The memory management stuff that Java, Ruby and Python people are always having cows about is NOT the same memory management stuff that Linus is talking about.
I completely agree. I think a much more mundane prediction is far more likely: you will be able to install Windows on a separate partition and run apps off of it via a virtualization layer.
If true, then Apple has a *legal right* equivelent to that of an owner to use the Windows API. Yes, M$ can change it, but it would have to be prospectively.
But Microsoft could change all of their applications (Office, etc) to use a new Vista API, and encourage a sufficient number of their "partners" to do the same, and suddenly the ability to run WinXP apps on Mac OSX becomes a great big yawn. After all, this is what history teaches us. IBM had full rights to Windows 3.1, and had a Windows compatibility layer that many argued was better than native Windows itself. But then along came a new API with Windows 95 and it was all over for OS/2.
The big lesson learned by OS/2 was that the better you were at running another platform's software, the less likely it was that anyone would write native software for you.
So apache an OS component, because all of the distribution vendors bundle it with linux?
It depends on how you define "component." Loose definitions are great because it allows to you pick and choose to your personal advantage. For example, the FSF said that MFC is a component of Windows (even though it doesn't ship with it) but refused to approve Qt as a component of any Linux distribution (most of whom ship with it), and so declared KDE to be illegal back when Qt was not dual licensed with the GPL.
Um, that still IS anarchy. If you're in a man's house and don't obey his rules, he can shoot you and there won't be any police to stop him. Anarchy isn't the absence of rules, it's the absence of a rule enforcement monopoly.
p.s. The only reason the man above doesn't shoot your outside his house, is because it will likely piss off his neighbors, and they'll started gunning for him because he's a loose cannon. On the internet, this is known as blacklisting, routing, firewalling, etc.
As a libertarian, I haven't been able to moderate in two years. Someone told me that it's a factor of my posting/viewing ratio, so I created another account and didn't post on this one for three months. No effect. I'm thinking of an experiment with two accounts, one which only posts in political stories and one which only posts in technical stories, and see which one get's blackholed first.
I just told you, I'm a "software engineer". I do coding, but I also do the stuff that makes the coding work. Such as analysis and design, requirements and specifications, yada, yada, yada.
If I could download a SPARC or PowerPC specification to an FPGA, that would be really great - and really open.
But you can't! That's my point. Despite your desires to the contrary, most hardware is NOT an FPGA. But more than that, even the ones that are, are not generic program-whatever-you-want boards! I have an FPGA based video card hear at work, and try as I might, I cannot get it reprogrammed as a sound card. To do so involves relaying out the board with different chips. The central Altera chip may be the same, but everything around it is different.
This isn't the dim and distant past. This is still current behavior on many Unix systems. I just tried it on my Solaris box, and what do you know? I must be part Scots!
While software engineers are ranked with the best jobs in America, they are also ranked as thsoe most likely to bitch about their job. Every Friday evening down at Moe's Bar you can hear software engineers whine about the "good old days" when they had stock options, onsite laundry, and a foosball table in every cubicle. They only got a 2% raise on their $125,000 salary last year, and that is so ghastly unfair that they're going to complain to Slashdot about it. During working hours, of course.
I know the kind that I recognize: the same as open software.
You're confusing firmware with hardware. If hardware can be programmed (as with an FPGA), then the firmware is indeed like software. But the hardware itself is still immutable. Most hardware components are not amenable to modification. No matter how much I try, I can't reprogram a SPARC as a PowerPC.
p.s. But I do want the hardware *specification* to be open. That's what this article is about.
On the other hand they are always CHEAP. That can mean a whole lot, especially when you are poor. You can afford to get some food and some clothes(Wow). Being that cheap can seriously help poorer people, especially in the short term. wal-mart's biggest problem is the long term. The constint outsourcing and incredibly low wages make more poor people, which increases those who need wal-mart pricing.
The alternative is expensive mainstreet boutique style stores. That's what people bitch about the loudest when a Wal-Mart comes to town: that the tiny mom-n-pop on mainstreet is going to close.
But these stores are not awash in cash simply because they are small. Here's what you get with mainstreet boutique stores, besides higher prices: close to minimum wages (often much lower than Wal-Mart's wages); no health care coverage (though possibly you might bet catastrophic); rarely any dental; no vacations; miniscule opportunity for promotion and growth. It's not that these stores don't want to offer those benefits, it's that they can't. Big rich stores can do this, but it's big rich stores that the left hates.
I don't think you realize what you are saying. From a technical standpoint, it's nonsensical and nearly impossible. In terms of vendor lock-in, it's replacing one shackle with another. In terms of freedom and choice, you don't have any. In terms of morality, you have no right to tell another what code they can or cannot write.
The ugly truth is that the "left" doesn't like Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart is for the common man. It's low brow. It's redneck. It's a store for the poor and middle classes. It isn't trendy. It's elitism, pure and simple.
