No, they're not preprocessor statements. They are calls to actual nop functions (the patent calls them "void" functions which is highly misleading). Some example code:
static void sw_break1(void) { } static void sw_break2(void) { } extern void do_something_with_side_effects(void); extern int some_function(int, int, int); void some_buggy_function(int a, b, c) {
int d;
do_something_with_side_effects();
sw_break1();
d = some_function(a, b, c);
sw_break2(); }
Now, if you declare the functions sw_break1 and sw_break2 as software breakpoint functions to the debugger and not the function do_something_with_side_effects, the debugger will recognize that the nop calls to sw_break? should do something special and trap them. Since they are nop functions, obviously if the program is not being run under a debugger, nothing special happens and the program doesn't crash.
The way the description is worded, the debugger is expected to be doing the equivalent of single stepping through the program at a source code level looking for calls to special nop functions. When it detects some such, it can perform some (debugger) user defined operation. Because these are specifically software breakpoints, they are built into the program at compile time and are always present whether or not the program is being debugged.
The patent goes on to claim various methods of describing which void functions should be considered special by the debugger, including a broad all parameterless void functions are special. Any required special debug code is linked from a library and hence, this method of debugging allows one to enable and disable breakpoints dynamically in an read-only image executing directly off a ROM.
I'm a programmer not a lawyer and I've never done embedded programming so I haven't much of a clue whether or not there's prior art, but I am certain that gdb or any debugger that modifies the executable image in any way are not within the claims of this patent.
It's so vaguely stated as to be totally useless. Useless, that is, if someone were to actually use this patent to implement something useful. The diagrams didn't show up too well and the English is pretty bad.
As I understand it, this invention is targeted at debugging ROM executable images on embedded devices. The programmer codes static calls to a breakpoint function in the source code, which will default to do nothing if the image is not being run under a debugger. Various kinds of debugging functions can be coded up and can be enabled under the debugger. Looks kind of useful actually for debugging problems with a cellphone if you have spare ROM to link in debug info.
Hardware debugging does not count, chip specific hardware breakpoints do not count either. The patent applies to a processor and language agnostic environment.
No that's not what they've patented. They've patented source level debugging with static break points. Apparently the developer litters the source code with SOFTWARE_BREAKPOINT; calls which turn into do-nothing statements if there is no debugger running the code. The target environment appears to be an embedded system like a cellphone.
They have not patented hardware breakpoints, gdb, etc. and a huge advantage of their system is that you could apparently debug and selectively enable/disable breakpoints in a production ROM executable image.
I know noone reads these patents when these kinds of articles go by, this is/., but is it too much to ask that the article submitter or the editor read them first?
Suppose I want to iterate through audio files on the filesystem - get "title" metadata from those that have it, and the length of the audio in time units, format that into a list structure and save it in an environment variable. If this is all stuff that's part of the file format, this is not a shell programming activity at all. file(1) should be taught about all the fields in/etc/magic and then you can just capture its output and do what you wish with the various fields.
the OO solution would be to ask each file for this information. I'm neither a fan of OO nor a fan of executable data that may have come off-host, but to each his own. In the case of file types, I am a fan of teaching file(1) about the format and letting it do all the messy work. Do one thing and do it well is ancient Unix wisdom more ignored than followed now-a-days, but this kind of stuff is what that program was designed to do. I do believe it is an utter mistake to judge file types by extensions.
Sure, a shell extension can add new functions to a shell, but how does that help with the problem of improving command pipelines? How does that help me not to forget to account for the possibility that "find" could return filenames with whitespace in them, or that a field in a character-delimited file could contain the delimiter? The white space (and worse) in find output issue is a well-known potential security issue with solutions dating back to the 80's. Consistent double-quoting, including using "$(command)" instead of `command` solves most of it. Zsh has a somewhat stricter setting that lets you get away with not doing as much quoting in your scripts. The delimiter in data issue is an unsolvable problem as you describe it. If you have control over how the data is written, then you can scan it before-hand to avoid using a bad delimiter. Otherwise, you just have to choose a obscure sequence of characters as delimiter and pray.
You've always been able to pick a simple delimiter when typing an expression like `s/old/new/' used in sed or ed - `s;o/l/d;n/e/w;'.
