ironically, I'm sure you would be happy to cane me. I fear you may have a lot in common with Osama.:(
simply to protect our economic interests (sorry, Saudi Arabia!
There's the parallel. You hate big business, but have to buy their products every day. You hate countries like Saudi Arabia, but probably drive a car and use their oil.
You really need to make a choice and quit lying to yourself: become a hermit and follow your principles, or learn that buying a product does not mean you fully endorse their belief system.
Actually, I don't own a car. I use public transportation. I recycle. I don't eat meat. I'm not sure why you think I should be a hermit, but I do follow my principles, thanks.
This means signing treaties to submit to the decisions of world justice
This would be a violation of the contract this country is based on. For a political leader or a citizen to advocate this is to declare opposition to the laws of the US. Some call it treason, but that is such a distasteful word.
I assume this means that you think that we should pull out of the GATT? Oops - that's about free trade, so it must be a good thing.
The U.S. Military already has a separate justice system, not subject to civilian rules. Since we already have strict guidelines forbidding human rights abuses by our soldiers, why would it matter if we signed a treaty saying we won't tolerate that? We already agree to hand over civilians to foreign justice, and yet for some reason that's not treason!
The U.S. has no problems dragging foreign leaders out of their countries and taking them to trial (admittedly, real scum bags, but we're talking about princples here, right?). Why is it okay to do unto others but not vice versa? Might makes right?
Look. Instead of neutering the US, leave. Our constitution is quite clear and is a contract with all who live here. You obviously value some other order where you can push people around. I'd suggest you move to Britain. They've done a great job neutering the country, feeling guilty about not being loved by others, etc. You'll fit right in there. Of course, Canada's on their way there already and they're a cheaper airfare.
All because I think the U.S. should play by the same rules as everybody else doesn't mean that I should have to leave.
I don't want the U.S. neutered, I want it to pursue measures that will help move towards genuine, long term peace. Continuing an arrogant, narrowly self-interested foreign agenda won't do it, not matter how much you spend on ABM techology.
I agree with you that the Israelis get a lot of bad press, and the Arabs tend to forget that they are the ones who attacked Israel with a "death to all Jews" policy.
I also think (and maintained even 5 years ago) that it was foolish to trade land for peace. Once your land is gone, it's gone, but it's trivial for a peace to end.
Nevertheless, the current breakdown of the peace process was started by the visit of the Israeli president to Palestine. Lets face it, the Jewish "settlement" movement is designed to gain a foothold in Arab territory, and make Israeli pullout in Palestine to complicated to do effectively. I find this a fundamentally dishonest approach to occupation in the Palestine territory, and until Israel commits to ending this policy, I don't know how it can expect the Palestinians to take what they say at face value.
But killing people is almost always wrong, and the Palestinians had certainly not been mistreated enough to justify terror bombings!
Your "it's not us, it's them" attitude is exactly the kind of thinking that will keep the violence going forever. Until both sides step back and agree to end the blame game, innocents will continue to die useless, painful deaths. For it's part, the U.S. should not support either side until genuine concessions for peace occur.
There is no logical reason why the governement could do a better job. A better solution would be private sector security with higher enforced standards. Of course the airlines would much rather the government pays for security.
How about this for a logical reason: less conflict of interest. Airlines have to keep shareholders (like me) happy, and therefore have to turn profit. There is always the temptation to cut corners that consumers won't notice to make extra money.
From a fairness point of view, I don't think government funded security is a good idea becuase people who do not fly should not pay for the security of those who do.
<sarcasm>
I agree, we should do away with government roads since those who do not drive should not pay for the convenience of those who do. We should also do away with public education, libraries, art in public places, public sanitation, and pretty much everything other than fast food.
</sarcasm>
One problem with this is that the increased efficiency gained by doing things in a uniform manner more than offsets the minor unfairness to those who do not take advantage of the specific service offered. Not to mention the problem that some members of society (e.g. children) simply can't afford to pay for what they need, period.
Personally, I wish some right-wingers would complain about all the money the government throws away, rather than just projects that take away the ability of some corporation to make a profit. (I guess that's Libertarians - they keep having a hard time convincing people that we should simply shut down the government, though.)