Even without the ability to shift data off of the CD/DVD into other formats, they would STILL be much more valuable than DRM-laden files. That's because I can play my CD in any CD player: my stereo, my car, my PC, my laptop, my walkman, etc, etc. Morever, I can still play CDs that are twenty years old!
With a DRM encumbered file, I'm limited to one computer, and if I still want to listen to it twenty years from now, I need to make sure I keep my computer that long. This is bullshit.
Sigh. Your code snippet is passing in a pointer to a character. Yet you are reading in one hundred characters. Do you see the problem? It isn't the pointer!
I was being a little too specific when I called null terminated arrays problematic. In general, ALL unbounded arrays problematic, and the use of pointers as arrays only compounds the problem. If you're going to use an array you must always know what its size is. In the case of your code snippet, you should have a second parameter for the size of the array.
But why is it I never hear anyone bitch about arrays in C/C++? Why do they only bitch about pointers? I'll tell you why: because they're too busy bitching about pointers to think through the problem and realize that it's really unbounded arrays that cause the problems. There is no problem with allocating memory for a structure (for use in a linked list, or binary tree, or sparse matrix, or whereever). But the Java zealots have so thoroughly brainwashed people that they now think it's evil to allocate memory for a struct. Truly sad.
Likely this professor was supported under Martin who was the former liberal PM of Canada and Harper's administration axed it.
Actually if you put your hatred aside and read the damned article, you'll see that he was denied because it was simply a bad proposal with little scholarly merit. The only reason this is a story is because the media is trying to whip up controversy.
My company evaluated several small "consumer" grade routers for a product of ours. We needed something small and cheap and robust. We finally settled on someone OTHER than DLink. This wasn't due to the phkamp issue, but it's still nice to know that we won't be buying several thousand routers from them.:-)
Big companies tend to treat certain groups of people like terrorists (we don't negotiate with terrorists) because they're afraid that if they give money to one of them, more will come out of the woodwork.
They are correct in a way. Every time you hear about a large settlement, watch for all the copycat claims popping up because of it. It's a natural reaction of businesses to push back until the "stink" gets too strong to ignore.
i like the fact that NetBSD is a simple barebobones system
That's why I like FreeBSD. In fact, it's pretty much only chance that I'm running FreeBSD instead of NetBSD. I too used to be a Slackware person, and if I had to go back to Linux, it would be Slackware with pkgsrc.
Slashdot Mirror
The memory management stuff that Java, Ruby and Python people are always having cows about is NOT the same memory management stuff that Linus is talking about.
If Linux isn't an incompetent idiot, how come he didn't have a vmsplice() function in the kernel until now?
I completely agree. I think a much more mundane prediction is far more likely: you will be able to install Windows on a separate partition and run apps off of it via a virtualization layer.
If true, then Apple has a *legal right* equivelent to that of an owner to use the Windows API. Yes, M$ can change it, but it would have to be prospectively.
But Microsoft could change all of their applications (Office, etc) to use a new Vista API, and encourage a sufficient number of their "partners" to do the same, and suddenly the ability to run WinXP apps on Mac OSX becomes a great big yawn. After all, this is what history teaches us. IBM had full rights to Windows 3.1, and had a Windows compatibility layer that many argued was better than native Windows itself. But then along came a new API with Windows 95 and it was all over for OS/2.
The big lesson learned by OS/2 was that the better you were at running another platform's software, the less likely it was that anyone would write native software for you.
So apache an OS component, because all of the distribution vendors bundle it with linux?
It depends on how you define "component." Loose definitions are great because it allows to you pick and choose to your personal advantage. For example, the FSF said that MFC is a component of Windows (even though it doesn't ship with it) but refused to approve Qt as a component of any Linux distribution (most of whom ship with it), and so declared KDE to be illegal back when Qt was not dual licensed with the GPL.
Um, that still IS anarchy. If you're in a man's house and don't obey his rules, he can shoot you and there won't be any police to stop him. Anarchy isn't the absence of rules, it's the absence of a rule enforcement monopoly.
p.s. The only reason the man above doesn't shoot your outside his house, is because it will likely piss off his neighbors, and they'll started gunning for him because he's a loose cannon. On the internet, this is known as blacklisting, routing, firewalling, etc.
As a libertarian, I haven't been able to moderate in two years. Someone told me that it's a factor of my posting/viewing ratio, so I created another account and didn't post on this one for three months. No effect. I'm thinking of an experiment with two accounts, one which only posts in political stories and one which only posts in technical stories, and see which one get's blackholed first.
I just told you, I'm a "software engineer". I do coding, but I also do the stuff that makes the coding work. Such as analysis and design, requirements and specifications, yada, yada, yada.
If I could download a SPARC or PowerPC specification to an FPGA, that would be really great - and really open.
But you can't! That's my point. Despite your desires to the contrary, most hardware is NOT an FPGA. But more than that, even the ones that are, are not generic program-whatever-you-want boards! I have an FPGA based video card hear at work, and try as I might, I cannot get it reprogrammed as a sound card. To do so involves relaying out the board with different chips. The central Altera chip may be the same, but everything around it is different.
