As others have pointed out, learning assembly is a way to become more familiar with the low-level stuff that can in turn help you with the high-level stuff. I learned assembly in college (Vax assembly, in fact, hehehe), and put it to use in a later job where we were using Visual Basic (version 3 at the time, on 486 and Pentium class boxen).
My boss had written a routine for dealing with user input that allowed a user to just start typing from any field on the main input screen and the cursor would go automagically to the text input field and start a search based on the typed text. Today, that would seem trivially easy, but at the time, not many programs were doing this. The problem, though, was his handling of the typing was horribly inefficient. I could guess what was going on behind the VB code, because I know assembly and some compiler construction theory. I was able to improve the performance of his code by 3 orders of magnitude. Since the function worked on his system fine (a then top of the line Pentium), he couldn't understand why I spent time optimizing the routing. For our customers, though, many of whom were using 486s, this made a huge difference. Under his code, a moderately skilled typer could out-type his routine, and the letters would show up in a different order than typed (due to his poor coding and an interaction with how VB handled execution among several routines that got called when the cursor skipped up to the text input field). Under my routine, we could never out-type the routine, and customer calls about the function not working were eliminated. Since those calls alone made up over 5% of our help-desk calls about that product, that's a significant savings.
And that was all from knowing enough assembly and compiler construction to intuit how VB was handling the code, and using the info to improve it. I'm not good at assembly, but I know enough to help me optimize my coding in many cases. I've done plenty of stuff like the above (but usually not as significant an improvement, because really, someone has to write some pretty poor code to allow another user to tweak that much), and others who know assembly but work at a higher level probably have similar tales.
Outright attacks on the author are likely to be discarded rather than read and considered. For a feedback message to have any value, it needs to be well written and question the facts or claims of the article, not insinuate lack of skills by the author (no matter how likely the insinuation seems). Furthermore, signing as a "Reporter" for another magazine seems questionable, given the apparent lack of thought in your feedback. Please, if you can't write in a way that helps stop anti-Linux FUD, don't respond at all.
I didn't think it was a dupe, I thought the USPTO had done it again.:)
While I was shocked recently to read that the USPTO awarded this patent, imagine how shocked I was today to read that they had awarded it *AGAIN* to someone. I wonder if the two guys who got it will sue each other now?
But, c'mon....minimum wage for an educated person? I can't believe any US business would expect that.....
Well, I pretty sure Carly Fiorina (chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., for those that didn't pay attention to the article) works for that. I mean, really, this comment couldn't possibly be coming from someone in a high paying job - lead by example, and whatnot.:)
Thank you for continuing the/. tradition of not fully reading a post and pulling a response out from deep within your ass. That's the only place I can figure this came from, since it doesn't reflect what the poster above you said.
I've found that the extra width is what really helps
You know, my wife has recently started saying the same thing. I'm not really sure why she thinks that, though, as she only has one 15-inch LCD. Any ideas?
Is Daryl right? Are you being bankrolled by IBM? Please respond, we need to know who are our friends and who are not.
Please tell me this post is based on the usual fucking idiocy and laziness shown on/. in which you simply did not read the article. Oh, and read the fucking article to find your (BTW, notice the correct spelling of your, unlike most/. posters) answer.
The RIAA is just a group of the top record companies that formed to retain the rights of the companies (read: make sure they get all the money they can while screwing over whoever they need to).
Actually, the RIAA was formed to insure a consistent quality of recording equipment and media. They have since grown into a gross abusive entity which does whatever possible to extend the life of a bloated, archaic market control force.
I had the same question. I actually read the article last night, and noticed that nowhere did the article mention what percentage of calls the Questec system and the umpire agreed on. There was mention in the article that umpires at fields with Questec systems called slightly more strikes (or called slightly more strikes "correctly" - it wasn't really clear), but no mention as to whether or not the digital system also detected a greater number of pitches as a ball or not. Interesting article, but far too much information was missing to make a good decision one way or the other as to whether the umpires have a valid argument.