Something I wrote in a private e-mail on 2001-11-02:
What can we do to protect ourselves from terrorism? Well, we could stop bending over and grabbing our ankles to protect the interests of big business for starters. How about we separate the FAA into a government body that is there to foster the airline industry (deferring discussion about whether we really need this body or not) and one that is there to watchdog the industry. No more "cost-benefit analysis" on security, at least, not driven by shareholders
Dear Airlines:
Sorry, you can't protect us, we want our elected officials to do that, thank you very much.
Of course, the real problem is that we do unpopular actions worldwide.We can't make everyone happy, but I don't think we've had a consistent
foreign policy since the end of the Cold War (blame this one on Bush the Father, but unfortunately even more on Clinton). We need to stop supporting governments that don't fit American ideals, simply to protect our economic interests (sorry, Saudi Arabia!). We need to take a stand to Israel and withdraw support until they really, truly pull out of the West Bank (sorry, big Jewish lobby!).
We need to partipate in the world community the same as everybody else. This means paying our U.N. bill (all of it, and not just when we need something from the U.N.). This means signing treaties to submit to the decisions of world justice (like the court that many countries think
Osama should be tried under, but the U.S. doesn't recognize). This means signing small arms, land mine, and other treaties, in spite of the cost to our domestic arms business and inconvience to our military, both in Korea as well as when cluster bombing. This means not forcing U.S. exports on countries that don't want them for health, political, or other reasons.
I'd be more in favor of a War on Isolationism more than a War on Terror. I'd be even more in favor of no more wars on anything.
Yeah, FreeBSD rocks, unless you want a multithreaded program that doesn't choke on disk I/O (MySQL is particularly suckful on FreeBSD). Oops.
Or an OS that supports the built-in network card in my laptop (it's in the Linux PCMCIA support, and worked on the Windows that was on the box when I bought it). Damn.
Or an install program that doesn't lock solid on my old AMD Irongate chipset (both floppy and CD-ROM boot require hitting the reset button on this box with FreeBSD, but boots fine with Linux and Windows). Yikes!
Linux has better hardware support (both CPU and peripheral), better 3rd-party software (or dare I say any 3rd-party software), a decent array of distributions to match whatever your specific install requirements are, and is GPL.
Sorry, FreeBSD sits squarely in the "why bother?" camp.
History channel is worse with it's solid gold logo and the word "History" on everything. It would be highly preferrable to have a transparent "H" and nothing else.
I have a friend who first saw the History Channel with Hitler giving one of his speaches, with a big gold "H" in the corner. From then on, it was the Hitler Channel. (Don't worry, I'm not a Nazi, except occasionally during Multiplayer Wolfenstein.);)
The "Fix for insecure regexp" and "Important security bugfix" in the "Miscellaneous Bugfixes" from the press release bother me.
I am subscribed to the Debian security mailing list, and use the security.debian.org site for apt-get of the latest fixes. However, if the fact that there are fixes that don't appear in any announcements is worrisome!
Hopefully it isn't as bad as I think it is, and they were just discovered as this release was on the way out the door. Still, a security advisory would be nice on these!:(
Why, I do think you're biased, and our Dell boxes work very nicely once Captain Linux (not his real name) here has installed Linux on them, thank you.
Now that Sun boxes have PCI buses and run (optionally) IDE hard disks, they really aren't anything more than slow, expensive PC's for most applications.
If you don't need 64-bit processing or lots of CPU's, server PC's are just as reliable as Sun boxes, do the same work, and cost a lot less. Plus, if you run Linux, you never have the joy that I did of spending two days tracking down a bug and having Sun tell me they already knew about it. *grumble*
I hate Microsoft as much as the next Linux fan, but the article was about money saved versus Unix systems.
It's a good thing I hate Sun too.:) Or maybe they were using some other Unix? Naaa...
Re:Quick and Dirty Interrupt Handler
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but the 80286 was available in 1982. MS-DOS 2.0 (released in 1983) could have included memory protection for systems that supported it.
Re:Not only does XP have the command prompt
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
Thank goodness! I remember explaining my edlin mastery to my colleges (about 5 years ago), claiming that "DOS will always have edlin". The bastards then typed "edlin" and it wasn't in the install (Windows 95?).