I'm a literature major who had to flunked calculus once and dropped out twice. Yet I'm a software engineer for a major company.
Would you prefer, "Dad, Mom says you're have a shitty job cleaning pools, but it's OK cause you have buns to die for..."
This isn't the dim and distant past. This is still current behavior on many Unix systems. I just tried it on my Solaris box, and what do you know? I must be part Scots!
fiddling with /proc
/proc is a vastly different thing under other Unix systems.
Only on Linux.
While software engineers are ranked with the best jobs in America, they are also ranked as thsoe most likely to bitch about their job. Every Friday evening down at Moe's Bar you can hear software engineers whine about the "good old days" when they had stock options, onsite laundry, and a foosball table in every cubicle. They only got a 2% raise on their $125,000 salary last year, and that is so ghastly unfair that they're going to complain to Slashdot about it. During working hours, of course.
I know the kind that I recognize: the same as open software.
You're confusing firmware with hardware. If hardware can be programmed (as with an FPGA), then the firmware is indeed like software. But the hardware itself is still immutable. Most hardware components are not amenable to modification. No matter how much I try, I can't reprogram a SPARC as a PowerPC.
p.s. But I do want the hardware *specification* to be open. That's what this article is about.
On the other hand they are always CHEAP. That can mean a whole lot, especially when you are poor. You can afford to get some food and some clothes(Wow). Being that cheap can seriously help poorer people, especially in the short term. wal-mart's biggest problem is the long term. The constint outsourcing and incredibly low wages make more poor people, which increases those who need wal-mart pricing.
The alternative is expensive mainstreet boutique style stores. That's what people bitch about the loudest when a Wal-Mart comes to town: that the tiny mom-n-pop on mainstreet is going to close.
But these stores are not awash in cash simply because they are small. Here's what you get with mainstreet boutique stores, besides higher prices: close to minimum wages (often much lower than Wal-Mart's wages); no health care coverage (though possibly you might bet catastrophic); rarely any dental; no vacations; miniscule opportunity for promotion and growth. It's not that these stores don't want to offer those benefits, it's that they can't. Big rich stores can do this, but it's big rich stores that the left hates.
I wish they would merge...
I don't think you realize what you are saying. From a technical standpoint, it's nonsensical and nearly impossible. In terms of vendor lock-in, it's replacing one shackle with another. In terms of freedom and choice, you don't have any. In terms of morality, you have no right to tell another what code they can or cannot write.
KPlato Barada Nikto!
The ugly truth is that the "left" doesn't like Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart is for the common man. It's low brow. It's redneck. It's a store for the poor and middle classes. It isn't trendy. It's elitism, pure and simple.
Even without the ability to shift data off of the CD/DVD into other formats, they would STILL be much more valuable than DRM-laden files. That's because I can play my CD in any CD player: my stereo, my car, my PC, my laptop, my walkman, etc, etc. Morever, I can still play CDs that are twenty years old!
With a DRM encumbered file, I'm limited to one computer, and if I still want to listen to it twenty years from now, I need to make sure I keep my computer that long. This is bullshit.
Sigh. Your code snippet is passing in a pointer to a character. Yet you are reading in one hundred characters. Do you see the problem? It isn't the pointer!
I was being a little too specific when I called null terminated arrays problematic. In general, ALL unbounded arrays problematic, and the use of pointers as arrays only compounds the problem. If you're going to use an array you must always know what its size is. In the case of your code snippet, you should have a second parameter for the size of the array.
But why is it I never hear anyone bitch about arrays in C/C++? Why do they only bitch about pointers? I'll tell you why: because they're too busy bitching about pointers to think through the problem and realize that it's really unbounded arrays that cause the problems. There is no problem with allocating memory for a structure (for use in a linked list, or binary tree, or sparse matrix, or whereever). But the Java zealots have so thoroughly brainwashed people that they now think it's evil to allocate memory for a struct. Truly sad.
Likely this professor was supported under Martin who was the former liberal PM of Canada and Harper's administration axed it.
Actually if you put your hatred aside and read the damned article, you'll see that he was denied because it was simply a bad proposal with little scholarly merit. The only reason this is a story is because the media is trying to whip up controversy.
My company evaluated several small "consumer" grade routers for a product of ours. We needed something small and cheap and robust. We finally settled on someone OTHER than DLink. This wasn't due to the phkamp issue, but it's still nice to know that we won't be buying several thousand routers from them. :-)
Big companies tend to treat certain groups of people like terrorists (we don't negotiate with terrorists) because they're afraid that if they give money to one of them, more will come out of the woodwork.
They are correct in a way. Every time you hear about a large settlement, watch for all the copycat claims popping up because of it. It's a natural reaction of businesses to push back until the "stink" gets too strong to ignore.
i like the fact that NetBSD is a simple barebobones system
That's why I like FreeBSD. In fact, it's pretty much only chance that I'm running FreeBSD instead of NetBSD. I too used to be a Slackware person, and if I had to go back to Linux, it would be Slackware with pkgsrc.