Really, I read the article more as a "This is the future of baseball, and listen to how these umpires complain" type thing than something with details to allow me to decide if the system appeared good/bad/promising based on current trials.
Wow! Thanks for that link. It explains beautifully how my head works. I've shared it with the wife so maybe she'll stop giving me so much grief about my inability to watch a movie in one sitting or pay attention to her when she's talking.
I'm pretty sure the "pay for support" comment was in regards to an ongoing support and maintainance contract, not in regards to finding someone to help them make the software work. In other words, Microsoft Licensing 6.0. Check the pricing problems and see why some people aren't eager to have that ongoing cost.
If open source is judged to fit these criteria the best, it will win. I don't believe that open source needs or should have this sort of "positive discrimination". It should win or lose based on its merits.
But see, that's exactly the problem - OSS/FS can't win or lose based on merits in most institutions unless the body overseeing that institution actively encourages its use or forces consideration of said solution.
The site where I work (for a USA gov't entity), would not allow me to use Linux/Snort/Nessus until we started using a package (developed by another site within the same gov't agency) which used these tools. Since seeing that we get better results from these tools, I've been allowed to bring in more and more OSS/FS to the site. But I was actively opposed on all attempts to use them until another branch of our agency delivered their tools along with an agency directive to consider these tools in addition to or in place of the proprietary tools we were using.
Without a mandate to consider OSS/FS, most organizations appear to be unwilling to use them, even when in-house expertise is available to make them viable solutions. I've seen it at every site I've worked in the past 6 years, and I'm sure others have seen it even further back than that.
"protect the privacy of visitors to the site." (Good job!)"
Not good job. They protect the safety of criminals too.
Yeah! How dare we protect everyone in the country? That whole innocent until proven guilty idea is over-rated anyway. The Constitution really should have listed by name (and maybe social security number) all the people to whom it actually applied, so we wouldn't have to protect criminals.
Lets be realistic, shall we?
With the amount of marketshare that Word has on the wordprocessing market, I don't think anything will cause its 'doom' anytime soon.
Yeah! Just ask Netscape and Corel how unlikely a company is to lose their bread and butter if they start out with a huge market share lead.
And I'm all up to date. Might occasionally have to rebuild the kernel, but other than that, emerge handles all my updates, and much more easily than M$ auto-crash installer. I love Gentoo.
A soundtrack album (or any other CD for that matter) is as expensive as the movie because unlike the movie, you can play an CD in your car, in the kitchen, in your pocket player while jogging. Unlike a movie, a recording doesn't demand your full attention. Thus, you play it more often.
Pardon me if I'm dumb, but how does the number of times I play a CD/DVD or the attention required to "enjoy" it affect the cost to produce it? I'm not sure I follow your logic, but would love to hear this explained.
Color me lazy, but I haven't even bothered reading the article yet. However, I do wonder about this "can't be explained due to DMCA" stuff. I mean, can't you just read the source of the patch to figure out what it does? Or are they releasing a binary only patch?
OK, so how do you install Windows on that laptop without a CD-ROM? I don't think it is too much of a stretch for them to assume you have a CD-ROM, and they provide instructions for installing on a system without a bootable CD on the same page as the instructions for the standard install.
I agree that scanning a network doesn't make it secure but rather it is the first step in identifying where it is insecure.
Well, actually, it isn't a first step. The first step is reviewing policies. If no policies are in place, knowing what is secure or insecure is almost irrelevent. Once you've analyzed the policies, go over what is missing, clarify what is unclear, ensure that what is required is sensible, and work through everything to make sure the policy is clear and enforced.
