To whomever modded my post above "troll". It is not a troll, as it is factually correct and my intent is not solely to goad people. It's fact, presented in an insulting manner. Therefore it is more correctly "flamebait". Learn to mod, idiots!
Yes its design and implementation were (and still are, with GCC, an amazing compiler) scrutinized over, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still decades old technology. In the computer industry, I mean let's face it, it's a relic. I can't even believe major systems (like most modern operating systems) are still written in this.
This is a language that was designed initially to operate on computers with TELETYPE interfaces, forget even terminal let alone raster graphics. With BYTES of system memory and disk space, tiny little systems. No remote sense of complex data type checking (array bounds, etc), or automatic memory management, or anything remotely useful.
Two thousand years later, we're still building with concrete, stone, and brick like the Romans did. The basic building blocks never change. You want memory management and bounds checking? What language should your memory manager and bounds checker by written in? You think this high-level functionality springs fully formed from the CPU?
I dream of a language with the syntax and dynamics of python but with the compilation technology of common lisp. I'd love to write an OS in that language, on top of a highly optimised VM Microkernel, but with runtime introspection....MMM can anyone else say Lisp Machine style mechanics?
Hah! So you want to write an OS, but have someone else do all the heavy lifting for you, eh? Why not just ask for a language with an IDE that has a "Do" function in the Edit menu, right next to "Undo"! That way you can click "Do" and it'll spit out what you want into the editor frame!
Honestly, I'm not sure you understand the importance in an OS of interfacing with the hardware. This isn't a job you want to pawn off on the compiler with a bunch of canned, one-size-fits-all libraries. Not unless you want a crappy, slow, awkward OS.
Re:MULTIthreading != Hyperthreading
on
AMD Quad Cores, Oh My
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
To whomever modded my post above "troll". It is not a troll, as it is factually correct and my intent is not solely to goad people. It's fact, presented in an insulting manner. Therefore it is more correctly "flamebait". Learn to mod, idiots!
2. Strings. There is *no* excuse for C style strings. Is it really such a problem to create a type that has a length encoded into the start?
Clarity. All the data types in C are intended to be clear. It's only a single step up from assembly, really. C handles strings the same way assembly does: it eats bytes sequentially from an array, and it's up to the programmer to tell the program when it's had enough. Data handling in C is a virtually transparent veneer of abstraction from pointer arithmetic. A string data type with length encoded into it would require special handling, and C just don't play that game. C is all about pounding raw bytes and twiddling naked bits. If you want fancy meta-data, you're using the wrong language. Try C++ of Java.
errr....expect it or not, anyone seeing a suspicious pile of comments like that is gonna delete it all before compiling. After all, they're just comments.
The word "Hyperthreading" describes a specific hardware kludge by Intel to make a single-core CPU pretend it's dual-cored. Apps that utilize multiple CPUUs are called multithreaded. All you dorks parroting the article submitter and calling it "hyperthreading" are idiots.
Nice idea, but it doesn't look innoucuous. It looks like a trick. I think the contest is for code the equivalent of a razor blade in a nice looking apple, rather than a razor blade hidden in a pile of clearly marked rat poison.
It's funny, that's one thing about political discourse in the US that seems strange to Europeans. Arguments that go along the lines of:
"but the Founding Fathers clearly wanted us to have guns/abortions/prayers in high school.."
Usually such arguments are an appeal to the notion of the basic rights of man. The original basis of the US federal government was a bunch of guys getting together and saying "what is the bare minimum, least intrusive, most even handed way to govern" and then setting about to make it happen. Since that time, the federal government has slowly evolved into a lumbering monstrosity passing sweeping laws in defiance of the very documents that grant it its powers in the first place. Reference to the "Founding Fathers" is generally an attempt to point out that the rules of government they wrote are still technically the law of the land, and that their aims at limiting government and promoting liberty are as valid now as they were then. That's not to say, of course, that all arguments citing the "Founding Fathers" for support are valid. There are certainly those who do so in reference to (for example) how they were all Christians and therefore we should have government sponsored prayer in government buildings like the FF's did, totally ignoring the things that do change over time (the lowest common religious denomination, in this case).
