We don't need to worry - unix has the "natural appeal" for aspiring programmers.
Let me guess, you're an Unix zealot. Only someone who's been completely indoctrinated to the New Jersey Cause would honestly think that Unix is "natural". If you got out of your coccoon for a while, you'd see that not everyone thinks like you, not everyone worships Unix. This "natural appeal" nonsense is like a priest saying that Christianity has the "natural appeal" for children - pure drivel.
And, with unix,they get all the necessary tools for free.
Oh, please. Just as you can pay a bundle for, say, Sun's "official" development kits for C++ or Fortran in Solaris, you can pay nothing for Cygnus' port of the GNU development software to Windows. Unix isn't in itself any less proprietary or commercial than Windows.
First of all, I'm not giving an "argument by Einstein" (chuckle). I'm not an Einstein-worshipper either, but I'm just wondering: what if the old fella was right where QM is concerned? Trevor Marshall and others certainly seem to think so. And if you dismiss these people's point straight away, merely because so many scientific geniuses of the 20th century developed QM, then you're the one who's pulling an "argument by Feynman" (or by Heisenberg, or by Pauli)...
Frankly, I never liked the Copenhagen Interpretation at all (it certainly justifies the name "quantum magic", and gives the entire scientific enterprise a bad name), and maybe all of QM is based upon a faulty foundation. Yes, it'd be a monumental error, but if there's ever been a community that could make it, it's today's physics community. (I've seen it from the inside; if you have too, you know what I'm talking about. The mutual reinforcing of dogma; the unwillingness to test, experiment, reformulate, or do anything that even smacks of real science; the lack of intellectual honesty; the cargo-cult science; the mental laziness; the rigid structure of academia which requires one to conform to the dogma to get respected, or even to be acknowledged at all; the general subscription to Bohr & co.'s distorted (not to mention depressing and counterproductive) idea of what science is... Feynman is certainly rolling on his grave - as is Einstein.)
Oops, bad copy-paste! That's the link I intended; sorry to all others for the misunderstanding. While we're at it, there's also this one; while Thompson certainly doesn't seem to have "what it takes" (as Trevor Marshall does), her site is also quite interesting.
Ever since I've been studying cryptography, poor Alice has been trying to talk to Bob without having that bitch Eve eavesdrop. Why can't Eve just let them be, for chrissakes?!? Then, as a side benefit, distributed.net would be able to redirect their efforts to something rather more worthwhile, such as looking for imaginary little green men.
On a side note, ever consider the possibility that Einstein was right all along and quantum magic really is bogus? If the linked-to people, currently disregarded by the scientific community as crackpots and throwbacks, end up proven right, that would be damned funny... "Hello? Yes, this is Mr Scientist Man, who is calling? Ah, the NSF? Yes, I know you've been giving us research grant money for the last 50 years to build huge particle accelerators and develop O(1) code-breaking for the NSA... you want to know why our prototype won't work? Well, it turns out that spooky action-at-a-distance is a measurement error, the Bell inequalities were never violated, and the universe is really fundamentally deterministic... sorry about that. See your money back? Not unless the NSF operates in the Bahamas too..."
It's like they say, nobody ever got fired for believing in Einstein...
One last thing... timothy, learn to close your italics.
But you're still arguing that it's provably possible to ensure that there does not exist a set of statements that can cause the kernel to segfault or panic or do something else nasty.
No, I'm arguing that it's provably possible to ensure that such statements won't be executed - not in userland, anyway - either by checking the validity of an existing proof to that effect or by only executing a language whose statements are already provedly safe.
unless they have in fact generated every string that can be represented by the OS's storage facilities and tested all of them.
But you don't have to do that - you just prove it by structural induction.
However, on general principals, I'd be disinclined to believe that they've created a truly "bulletproof" system.
As am I - especially since even the methods I talked about depend on the kernel code itself being correct, which is a wholly different issue - but you have to concede that what they're claiming is actually possible.
Well, I don't quite believe that by impossible Enea means "actually and provedly impossible" (instead of the usual meaning, "really damned unlikely") either.