Lastly, non-linear pipeline syntax does exist and is not a new feature either. Zsh uses something like <(process1) and >(process2) for command splicing.
it seems like when it comes to the CLI people are content to let it rot. It hasn't "rotted", but it has been sufficiently powerful for several decades now that there aren't many features that need to be added. My favorite hack of the 80's was writing a BASIC interpreter in Korn Shell script with floating point math, gosub/return, single step, pause/continue, full line curses line editing and what not. It was still a Unix style program. It had a small helper program that did the parsing and evaluation of arithmetic expressions and used ed(1) as an coprocess for program storage. It only took a couple of days to code up too.
The Z-shell has had dynamic loading of extensions for about 10 years now. I suppose someone could have added GUI extensions that way. Maybe they have, I haven't checked on their development in a long time. Basic textual zsh works perfectly for me.
Glad to see though that Microsoft Windows is finally catching up to old technology in this area.
One teacher pushed a desk into a misbehaving student so he replaced the Cyberdemon and instead of shooting rockets, he shot desks at you. Hmm. That gives me a great idea for a map of another building in the Pacific Northwest with a monster throwing furniture like chairs and stuff.
These days North America seems to have descended back into a Salem witch hunt. Sad and true. Reason #0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 why my sons will not be attending public school in the United States.
Listen to me once, because I do not wish to repeat this 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 times. That's not what I meant. I apologize 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 times for any confusion.
You can quite clearly set up a hierarchical model with ease using nothing more than groups. People have been doing so for a long time. I think this constitutes prior art. No, it doesn't. I posted another example later. Think of the TiVo or the PS3 as specific examples of what this patent applies to (the OEM can lock up part of the system and retain access to it that the end-user administrator cannot touch). They are not prior art because they clearly did not come before 1999.
Can you imagine 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 people posting that number 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 times each? I think you would have to have a Beowolf Cluster of oh, at least 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 nodes to count them all.
That is correct, not that it matters and "all or nothing" is what is described in the patent as something that the patent does not cover. (Something implemented since 1999 is not prior art either).
Let me try to make this clearer, since noone seems to understand what they've patented. Sudo, ACLs, Unix Groups, Capabilities are not what is covered in the patent. The patent does cover something like TiVo. You can be root on your machine, but you are not allowed to change the operating system. The patent does cover something like the PS3, you can install Linux and be root on your machine, but you are not allowed access to the whole system. Moreover, that is exactly the language used in the patent to describe their invention - an OEM who wishes to restrict certain privileged operations on their system from an administrating end-user.
*Sudo is specifically not covered. Sony PS3s and TiVos are.
Soooo, you mean something kind of like the Unix group:user permissions system, whereby you can give specific users (and hence specific programs) access to various things in a really quite fine-grained manner? Or better yet, Access Control Lists (present in various flavors of Linux, notably SELinux)? No and that's not what the patent describes. Capabilities, ACLs and groups are finer-grained than in the patent, but I wrote that. SELinux wouldn't count as prior art because the patent was applied for in 1999 and as I recall, capabilities were not exactly implemented in Linux then either.
Much closer to a hierarchical security model would be VMS privileges. SETPRV = god, SYSPRV = most other privileges, but not all, another level I forgot the name of that was a subset of SYSPRV and normal user level. VMS is important because by that time, DEC had pretty much collapsed and Microsoft had hired the core VMS team to do Microsoft Windows NT.
Consider the way US security clearances work. There are compartmentalized clearances that are granted on a per-project basis - this is like ACLS, etc. For DOD clearances, there's the President who is Root and has access to everything. Top Secret, which has access to Top Secret, Secret and Confidential; Secret, which has access to Secret and Confidential; Confidential which has access to Confidential, and unclassified. UAC is like DOD clearances and while that may be implemented with Unix Groups, or some such, I'm not specifically aware of anyone doing it that way before 1999.
It's a dumb way to do security actually, but it's patented by Microsoft.
I'd be a lot more likely to play WoW if I could pay only $5 a month and see ads for Nike all over Azeroth. Well, you already get to see constant ads for power leveling and cheat gold in your/whisper chat box. I'd pay a little extra to have those go away.
Come to think of it though, company logos on armor and stuff could be fun. "This guild officially sponsored by Toyota!"
You didn't read the patent. They describe sudo in it as clear prior art, then go on to describe why their system is different and better.
The patent is for a heirarchical security model where there are multiple levels of access not the all or nothing of sudo. Only the most privileged is like sudo, the other intermediate levels have some level of system access, but not all. It's kind of like capabilities, but a lot more limited since each higher level of security has access to all the lower levels. Fascinating and I can see why the patent was granted (I hope there's clear prior art in an MLS system of the day or even VMS, SYSPRV and SETPRV are close, but I'm not sure).