I've always thought Frank Lloyd Wright was overrated. I especially dislike Fallingwater as it ruined a perfectly good naturally beautiful waterfall by putting a boxy concrete monstrosity over it.
Maybe because it seems like so much of what he built values form over function.
Dang straight. The two things that outrage me the most over that stupid Fallingwater monstrosity are 1) the ruining of a beautiful spot as you mentioned, and 2) those stupid built-in couches that are meant to be looked at rather than sat on. A man who doesn't leave room in his house for a good couch is a fool, if you ask me.
And where do you suppose they are getting the $61 million to fund their little upgrade? PETA?
Somehow I the the Defense department is involved in this in some way.
Of course it is. Sandia National Labs is a DOE installation, and the DOE does a shitload of nuclear weapons research. One of the purposes of the Z device is to verify the accuracy of nuclear warhead computer simulations by producing small fusion reactions for analysis. No one said it was a device designed to expose feed poor children or grant all of us on earth instant transcendent elightenment. But regardless of who funded it, it ain't a frickin' rail gun. It's not even a weapon at all. It a piece of frickin' lab equipment.
Why not introduce a peer review process by which a patent in a particular industry is reviewed by patent holders in the same industry
Errr....the purpose of the patent system is to prevent the established, moneyed old boy network of entrenched industry from telling small upstarts "thanks for the idea, now get lost".
I'm not a hippie, far from it. Grizzled veteran of several wars is more like it.
But I hate guns. I hate war. I hate all these things that are designed to kill and maim (contrary to international treaties, in fact).
How about concentrating on global cooperation instead of global conquest? There are only two ways of eliminating an enemy: Kill him or make him a friend.
Call me crazy, but I'd rather make a friend than kill an enemy.
Designing these weapons can only lead to more killing. I find that terribly sad.
How about reading the linked article at LiveScience.com where they explain the actual purpose of the device: it's not a rail gun, it's an implosion machine designed to investigate the properties of nuclear fusion. It's not a weapon.
"Yahoo News is reporting that scientists at Sandia National Labs have created a magnetic pulse gun (rail gun)
Let's hear it for reading comprehension! Between yahoo news and he submitter, we're somehow left with the impression that this is a rail gun. It's nothing of the kind. It's an implosion machine. As described in the LiveScience.com article linked: "The Z uses a short burst of intense electricity - only a few 10 billionths of a second long - that forces an ionized gas to implode." So we can stop the handwringing over the morality of this "weapon", as to use it as such would require luring the enemy into a chamber the size of a soup can and asking him to hold still while you blast him.
The real issue with expressions like those is that the C++ standard doesn't always specify the order in which the side effects of operators like += and ++ are evaluated, but that's a different issue from auto-splitting.
While operator precedence (or lack thereof) is a valid issue, I don't think it's the true issue here. Auto-splitting is an attempt to cram DWIM features into the compiler. Really, a compiler shouldn't be trying to fix errors, it should be spitting out error messages. If the source is ambiguous, it just plain needs to be fixed and re-compiled.
Err...what good would THAT do? It's important to remember that the Drake Equation is, at best, speculative science fiction (see HERE for a more critical evaluation of it). The equation itself is little more than a statement of the obvious. The only way to get an informative result from it is to plug in meaningful values. Drake and company came up with some speculative numbers, but there are simply way too many unsubstantiated "ifs" there to draw any trustworthy results. The fact that the values of the three "f" terms must necessarily be fabricated from whole cloth is alone enough to render the equation non-science.
I should have been more specific: I mean, we are all capable of any level of MENTAL potential.