But it is possible for OSE to make sure that user processes can't corrupt the kernel. The first technique that comes to mind: you assume that the OS just runs program code as is. While traditionally that may be a reasonable assumption, it may not be the case. Perhaps OSE uses a PCC (Proof-Carrying Code) system; maybe they just won't run precompiled binaries, but force programs to be written in a high-level language which is then run by a security-minded interpreter or dynamic compiler.
In either case (and others), OSE would be able to guarantee that user processes can't corrupt the kernel, without violating any of Turing's work.
Of course Vicky can't get her computer to work right. After all, she's using Microsloth Windblows! I urge the entire Slashdot community to email Dr Glickman and ask him to migrate the clinic's management system to a Modern Operating System (like Linux, which is based on next-generation Unix design and state-of-the-art fail-proof Open Source development). Using Linux's powerful desktop system GNOME (packaged in the user-friendly, failproof RedHat distribution), Vicky will be able to go from incompetent loser to elite hacker geekchick in no time! And using her powerful, cheap Dell computer, she can even help good Dr Glickman save the lives of patients... all thanks to Linux!
No, really. I think MS Germany should get some heavy reprehension from the headquarters about this. Damn! Do they really think this'll convince anyone with this? It's really stupid!
Of course. C is the programming language of the Dark Side of the Force; all good Jedi Knights are expert FORTH hackers. This is why we don't see many of them nowadays...
Actually, some languages with C-ish function call syntax, such as Perl, allow parameter-less functions to be called without parentheses. From the explicit then statement, it's obvious that the OP is not using C.
The blurb commented on the "steep" price - $99 US. Well, I recently decided to buy a Mindstorms set for my 12 year old brother, to see if I got him interested in programming. (He is already an avid Legoer, and has a lot of engineering potential...) On the Lego web site, I found one which looked good - only $60 too. Problem is, I'm in Brazil, and they don't seem to ship overseas. So I go shopping, and I find out that they don't sell this set here for less than R$280, which is about 150 dollars!
After some research, I found out that these kits are also ridiculously overpriced in many other countries outside of Western Europe-US-Japan. This is really too bad; there is a big market of hacker-larvae around the world who would kill to get one of these, if only they could afford it. By limiting their market like this, Lego are causing a situation where no one wins.
The Imperial R&D Department, in the basement of the Death Star...
Clinko Palpatine, age 12, the Emperor's nephew and head of development, is working on the control software for the new AT-AT model...
> IF legs == blocked, THEN stop walking
A few days later - the AT-AT, sent into battle, falls into a trap...
TYPE MISMATCH:legs is of type LIMB, blocked is of type BOOLEAN FATAL ERROR:stop walking is not a known function TOO MANY ERRORS SEGMENTATION FAULT DISACTIVATING UNIT
With programmers like clinko running the thing, it's no wonder the Empire lost!
I hope I wasn't the only one who got the Spaceballs reference. Then again, maybe there was noSpaceballs reference, and I'm reading too much into the "Barf" part. And, if it was intended, the "candy-coating" pun was disgraceful... respect the memory of poor ol' John, will ya?
Red Hat's business is built on solving the problem thatMicrosoft's business model has imposed on the software user since Bill Gates disagreed with the members of the Homebrew computing club back in 1980.
... except that it happened in 1975. And Bill's letter read:
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software.
I don't think that calling an entire community as thieves qualifies as "disagreeing"...:)
In short, if Bob wants to quote Levy's Hackers, he at least should do it right!:)
Slashdot (not to mention other sites such as Technocrat) have been covering this since early 2000; this particular article says that comments "are due Feb 17 2000". Add this to the earlier story about Mojonation, which is a repeat from July 30, and one can only conclude that the Slashdot editors are suffering from an acute problem which makes it impossible for them to retain any kind of long-term memory. This illness is caused by some form of brain damage.
OTOH, so the Slashdot editors are brain-damaged... what's new about it?
Jini is a proprietary system for networking between embedded computer systems. Mojonation is a Free system for remunerated music sharing. Where's the similarity?
are you so naive as to believe that your actions, however small they may be, do not have consenquences?
That's very different from saying that "karma exists" in real life.
I maintain certain truths are obvious to anyone with sense.
Sorry pal, but "karma exists" does not qualify as a "truth" that is "obvious to anyone with sense".