That's not a bad list. As someone has already pointed out though, none of this scales up. You can't fit 17,000 businesses in the same category into the 1st page. Google and Yahoo already use local servers for countries other than the US, I would expect them to find some other way to optimize their search algorithm, possibly based on geography. If I'm browsing the web in the jungles of Mindanao, am I really interested in home mortgage loans in California? (I clicked on one of those once to see what would happen - the site rejected me for coming from a.ph domain).
I was lucky to meet Mr. Doohan at a book signing in Los Angeles 15 years ago. May he rest in peace and I am glad he got his final wish. Mr. Scott is definitely my favorite Star Trek character and thank you so much for acting him out.
"He called you a tin-plated dictator with delusions of grandeur." "So, that's when you hit him?" "No, sir, you told us to be restrained."... "He called the Enterprise a pile of garbage and that's when I hit him." "You're relieved of duty and confined to quarters until further notice." "Aye, sir! That will give me time to catch up on my technical reading!"
-sb (What are you drinking? It's... um, it's green!)
What has open source accomplished that Microsoft didn't accomplish 10 years in advance? I'll name one - deliver a system that can stay up and functional for years at a time. This crappy enterprise Microsoft Windows XP "Professional" I'm typing on can't seem to stay alive more than a few days at a time. Bah. Rebooot this year or next year, it shouldn't matter. Rebooting every few days is unprofessional. The first time I got +1 year uptime on a Linux system in production use was with Linux kernel 2.0.6. Date that and remember that over that time period that system also survived the great west coast power outage.
How many of you Microsoft Windows guys have had email from Bill Gates debugging a problem with Microsoft Windows? I'm not the only person who has had personal email from Linus helping to debug a problem with Linux. (It was a bad cache chip on the motherboard, nothing to do with Linux at all, as it turned out).
You can usually set your watch by the Shinkansen. Japanese trains usually are run on schedule to at least the minute. I found that it was wise to do exactly that - if my watch/keitai time didn't match the time shown in the station to within less than a minute I reset my own time. I learned my lesson fairly quickly the first (and only) time I was late for the last highway bus leaving Tokyo Station by about 25 seconds. Fortunately, there was still one more Joban-sen train so I was still able to get somewhat close to where I needed to go.
Is anyone familiar with the game Densha de GO! ? My understanding is that the scoring rules in that game match how train drivers are scored in real life. You not only have to be (exactly) on time, you have to stop the train within a couple of inches of the exact stop at the same time. Newer train lines like the Mita-sen subway in Tokyo and the shinkansen block the tracks except for the place the doors of the train are supposed to be.
Actually, the maglev line will not run parallel to the Shinkansen line on the coast Very clever, if they're doing it for redundancy. The line along the coast follows the ancient Tokaido path. Do you mean they have chosen the Koshukaido for the maglev? That's only a sentimental question. I used to live off the Koshukaido in Setagaya ku.
(Call me racist if you wish, but I've worked with Japanese in Japan and despite serious problems with their educational system, the average Japanese engineer runs circles around the average American engineer).
Well, actually that always when I took the Shinkansen. I lived the life of the typical salaryman and had my home in Tokyo, but was forced to work in Kobe for awhile and I basically took it from Friday after work, Kobe to Tokyo and Sunday evening Tokyo to Kobe every weekend for about a year. That's as "rush hour" as it gets. Oh, when I traveled Golden Week, I just bought a Green Car ticket, they wouldn't sell me anything else. I was also traveling that route when the FIFA whatever it was, was in Kobe and gaijin were returning to Tokyo.
I had to stand several times on the express shuttle train to Narita, but never on the Shinkansen.
The Japanese built the Shinkansen to impress people, mainly visiting gaijin like us, but hey, they did it right! I am so impressed at Japanese trains in general, but the Shinkansen is a train system done *right* in my opinion.
Maybe you're confusing the Nozomi with something else or you're talking about a different line.
How many passengers per car? Having seen the way the crowd Japanese trains the answer to that is quite a lot. Nope, not in the way you think. The shinkansen is nice, with the equivalent in space to something a bit larger than business class in an airplane and it's a big train.
Per car in the Nozomi (the express-est of the express bullet trains), there's something like 15 rows of seats with 5 seats per row with 16 cars per train. The two Green Cars (first class, sort of) are a little more spacious - 4 seats per row, but not much more.