You'd still be wrong though. There are many of people with varying levels of congenital mental retardation who are not even capable of understanding that a dime is worth more than a nickel while being smaller. No amount of exercising their "brain muscle" is (or was EVER) going to turn them into an Einstein. We are not all born equal. Mental capacities run the gamut from vegetable all the way up to super-genius. Why can you not accept the possibility that some people are born with a greater potential? It's clear that it happens on the "low end"-- do you reject the notion that there can be no beneficial brain abnormalities?
Yes for packages that arrive LATE...so it gaurantees a package will get there on time, and if it doesn't get there on time you will get a refund. Implying "Your package will get there, it might get there late, but it will get there".
I think you're missing the point. In business a guarantee is only worth what comes after "or". As in "we guarantee (x), or we'll do (y)" where (x) is the promised service and (y) is the remedy offered in case of failure. I know you can't be saying that UPS never fails to deliver, so therefore the discussion must necessarily turn to the remedies offered. The "Service Guarantee" to which you have linked does not anywhere state that all items will be delivered, no matter what. It only addresses the timeliness of delivery, and even then only offers a refund of shipping charges. The extent of UPS' assumed liability for lost items is is clearly stated in the service agreement. Said statement is an outright admission that loss is a possibility. I say it again: in business a "guarantee" is only as good as the remedy it offers for failure. Here is the UPS policy on lost stuff:
UPS will not be liable for or responsible for loss or damage to: articles of unusual value (as defined in Item 460 of the UPS Tariff); Prepaid Letters; perishable commodities or commodities requiring protection from heat or cold to the extent the loss or damage results from exposure to heat or cold or the perishable nature of the item; loss or damage due to war risks, insects, moths, vermin, inherent vice (including, but not limited to, improper, inadequate or unsafe packaging or wrapping that fails to meet UPS's published standards related thereto set forth in the UPS Tariff or elsewhere), deterioration, dampness of atmosphere, extreme of temperature, ordinary wear and tear or that which occurred or arose prior to or after the course of transportation by UPS; and special, incidental or consequential damages. Additionally, UPS will not be liable for any damages related to providing, or the failure to provide, C.O.D. service, including, but not limited to: failure to collect the C.O.D. amount; failure to collect the specified form of payment; collection of an instrument in the wrong amount; failure or delay in delivering the collected instrument to the shipper; or collection of forged, insufficient funds or otherwise invalid instruments.
Where a value has been declared and the applicable charges paid, UPS's maximum liability shall not exceed the lesser of: (1) the declared value on the UPS source document or UPS shipping system used, (2) the lesser of the purchase price paid by the consignee (where the property involved has been sold to the consignee), the actual cost, or the replacement cost of the property lost or damaged, at the time and place of loss or damage, (3) the cost of repair of damaged property, (4) $50,000 (U.S.) per package, except for: (i) packages shipped via a UPS Drop Box, in which case UPS's maximum liability shall be $500 (U.S.) per package, (ii) packages shipped as a result of a request for service made through the Internet by a shipper who has a UPS Internet Shipping account only, in which case UPS's maximum liability is $5,000 (U.S.) per package, (iii) packages returned via Print Return Label, Print and Mail Return Label, Electronic Return Label or 1 UPS Pickup Attempt Return Service, in which case UPS's maximum liability is $1,000 (U.S.) per package and (v) packages for which Shipper Release is selected, in which case UPS's maximum liability is $999 per package, or (5) $500 (U.S.) for packages containing jewelry (not including costume jewelry) shipped via UPS international service.
UPS cannot and ddoes not absolutely guarantee delivery.
Actually, go to the UPS website Now do a search for UPS Service Gaurantee - they gaurantee delivery.
Did you read the actual service guarantee? It says: (emphasis mine)
In the event UPS fails to attempt delivery within the time published on the UPS Web site, or as provided when 1-800-PICK-UPS is called, UPS, at its option, will either credit or refund the transportation charges for each such package to the payer only, upon request, subject to the following conditions. This is the sole remedy available under the UPS Service Guarantee.