Slashdot Mirror
If you get hacked, simply restart your machine, and you are back to factory settings.
And are hacked again in 15 minutes.
This is why computer forensics are important.
The press release says "practically random", which means basically nothing.
It also mentions "temporal restraints" which means it runs to slow to use anywhere.
Did you mean this?
Slashdot: News for nerds. Again, and again, and again...
I feel your pain.
What I did was perform a coup on the release process, and now I look at every warning before I release a new version. Sure, I end up doing the work, but at least I don't foist crap on the world.
Took me forever to figure out what I was doing. That bit about it always seeming to happen after a breakaway ended up being the key difference, though, because whenever the breakaway conditions came up, I was writing to player->movelist[6].x and player->movelist[6].y when I'd only declared the arrays to have 6 movelist elements to begin with. Not too far down on the player struct was player->strength, so that turned ou to be the problem.
Um... all because you're using C doesn't mean you can't use abstraction, and the use of 6 is pretty inexcusable. Even K&R had #define!!
My advice: if this is how you code, stay away from Perl.
And all I want is const, so I don't have to worry about all arguments being passed by value.
Those other things seem kind of pointless relatively speaking.
Actually, this is not 100% true. When you cast a reference to a subclass type, the interpreter performs a necessary runtime check not required in C:
// pesky run-time check
import java.util.*;
class foo {
public static void int main(String args[]) {
Vector bar = new Vector();
bar.add(new Integer(666));
Integer x = (Integer)bar.elementAt(0);
}
IIRC, there are a couple of other run-time checks as well. A quick look through the opcodes in the Java virtual machine should help you spot them.
And as for optimzations you can do better at compile time, try register allocation!!! I know Java people don't think about this, since they think they live in a stack-based world, but last time I checked, picking optimal registers was still an NP-complete problem, which is expensive on CPU's with lots of registers (meaning everything except the x86).
It may seem like compilers don't need static optimizations, but I think that has more to do with the lack of high-performance compilers for anything other than FORTRAN than the worthlessness static compilation.
When I used to work in a warehouse, everything was marked fragile. Heavy, metal things without movable parts were marked fragile. Crates of cereal were marked fragile.
You can't treat everything as if it was easily breakable, so we basically treated everything as if it wasn't. Not ideal, but I don't really see any alternative as long as those labeling boxes are dishonest in an attempt to retrieve special treatment.
That said, why should I donate my spare cycles to a project that will only help those who can afford to pay.
While I mostly agree with you, remember that patents are actually good in some regards. First, the information in the patents must be made public. Second, they do expire eventually.
If I was a person dying of AIDS in Brazil, unable to afford the drugs that would keep me alive, I might not be so impressed with this argument, but the research will eventually be moved into the public domain (assuming they follow the typical route and patent the related technology, and Disney doesn't get patent law changed to extend them to 2.73E4 years).
One of the people conducting the study, Abha Ahuja, has passed away.
Fine. Quit buying their stuff. Next?
Oh wait, what, that's not good enough? You want to force other people to have to accept your ban on big business? Your choice isn't enough?
And if I choose not to spend billions on a bailout of the inefficient airline industry? It's not capitalism that I am opposed to, it is when the government spends tax dollars propping up allegedly for-profit businesses, and then people like you seem to think that if I oppose this that I'm forcing some sort of consumer choice down your throat. Get over your bad self.
Of course, the real problem is that we do unpopular actions worldwide.
Tell me, your confused blathering makes you real unpopular with intelligent people. Does that give us the right to deal with you in Bin Laden's manner? How about we just institute public caning to help guide some of our weaker citizens?
According to your reasoning, this approach is justified.
Huh? My reasoning is this: if you don't care what people think about you, don't be surprised if they don't like you. My point is not that killing is justified - that's your point. Rather I hold that one cannot defeat hatred with violence, and that the problem is hatred.
Ironically, I'm sure you would be happy to cane me. I fear you may have a lot in common with Osama. :(
simply to protect our economic interests (sorry, Saudi Arabia!
There's the parallel. You hate big business, but have to buy their products every day. You hate countries like Saudi Arabia, but probably drive a car and use their oil.
You really need to make a choice and quit lying to yourself: become a hermit and follow your principles, or learn that buying a product does not mean you fully endorse their belief system.