The route I presume will be from Tokyo/Yokohama to Nagoya which along the same shinkansen route that continues on to Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, goes underwater and ends up in Hakata in Kyushu. Most of the passengers go from Tokyo to Osaka, but I understand why they're not doing the Maglev train all the way to Osaka yet, it's fairly flat up until Nagoya, then there are a lot of hills between Nagoya and Osaka.
I love the trains in Japan. I'm sure they will do this one just as well as they did the shinkansen.
Does this mean Google don't have *any* account settings backed up? Something is backed up somewhere, for some definition of "backed up". TFA had people reporting that their accounts had reverted to settings from 6 months to a year or so ago.
Slashdot Mirror
The way the description is worded, the debugger is expected to be doing the equivalent of single stepping through the program at a source code level looking for calls to special nop functions. When it detects some such, it can perform some (debugger) user defined operation. Because these are specifically software breakpoints, they are built into the program at compile time and are always present whether or not the program is being debugged.
The patent goes on to claim various methods of describing which void functions should be considered special by the debugger, including a broad all parameterless void functions are special. Any required special debug code is linked from a library and hence, this method of debugging allows one to enable and disable breakpoints dynamically in an read-only image executing directly off a ROM.
I'm a programmer not a lawyer and I've never done embedded programming so I haven't much of a clue whether or not there's prior art, but I am certain that gdb or any debugger that modifies the executable image in any way are not within the claims of this patent.
As I understand it, this invention is targeted at debugging ROM executable images on embedded devices. The programmer codes static calls to a breakpoint function in the source code, which will default to do nothing if the image is not being run under a debugger. Various kinds of debugging functions can be coded up and can be enabled under the debugger. Looks kind of useful actually for debugging problems with a cellphone if you have spare ROM to link in debug info.
Hardware debugging does not count, chip specific hardware breakpoints do not count either. The patent applies to a processor and language agnostic environment.
No that's not what they've patented. They've patented source level debugging with static break points. Apparently the developer litters the source code with SOFTWARE_BREAKPOINT; calls which turn into do-nothing statements if there is no debugger running the code. The target environment appears to be an embedded system like a cellphone.
/., but is it too much to ask that the article submitter or the editor read them first?
They have not patented hardware breakpoints, gdb, etc. and a huge advantage of their system is that you could apparently debug and selectively enable/disable breakpoints in a production ROM executable image.
I know noone reads these patents when these kinds of articles go by, this is
I think they're just confused with a different quote.
u otations-19990709.html
"The network interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/reagle/inet-q
You've always been able to pick a simple delimiter when typing an expression like `s/old/new/' used in sed or ed - `s;o/l/d;n/e/w;'.
Lastly, non-linear pipeline syntax does exist and is not a new feature either. Zsh uses something like <(process1) and >(process2) for command splicing.
The Z-shell has had dynamic loading of extensions for about 10 years now. I suppose someone could have added GUI extensions that way. Maybe they have, I haven't checked on their development in a long time. Basic textual zsh works perfectly for me.
Glad to see though that Microsoft Windows is finally catching up to old technology in this area.
Listen to me once, because I do not wish to repeat this 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 times. That's not what I meant. I apologize 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 times for any confusion.
Can you imagine 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 people posting that number 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 times each? I think you would have to have a Beowolf Cluster of oh, at least 0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 nodes to count them all.
That is correct, not that it matters and "all or nothing" is what is described in the patent as something that the patent does not cover. (Something implemented since 1999 is not prior art either).
Let me try to make this clearer, since noone seems to understand what they've patented. Sudo, ACLs, Unix Groups, Capabilities are not what is covered in the patent. The patent does cover something like TiVo. You can be root on your machine, but you are not allowed to change the operating system. The patent does cover something like the PS3, you can install Linux and be root on your machine, but you are not allowed access to the whole system. Moreover, that is exactly the language used in the patent to describe their invention - an OEM who wishes to restrict certain privileged operations on their system from an administrating end-user.
*Sudo is specifically not covered. Sony PS3s and TiVos are.
Hope that helps.
Much closer to a hierarchical security model would be VMS privileges. SETPRV = god, SYSPRV = most other privileges, but not all, another level I forgot the name of that was a subset of SYSPRV and normal user level. VMS is important because by that time, DEC had pretty much collapsed and Microsoft had hired the core VMS team to do Microsoft Windows NT.