We don't need scientific proof to tell us the sun comes up every morning.
... which just goes to show that you also don't understand the scientific method. Are you just trying to flaunt your ignorance? It may get you somewhere amongst your crew of Karma-sucking groupies, but it'll get you nowhere with me.
I'm not talking about the occassional good troll, but the foul-mouthed garbage and first post nonsense that contaminates/.
Have you ever considered that there is a reason why these trolls do it? Try to change your setup to show everything instead of just +2 or higher comments, and read one of the previous replies to your former post (one that was moderated -1, Troll, ironically). He puts it very well: most of the time, they're just trying to get you, the so-called "respectable Slashdotters", to take your collective head out of your ass.
The editors choice of stories, along with the quality posts, are what makes this site worthwhile.
Yes, but in no way does that exempt them from blame in the site's shortcomings.
I'm just trying to say if you don't like it, leave and spare us the garbage.
Oh, well, I'm sorry for trying to change things instead of just whining about how the trolls destroyed our community.
And anyway, if you really want to discredit what I said, please explain how being a spammer will not negatively affect someones future.
Umm... are you serious? As one of my good friends says, LTFU before it's too late.
Aha. Didn't think so.
This last remark just proves that your mind is already made up, and no amount of rational arguing on my part is going to get you to change it. I don't know why I even bother with people who babble about karma like you. Jeez.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't need to worry - unix has the "natural appeal" for aspiring programmers.
Let me guess, you're an Unix zealot. Only someone who's been completely indoctrinated to the New Jersey Cause would honestly think that Unix is "natural". If you got out of your coccoon for a while, you'd see that not everyone thinks like you, not everyone worships Unix. This "natural appeal" nonsense is like a priest saying that Christianity has the "natural appeal" for children - pure drivel.
And, with unix,they get all the necessary tools for free.
Oh, please. Just as you can pay a bundle for, say, Sun's "official" development kits for C++ or Fortran in Solaris, you can pay nothing for Cygnus' port of the GNU development software to Windows. Unix isn't in itself any less proprietary or commercial than Windows.
First of all, I'm not giving an "argument by Einstein" (chuckle). I'm not an Einstein-worshipper either, but I'm just wondering: what if the old fella was right where QM is concerned? Trevor Marshall and others certainly seem to think so. And if you dismiss these people's point straight away, merely because so many scientific geniuses of the 20th century developed QM, then you're the one who's pulling an "argument by Feynman" (or by Heisenberg, or by Pauli)...
Frankly, I never liked the Copenhagen Interpretation at all (it certainly justifies the name "quantum magic", and gives the entire scientific enterprise a bad name), and maybe all of QM is based upon a faulty foundation. Yes, it'd be a monumental error, but if there's ever been a community that could make it, it's today's physics community. (I've seen it from the inside; if you have too, you know what I'm talking about. The mutual reinforcing of dogma; the unwillingness to test, experiment, reformulate, or do anything that even smacks of real science; the lack of intellectual honesty; the cargo-cult science; the mental laziness; the rigid structure of academia which requires one to conform to the dogma to get respected, or even to be acknowledged at all; the general subscription to Bohr & co.'s distorted (not to mention depressing and counterproductive) idea of what science is... Feynman is certainly rolling on his grave - as is Einstein.)
Oops, bad copy-paste! That's the link I intended; sorry to all others for the misunderstanding. While we're at it, there's also this one; while Thompson certainly doesn't seem to have "what it takes" (as Trevor Marshall does), her site is also quite interesting.
Ever since I've been studying cryptography, poor Alice has been trying to talk to Bob without having that bitch Eve eavesdrop. Why can't Eve just let them be, for chrissakes?!? Then, as a side benefit, distributed.net would be able to redirect their efforts to something rather more worthwhile, such as looking for imaginary little green men.
On a side note, ever consider the possibility that Einstein was right all along and quantum magic really is bogus? If the linked-to people, currently disregarded by the scientific community as crackpots and throwbacks, end up proven right, that would be damned funny... "Hello? Yes, this is Mr Scientist Man, who is calling? Ah, the NSF? Yes, I know you've been giving us research grant money for the last 50 years to build huge particle accelerators and develop O(1) code-breaking for the NSA... you want to know why our prototype won't work? Well, it turns out that spooky action-at-a-distance is a measurement error, the Bell inequalities were never violated, and the universe is really fundamentally deterministic... sorry about that. See your money back? Not unless the NSF operates in the Bahamas too..."