Guaranteed to get there on time, or your money back. That's it. A "guarantee" is only as good as the remedy it provides. Anyone with half a brain knows you don't send sensitive, irreplaceable data via UPS, as the limit of your redress will be 1) refund of delivery charge, and 2) your insurance claim on the value of the lost item(s).
Try this thought-experiment. Follow a dollar as it goes from your pocket into a theater. Who gets it? Does nobody, in the end, receive it in the form of a salary?
Really, that's a pretty stupid experiment. If you follow that dollar long enough, in theory ALL OF US will receive it in the form of salary eventually. You have to define the limits of the transaction you're asking us to consider. Do we stop watching it when the 3rd assistant production manager of an unrelated movie finally pays it in cash to his gardener? Or when it goes to the janitor at the studio corporate HQ? Money itself isn't taxed. Transactions are. Which transaction are you asking us to look at?
Why are you not blaming UPS? They are the ones who lost the data. You should blame UPS for losing the package and then blame Citi for not encrypting the data. To say UPS is blameless is totally irresponsible on your part, and lacks insight.
Oh please. While UPS does indeed have a share in the blame, it's hardly worth mentioning. Their track record on losing/destroying packages is well known. They absolutely do NOT make any guarantee that every single package will make it through, and two out of three random people off the street can confirm that from personal experience. Their business model is essentially "usually gets there, for a reasonable price". There are numerous secure courier services that exist for this very reason: you cannot trust critical transfers to any of the mass carriers. Blame for the loss of the package goes to UPS. Blame for the loss of the data itself, which is truly the issue, sits squarely on the shoulders of whichever dumbass at Citi had those tapes put in a UPS mailer.
You serious? Is election fraud really only a civil offence? That's messed up. If there's anything that's a crime against society and not just an individual, it's faking society's elections.
Election fraud is certainly a criminal offense, but a prosecutor has to have some proof that the crime was committed before he'll go to court. Not liking the outcome of an election and suspecting that "something's fishy" don't constitute proof. The interested parties in this case were left with the only option being to file a civil suit in order to get some subpoenas flowing, in the hopes that the discovery process might lead to evidence of wrongdoing somewhere, or at least show that stuff was broken. You can file a civil suit for any reason you like, after all. You can sue your neighbor for turning the sky green, even though your neighbor has no control over the sky, and the sky never actually even turned green.
Don't forget that engineers fiddling with Verilog are the ones that make high-quality, commercial electronics. This is a neat project, but let's not get carried away, eh?
Patently Absurd Notion + Deadpan Delivery = Humor
Normally this style of humor works much better. The problem here on/. is that there are any number of clueless folks here where the following is true:
Slashdot Mirror
Moderation -1
100% Flamebait
OK, now that's more like it!
This is a language that was designed initially to operate on computers with TELETYPE interfaces, forget even terminal let alone raster graphics. With BYTES of system memory and disk space, tiny little systems. No remote sense of complex data type checking (array bounds, etc), or automatic memory management, or anything remotely useful.
Two thousand years later, we're still building with concrete, stone, and brick like the Romans did. The basic building blocks never change. You want memory management and bounds checking? What language should your memory manager and bounds checker by written in? You think this high-level functionality springs fully formed from the CPU?
I dream of a language with the syntax and dynamics of python but with the compilation technology of common lisp. I'd love to write an OS in that language, on top of a highly optimised VM Microkernel, but with runtime introspection....MMM can anyone else say Lisp Machine style mechanics?
Hah! So you want to write an OS, but have someone else do all the heavy lifting for you, eh? Why not just ask for a language with an IDE that has a "Do" function in the Edit menu, right next to "Undo"! That way you can click "Do" and it'll spit out what you want into the editor frame!
Honestly, I'm not sure you understand the importance in an OS of interfacing with the hardware. This isn't a job you want to pawn off on the compiler with a bunch of canned, one-size-fits-all libraries. Not unless you want a crappy, slow, awkward OS.