Consider the way US security clearances work. There are compartmentalized clearances that are granted on a per-project basis - this is like ACLS, etc. For DOD clearances, there's the President who is Root and has access to everything. Top Secret, which has access to Top Secret, Secret and Confidential; Secret, which has access to Secret and Confidential; Confidential which has access to Confidential, and unclassified. UAC is like DOD clearances and while that may be implemented with Unix Groups, or some such, I'm not specifically aware of anyone doing it that way before 1999.
It's a dumb way to do security actually, but it's patented by Microsoft.
That's been done before. Remember the RSA in 1 line of perl .signatures and t-shirts from the 90's?
Come to think of it though, company logos on armor and stuff could be fun. "This guild officially sponsored by Toyota!"
You didn't read the patent. They describe sudo in it as clear prior art, then go on to describe why their system is different and better.
The patent is for a heirarchical security model where there are multiple levels of access not the all or nothing of sudo. Only the most privileged is like sudo, the other intermediate levels have some level of system access, but not all. It's kind of like capabilities, but a lot more limited since each higher level of security has access to all the lower levels. Fascinating and I can see why the patent was granted (I hope there's clear prior art in an MLS system of the day or even VMS, SYSPRV and SETPRV are close, but I'm not sure).
That's not a bad list. As someone has already pointed out though, none of this scales up. You can't fit 17,000 businesses in the same category into the 1st page. Google and Yahoo already use local servers for countries other than the US, I would expect them to find some other way to optimize their search algorithm, possibly based on geography. If I'm browsing the web in the jungles of Mindanao, am I really interested in home mortgage loans in California? (I clicked on one of those once to see what would happen - the site rejected me for coming from a .ph domain).
By using an extremely small font?
I was lucky to meet Mr. Doohan at a book signing in Los Angeles 15 years ago. May he rest in peace and I am glad he got his final wish. Mr. Scott is definitely my favorite Star Trek character and thank you so much for acting him out.
...
... um, it's green!)
"He called you a tin-plated dictator with delusions of grandeur."
"So, that's when you hit him?"
"No, sir, you told us to be restrained."
"He called the Enterprise a pile of garbage and that's when I hit him."
"You're relieved of duty and confined to quarters until further notice."
"Aye, sir! That will give me time to catch up on my technical reading!"
-sb (What are you drinking? It's
How many of you Microsoft Windows guys have had email from Bill Gates debugging a problem with Microsoft Windows? I'm not the only person who has had personal email from Linus helping to debug a problem with Linux. (It was a bad cache chip on the motherboard, nothing to do with Linux at all, as it turned out).
Is anyone familiar with the game Densha de GO! ? My understanding is that the scoring rules in that game match how train drivers are scored in real life. You not only have to be (exactly) on time, you have to stop the train within a couple of inches of the exact stop at the same time. Newer train lines like the Mita-sen subway in Tokyo and the shinkansen block the tracks except for the place the doors of the train are supposed to be.
(Call me racist if you wish, but I've worked with Japanese in Japan and despite serious problems with their educational system, the average Japanese engineer runs circles around the average American engineer).
Well, actually that always when I took the Shinkansen. I lived the life of the typical salaryman and had my home in Tokyo, but was forced to work in Kobe for awhile and I basically took it from Friday after work, Kobe to Tokyo and Sunday evening Tokyo to Kobe every weekend for about a year. That's as "rush hour" as it gets. Oh, when I traveled Golden Week, I just bought a Green Car ticket, they wouldn't sell me anything else. I was also traveling that route when the FIFA whatever it was, was in Kobe and gaijin were returning to Tokyo.
I had to stand several times on the express shuttle train to Narita, but never on the Shinkansen.
The Japanese built the Shinkansen to impress people, mainly visiting gaijin like us, but hey, they did it right! I am so impressed at Japanese trains in general, but the Shinkansen is a train system done *right* in my opinion.
Maybe you're confusing the Nozomi with something else or you're talking about a different line.
Per car in the Nozomi (the express-est of the express bullet trains), there's something like 15 rows of seats with 5 seats per row with 16 cars per train. The two Green Cars (first class, sort of) are a little more spacious - 4 seats per row, but not much more.
The route I presume will be from Tokyo/Yokohama to Nagoya which along the same shinkansen route that continues on to Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, goes underwater and ends up in Hakata in Kyushu. Most of the passengers go from Tokyo to Osaka, but I understand why they're not doing the Maglev train all the way to Osaka yet, it's fairly flat up until Nagoya, then there are a lot of hills between Nagoya and Osaka.
I love the trains in Japan. I'm sure they will do this one just as well as they did the shinkansen.
Ugh. I hope they lose this one.