It's like they say, nobody ever got fired for believing in Einstein...
One last thing... timothy, learn to close your italics.
But you're still arguing that it's provably possible to ensure that there does not exist a set of statements that can cause the kernel to segfault or panic or do something else nasty.
No, I'm arguing that it's provably possible to ensure that such statements won't be executed - not in userland, anyway - either by checking the validity of an existing proof to that effect or by only executing a language whose statements are already provedly safe.
unless they have in fact generated every string that can be represented by the OS's storage facilities and tested all of them.
But you don't have to do that - you just prove it by structural induction.
However, on general principals, I'd be disinclined to believe that they've created a truly "bulletproof" system.
As am I - especially since even the methods I talked about depend on the kernel code itself being correct, which is a wholly different issue - but you have to concede that what they're claiming is actually possible.
Well, I don't quite believe that by impossible Enea means "actually and provedly impossible" (instead of the usual meaning, "really damned unlikely") either.
But it is possible for OSE to make sure that user processes can't corrupt the kernel. The first technique that comes to mind: you assume that the OS just runs program code as is. While traditionally that may be a reasonable assumption, it may not be the case. Perhaps OSE uses a PCC (Proof-Carrying Code) system; maybe they just won't run precompiled binaries, but force programs to be written in a high-level language which is then run by a security-minded interpreter or dynamic compiler.
In either case (and others), OSE would be able to guarantee that user processes can't corrupt the kernel, without violating any of Turing's work.
Of course Vicky can't get her computer to work right. After all, she's using Microsloth Windblows! I urge the entire Slashdot community to email Dr Glickman and ask him to migrate the clinic's management system to a Modern Operating System (like Linux, which is based on next-generation Unix design and state-of-the-art fail-proof Open Source development). Using Linux's powerful desktop system GNOME (packaged in the user-friendly, failproof RedHat distribution), Vicky will be able to go from incompetent loser to elite hacker geekchick in no time! And using her powerful, cheap Dell computer, she can even help good Dr Glickman save the lives of patients... all thanks to Linux!
Ain't life grand without Billsux around?
No, really. I think MS Germany should get some heavy reprehension from the headquarters about this. Damn! Do they really think this'll convince anyone with this? It's really stupid!
His body is found a decade later, marooned in a sand trap in the back nine.
;)
Weeeeeeell, it doesn't say his dead body, does it?
Of course. C is the programming language of the Dark Side of the Force; all good Jedi Knights are expert FORTH hackers. This is why we don't see many of them nowadays...
Actually, some languages with C-ish function call syntax, such as Perl, allow parameter-less functions to be called without parentheses. From the explicit then statement, it's obvious that the OP is not using C.
No, Lego don't win either: they lose a lot of potential sales.
That just had to happen... *sigh*
/* 1=OK, 0= Damn Rebels */
Um, that means the rest of the legs would keep trying to move, which is just as bad! Try this instead:
int i;
struct leg {
unsigned int status;
unsigned long odometer;
unsigned int rebelSquishCount;
unsigned int running;
} theLegs[4];
int stopLegs(void) {
int i;
for (i = 0; i < 4; i++)
theLegs[i].running = 0;
return 1;
}
void gpf(void) {
sing("Daisy");
while (1) {
justSitThere();
}
}
for (i = 0; i < 4, i++)
if (theLegs[i].status == 0)
if (! stopLegs(i))
gpf();
Um, that means the rest of the legs would keep trying to move, which is just as bad! Try this instead:
/* 1=OK, 0= Damn Rebels */
int i;
struct leg {
unsigned int status;
unsigned long odometer;
unsigned int rebelSquishCount;
unsigned int running;
} theLegs[4];
int stopLegs(void) {
int i;
for (i = 0; i
The blurb commented on the "steep" price - $99 US. Well, I recently decided to buy a Mindstorms set for my 12 year old brother, to see if I got him interested in programming. (He is already an avid Legoer, and has a lot of engineering potential...) On the Lego web site, I found one which looked good - only $60 too. Problem is, I'm in Brazil, and they don't seem to ship overseas. So I go shopping, and I find out that they don't sell this set here for less than R$280, which is about 150 dollars!