To whomever modded my post above "troll". It is not a troll, as it is factually correct and my intent is not solely to goad people. It's fact, presented in an insulting manner. Therefore it is more correctly "flamebait". Learn to mod, idiots!
whateverdude. This problem was fixed with XP SP1 three years ago. If you're running pre-SP1 XP, you're already an idiot.
Clarity. All the data types in C are intended to be clear. It's only a single step up from assembly, really. C handles strings the same way assembly does: it eats bytes sequentially from an array, and it's up to the programmer to tell the program when it's had enough. Data handling in C is a virtually transparent veneer of abstraction from pointer arithmetic. A string data type with length encoded into it would require special handling, and C just don't play that game. C is all about pounding raw bytes and twiddling naked bits. If you want fancy meta-data, you're using the wrong language. Try C++ of Java.
errr....expect it or not, anyone seeing a suspicious pile of comments like that is gonna delete it all before compiling. After all, they're just comments.
The word "Hyperthreading" describes a specific hardware kludge by Intel to make a single-core CPU pretend it's dual-cored. Apps that utilize multiple CPUUs are called multithreaded. All you dorks parroting the article submitter and calling it "hyperthreading" are idiots.
Nice idea, but it doesn't look innoucuous. It looks like a trick. I think the contest is for code the equivalent of a razor blade in a nice looking apple, rather than a razor blade hidden in a pile of clearly marked rat poison.
Usually such arguments are an appeal to the notion of the basic rights of man. The original basis of the US federal government was a bunch of guys getting together and saying "what is the bare minimum, least intrusive, most even handed way to govern" and then setting about to make it happen. Since that time, the federal government has slowly evolved into a lumbering monstrosity passing sweeping laws in defiance of the very documents that grant it its powers in the first place. Reference to the "Founding Fathers" is generally an attempt to point out that the rules of government they wrote are still technically the law of the land, and that their aims at limiting government and promoting liberty are as valid now as they were then. That's not to say, of course, that all arguments citing the "Founding Fathers" for support are valid. There are certainly those who do so in reference to (for example) how they were all Christians and therefore we should have government sponsored prayer in government buildings like the FF's did, totally ignoring the things that do change over time (the lowest common religious denomination, in this case).
Dang straight. The two things that outrage me the most over that stupid Fallingwater monstrosity are 1) the ruining of a beautiful spot as you mentioned, and 2) those stupid built-in couches that are meant to be looked at rather than sat on. A man who doesn't leave room in his house for a good couch is a fool, if you ask me.
Of course it is. Sandia National Labs is a DOE installation, and the DOE does a shitload of nuclear weapons research. One of the purposes of the Z device is to verify the accuracy of nuclear warhead computer simulations by producing small fusion reactions for analysis. No one said it was a device designed to expose feed poor children or grant all of us on earth instant transcendent elightenment. But regardless of who funded it, it ain't a frickin' rail gun. It's not even a weapon at all. It a piece of frickin' lab equipment.
Errr....the purpose of the patent system is to prevent the established, moneyed old boy network of entrenched industry from telling small upstarts "thanks for the idea, now get lost".
How about reading the linked article at LiveScience.com where they explain the actual purpose of the device: it's not a rail gun, it's an implosion machine designed to investigate the properties of nuclear fusion. It's not a weapon.
Let's hear it for reading comprehension! Between yahoo news and he submitter, we're somehow left with the impression that this is a rail gun. It's nothing of the kind. It's an implosion machine. As described in the LiveScience.com article linked: "The Z uses a short burst of intense electricity - only a few 10 billionths of a second long - that forces an ionized gas to implode." So we can stop the handwringing over the morality of this "weapon", as to use it as such would require luring the enemy into a chamber the size of a soup can and asking him to hold still while you blast him.
While operator precedence (or lack thereof) is a valid issue, I don't think it's the true issue here. Auto-splitting is an attempt to cram DWIM features into the compiler. Really, a compiler shouldn't be trying to fix errors, it should be spitting out error messages. If the source is ambiguous, it just plain needs to be fixed and re-compiled.