Actually, I don't own a car. I use public transportation. I recycle. I don't eat meat. I'm not sure why you think I should be a hermit, but I do follow my principles, thanks.
This means signing treaties to submit to the decisions of world justice
This would be a violation of the contract this country is based on. For a political leader or a citizen to advocate this is to declare opposition to the laws of the US. Some call it treason, but that is such a distasteful word.
I assume this means that you think that we should pull out of the GATT? Oops - that's about free trade, so it must be a good thing.
The U.S. Military already has a separate justice system, not subject to civilian rules. Since we already have strict guidelines forbidding human rights abuses by our soldiers, why would it matter if we signed a treaty saying we won't tolerate that? We already agree to hand over civilians to foreign justice, and yet for some reason that's not treason!
The U.S. has no problems dragging foreign leaders out of their countries and taking them to trial (admittedly, real scum bags, but we're talking about princples here, right?). Why is it okay to do unto others but not vice versa? Might makes right?
Look. Instead of neutering the US, leave. Our constitution is quite clear and is a contract with all who live here. You obviously value some other order where you can push people around. I'd suggest you move to Britain. They've done a great job neutering the country, feeling guilty about not being loved by others, etc. You'll fit right in there. Of course, Canada's on their way there already and they're a cheaper airfare.
All because I think the U.S. should play by the same rules as everybody else doesn't mean that I should have to leave.
I don't want the U.S. neutered, I want it to pursue measures that will help move towards genuine, long term peace. Continuing an arrogant, narrowly self-interested foreign agenda won't do it, not matter how much you spend on ABM techology.
I agree with you that the Israelis get a lot of bad press, and the Arabs tend to forget that they are the ones who attacked Israel with a "death to all Jews" policy.
I also think (and maintained even 5 years ago) that it was foolish to trade land for peace. Once your land is gone, it's gone, but it's trivial for a peace to end.
Nevertheless, the current breakdown of the peace process was started by the visit of the Israeli president to Palestine. Lets face it, the Jewish "settlement" movement is designed to gain a foothold in Arab territory, and make Israeli pullout in Palestine to complicated to do effectively. I find this a fundamentally dishonest approach to occupation in the Palestine territory, and until Israel commits to ending this policy, I don't know how it can expect the Palestinians to take what they say at face value.
But killing people is almost always wrong, and the Palestinians had certainly not been mistreated enough to justify terror bombings!
Your "it's not us, it's them" attitude is exactly the kind of thinking that will keep the violence going forever. Until both sides step back and agree to end the blame game, innocents will continue to die useless, painful deaths. For it's part, the U.S. should not support either side until genuine concessions for peace occur.
There is no logical reason why the governement could do a better job. A better solution would be private sector security with higher enforced standards. Of course the airlines would much rather the government pays for security.
How about this for a logical reason: less conflict of interest. Airlines have to keep shareholders (like me) happy, and therefore have to turn profit. There is always the temptation to cut corners that consumers won't notice to make extra money.
From a fairness point of view, I don't think government funded security is a good idea becuase people who do not fly should not pay for the security of those who do.
<sarcasm>
I agree, we should do away with government roads since those who do not drive should not pay for the convenience of those who do. We should also do away with public education, libraries, art in public places, public sanitation, and pretty much everything other than fast food.
</sarcasm>
One problem with this is that the increased efficiency gained by doing things in a uniform manner more than offsets the minor unfairness to those who do not take advantage of the specific service offered. Not to mention the problem that some members of society (e.g. children) simply can't afford to pay for what they need, period.
Personally, I wish some right-wingers would complain about all the money the government throws away, rather than just projects that take away the ability of some corporation to make a profit. (I guess that's Libertarians - they keep having a hard time convincing people that we should simply shut down the government, though.)
What can we do to protect ourselves from terrorism? Well, we could stop bending over and grabbing our ankles to protect the interests of big business for starters. How about we separate the FAA into a government body that is there to foster the airline industry (deferring discussion about whether we really need this body or not) and one that is there to watchdog the industry. No more "cost-benefit analysis" on security, at least, not driven by shareholders
Of course, the real problem is that we do unpopular actions worldwide.We can't make everyone happy, but I don't think we've had a consistent foreign policy since the end of the Cold War (blame this one on Bush the Father, but unfortunately even more on Clinton). We need to stop supporting governments that don't fit American ideals, simply to protect our economic interests (sorry, Saudi Arabia!). We need to take a stand to Israel and withdraw support until they really, truly pull out of the West Bank (sorry, big Jewish lobby!).