After some research, I found out that these kits are also ridiculously overpriced in many other countries outside of Western Europe-US-Japan. This is really too bad; there is a big market of hacker-larvae around the world who would kill to get one of these, if only they could afford it. By limiting their market like this, Lego are causing a situation where no one wins.
The Imperial R&D Department, in the basement of the Death Star...
Clinko Palpatine, age 12, the Emperor's nephew and head of development, is working on the control software for the new AT-AT model...
> IF legs == blocked, THEN stop walking
A few days later - the AT-AT, sent into battle, falls into a trap...
TYPE MISMATCH: legs is of type LIMB, blocked is of type BOOLEAN
FATAL ERROR: stop walking is not a known function
TOO MANY ERRORS
SEGMENTATION FAULT
DISACTIVATING UNIT
With programmers like clinko running the thing, it's no wonder the Empire lost!
I hope I wasn't the only one who got the Spaceballs reference. Then again, maybe there was no Spaceballs reference, and I'm reading too much into the "Barf" part. And, if it was intended, the "candy-coating" pun was disgraceful... respect the memory of poor ol' John, will ya?
Ah, Spaceballs... what a great movie.
... except that it happened in 1975. And Bill's letter read:
I don't think that calling an entire community as thieves qualifies as "disagreeing"...
In short, if Bob wants to quote Levy's Hackers, he at least should do it right!
Three words: No More Pop-ups.
Ah, that explains it. Well, to hell with them.
I still say that turning off Javascript was the best thing that ever happened to my Web usage.
PACT's website sure is well-designed. I must say, I haven't seen such a... um, clean design in a long time.
Seriously now, anyone have trouble seeing anything at all on that page?
Slashdot (not to mention other sites such as Technocrat) have been covering this since early 2000; this particular article says that comments "are due Feb 17 2000". Add this to the earlier story about Mojonation, which is a repeat from July 30, and one can only conclude that the Slashdot editors are suffering from an acute problem which makes it impossible for them to retain any kind of long-term memory. This illness is caused by some form of brain damage.
OTOH, so the Slashdot editors are brain-damaged... what's new about it?
Jini is a proprietary system for networking between embedded computer systems. Mojonation is a Free system for remunerated music sharing. Where's the similarity?
Dumb-ass moderators.
are you so naive as to believe that your actions, however small they may be, do not have consenquences?
/.
That's very different from saying that "karma exists" in real life.
I maintain certain truths are obvious to anyone with sense.
Sorry pal, but "karma exists" does not qualify as a "truth" that is "obvious to anyone with sense".
We don't need scientific proof to tell us the sun comes up every morning.
... which just goes to show that you also don't understand the scientific method. Are you just trying to flaunt your ignorance? It may get you somewhere amongst your crew of Karma-sucking groupies, but it'll get you nowhere with me.
I'm not talking about the occassional good troll, but the foul-mouthed garbage and first post nonsense that contaminates
Have you ever considered that there is a reason why these trolls do it? Try to change your setup to show everything instead of just +2 or higher comments, and read one of the previous replies to your former post (one that was moderated -1, Troll, ironically). He puts it very well: most of the time, they're just trying to get you, the so-called "respectable Slashdotters", to take your collective head out of your ass.
The editors choice of stories, along with the quality posts, are what makes this site worthwhile.
Yes, but in no way does that exempt them from blame in the site's shortcomings.
I'm just trying to say if you don't like it, leave and spare us the garbage.
Oh, well, I'm sorry for trying to change things instead of just whining about how the trolls destroyed our community.
And anyway, if you really want to discredit what I said, please explain how being a spammer will not negatively affect someones future.
Umm... are you serious? As one of my good friends says, LTFU before it's too late.
Aha. Didn't think so.
This last remark just proves that your mind is already made up, and no amount of rational arguing on my part is going to get you to change it. I don't know why I even bother with people who babble about karma like you. Jeez.