Err...what good would THAT do? It's important to remember that the Drake Equation is, at best, speculative science fiction (see HERE for a more critical evaluation of it). The equation itself is little more than a statement of the obvious. The only way to get an informative result from it is to plug in meaningful values. Drake and company came up with some speculative numbers, but there are simply way too many unsubstantiated "ifs" there to draw any trustworthy results. The fact that the values of the three "f" terms must necessarily be fabricated from whole cloth is alone enough to render the equation non-science.
You'd still be wrong though. There are many of people with varying levels of congenital mental retardation who are not even capable of understanding that a dime is worth more than a nickel while being smaller. No amount of exercising their "brain muscle" is (or was EVER) going to turn them into an Einstein. We are not all born equal. Mental capacities run the gamut from vegetable all the way up to super-genius. Why can you not accept the possibility that some people are born with a greater potential? It's clear that it happens on the "low end"-- do you reject the notion that there can be no beneficial brain abnormalities?
Wow! It's been done already!
I think you're missing the point. In business a guarantee is only worth what comes after "or". As in "we guarantee (x), or we'll do (y)" where (x) is the promised service and (y) is the remedy offered in case of failure. I know you can't be saying that UPS never fails to deliver, so therefore the discussion must necessarily turn to the remedies offered. The "Service Guarantee" to which you have linked does not anywhere state that all items will be delivered, no matter what. It only addresses the timeliness of delivery, and even then only offers a refund of shipping charges. The extent of UPS' assumed liability for lost items is is clearly stated in the service agreement. Said statement is an outright admission that loss is a possibility. I say it again: in business a "guarantee" is only as good as the remedy it offers for failure. Here is the UPS policy on lost stuff:
UPS cannot and ddoes not absolutely guarantee delivery.
Did you read the actual service guarantee? It says: (emphasis mine)
Guaranteed to get there on time, or your money back. That's it. A "guarantee" is only as good as the remedy it provides. Anyone with half a brain knows you don't send sensitive, irreplaceable data via UPS, as the limit of your redress will be 1) refund of delivery charge, and 2) your insurance claim on the value of the lost item(s).Really, that's a pretty stupid experiment. If you follow that dollar long enough, in theory ALL OF US will receive it in the form of salary eventually. You have to define the limits of the transaction you're asking us to consider. Do we stop watching it when the 3rd assistant production manager of an unrelated movie finally pays it in cash to his gardener? Or when it goes to the janitor at the studio corporate HQ? Money itself isn't taxed. Transactions are. Which transaction are you asking us to look at?
Oh please. While UPS does indeed have a share in the blame, it's hardly worth mentioning. Their track record on losing/destroying packages is well known. They absolutely do NOT make any guarantee that every single package will make it through, and two out of three random people off the street can confirm that from personal experience. Their business model is essentially "usually gets there, for a reasonable price". There are numerous secure courier services that exist for this very reason: you cannot trust critical transfers to any of the mass carriers. Blame for the loss of the package goes to UPS. Blame for the loss of the data itself, which is truly the issue, sits squarely on the shoulders of whichever dumbass at Citi had those tapes put in a UPS mailer.
Election fraud is certainly a criminal offense, but a prosecutor has to have some proof that the crime was committed before he'll go to court. Not liking the outcome of an election and suspecting that "something's fishy" don't constitute proof. The interested parties in this case were left with the only option being to file a civil suit in order to get some subpoenas flowing, in the hopes that the discovery process might lead to evidence of wrongdoing somewhere, or at least show that stuff was broken. You can file a civil suit for any reason you like, after all. You can sue your neighbor for turning the sky green, even though your neighbor has no control over the sky, and the sky never actually even turned green.
Patently Absurd Notion + Deadpan Delivery = Humor
Normally this style of humor works much better. The problem here on /. is that there are any number of clueless folks here where the following is true:
Patently Absurd Notion + Deadpan Delivery = Numbskull Actually Believes That Shit
Signs, maybe, but please tell me how to "read a map" to a blind person.