We need to partipate in the world community the same as everybody else. This means paying our U.N. bill (all of it, and not just when we need something from the U.N.). This means signing treaties to submit to the decisions of world justice (like the court that many countries think Osama should be tried under, but the U.S. doesn't recognize). This means signing small arms, land mine, and other treaties, in spite of the cost to our domestic arms business and inconvience to our military, both in Korea as well as when cluster bombing. This means not forcing U.S. exports on countries that don't want them for health, political, or other reasons.
I'd be more in favor of a War on Isolationism more than a War on Terror. I'd be even more in favor of no more wars on anything.
Live you life as you always have. Go to work, raise your kids, spend your money, and be happy until given a legitimate reason not to be.
No, we haven't been programmed to be happy little consumers, have we?
I followed the link to MonarchComputer.com site they used to build their "Ultimate Linux Box", and what did I see?
This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.0 and above.
Yuck.
Yeah, FreeBSD rocks, unless you want a multithreaded program that doesn't choke on disk I/O (MySQL is particularly suckful on FreeBSD). Oops.
Or an OS that supports the built-in network card in my laptop (it's in the Linux PCMCIA support, and worked on the Windows that was on the box when I bought it). Damn.
Or an install program that doesn't lock solid on my old AMD Irongate chipset (both floppy and CD-ROM boot require hitting the reset button on this box with FreeBSD, but boots fine with Linux and Windows). Yikes!
Linux has better hardware support (both CPU and peripheral), better 3rd-party software (or dare I say any 3rd-party software), a decent array of distributions to match whatever your specific install requirements are, and is GPL.
Sorry, FreeBSD sits squarely in the "why bother?" camp.
History channel is worse with it's solid gold logo and the word "History" on everything. It would be highly preferrable to have a transparent "H" and nothing else.
;)
I have a friend who first saw the History Channel with Hitler giving one of his speaches, with a big gold "H" in the corner. From then on, it was the Hitler Channel. (Don't worry, I'm not a Nazi, except occasionally during Multiplayer Wolfenstein.)
The "Fix for insecure regexp" and "Important security bugfix" in the "Miscellaneous Bugfixes" from the press release bother me.
:(
I am subscribed to the Debian security mailing list, and use the security.debian.org site for apt-get of the latest fixes. However, if the fact that there are fixes that don't appear in any announcements is worrisome!
Hopefully it isn't as bad as I think it is, and they were just discovered as this release was on the way out the door. Still, a security advisory would be nice on these!
Indeed.
But isn't this why God invented metamoderation?
Why, I do think you're biased, and our Dell boxes work very nicely once Captain Linux (not his real name) here has installed Linux on them, thank you.
Now that Sun boxes have PCI buses and run (optionally) IDE hard disks, they really aren't anything more than slow, expensive PC's for most applications.
If you don't need 64-bit processing or lots of CPU's, server PC's are just as reliable as Sun boxes, do the same work, and cost a lot less. Plus, if you run Linux, you never have the joy that I did of spending two days tracking down a bug and having Sun tell me they already knew about it. *grumble*
Don't believe the hype.
I have the same motherboard, so was very interested. :) In the picture, however, those are definately fans attached to the cooler. I think we're hosed.
My next PC will probably have a Cyrix chip and run without a fan. Slow, but sooner or later they'll be faster than my current box (700 MHz Athlon).
Let me know how the foam goes!
I hate Microsoft as much as the next Linux fan, but the article was about money saved versus Unix systems.
:) Or maybe they were using some other Unix? Naaa...
It's a good thing I hate Sun too.
Yeah, but the 80286 was available in 1982. MS-DOS 2.0 (released in 1983) could have included memory protection for systems that supported it.
Thank goodness! I remember explaining my edlin mastery to my colleges (about 5 years ago), claiming that "DOS will always have edlin". The bastards then typed "edlin" and it wasn't in the install (Windows 95?).