Now, once you know what is and isn't allowed, you might want to scan and see what's there. Remember, just because something is a potential vulnerability doesn't mean it has to be changed. A cost/risks analysis may have been done with the determination that a given "hole" has sufficient reward to justify the risk. But until you've gone over the policies and reviewed the business reasons for any given service, you can't determine if it is a hole or not.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have pointed out, learning assembly is a way to become more familiar with the low-level stuff that can in turn help you with the high-level stuff. I learned assembly in college (Vax assembly, in fact, hehehe), and put it to use in a later job where we were using Visual Basic (version 3 at the time, on 486 and Pentium class boxen).
My boss had written a routine for dealing with user input that allowed a user to just start typing from any field on the main input screen and the cursor would go automagically to the text input field and start a search based on the typed text. Today, that would seem trivially easy, but at the time, not many programs were doing this. The problem, though, was his handling of the typing was horribly inefficient. I could guess what was going on behind the VB code, because I know assembly and some compiler construction theory. I was able to improve the performance of his code by 3 orders of magnitude. Since the function worked on his system fine (a then top of the line Pentium), he couldn't understand why I spent time optimizing the routing. For our customers, though, many of whom were using 486s, this made a huge difference. Under his code, a moderately skilled typer could out-type his routine, and the letters would show up in a different order than typed (due to his poor coding and an interaction with how VB handled execution among several routines that got called when the cursor skipped up to the text input field). Under my routine, we could never out-type the routine, and customer calls about the function not working were eliminated. Since those calls alone made up over 5% of our help-desk calls about that product, that's a significant savings.
And that was all from knowing enough assembly and compiler construction to intuit how VB was handling the code, and using the info to improve it. I'm not good at assembly, but I know enough to help me optimize my coding in many cases. I've done plenty of stuff like the above (but usually not as significant an improvement, because really, someone has to write some pretty poor code to allow another user to tweak that much), and others who know assembly but work at a higher level probably have similar tales.
RagManX
Outright attacks on the author are likely to be discarded rather than read and considered. For a feedback message to have any value, it needs to be well written and question the facts or claims of the article, not insinuate lack of skills by the author (no matter how likely the insinuation seems). Furthermore, signing as a "Reporter" for another magazine seems questionable, given the apparent lack of thought in your feedback. Please, if you can't write in a way that helps stop anti-Linux FUD, don't respond at all.
RagManX
I didn't think it was a dupe, I thought the USPTO had done it again. :)
While I was shocked recently to read that the USPTO awarded this patent, imagine how shocked I was today to read that they had awarded it *AGAIN* to someone. I wonder if the two guys who got it will sue each other now?
RagManX
I can secure that computer in 2 words:
:)
Unplug system
There. Any single word book writers out there?
RagManX
Well, I pretty sure Carly Fiorina (chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., for those that didn't pay attention to the article) works for that. I mean, really, this comment couldn't possibly be coming from someone in a high paying job - lead by example, and whatnot.
RagManX
I've produced some clones of myself, and now I'm very, very scared of myself...
RagManX
Thank you for continuing the /. tradition of not fully reading a post and pulling a response out from deep within your ass. That's the only place I can figure this came from, since it doesn't reflect what the poster above you said.
RagManX
You haven't seen the Oracle installs I've seen, then.
RagManX
You know, my wife has recently started saying the same thing. I'm not really sure why she thinks that, though, as she only has one 15-inch LCD. Any ideas?
RagManX
Please tell me this post is based on the usual fucking idiocy and laziness shown on
RagManX
Actually, the RIAA was formed to insure a consistent quality of recording equipment and media. They have since grown into a gross abusive entity which does whatever possible to extend the life of a bloated, archaic market control force.
RagManX
Nah, they don't need that. Somebody had to buy up all those RFIDs that WalMart cancelled.
RagManX
I had the same question. I actually read the article last night, and noticed that nowhere did the article mention what percentage of calls the Questec system and the umpire agreed on. There was mention in the article that umpires at fields with Questec systems called slightly more strikes (or called slightly more strikes "correctly" - it wasn't really clear), but no mention as to whether or not the digital system also detected a greater number of pitches as a ball or not. Interesting article, but far too much information was missing to make a good decision one way or the other as to whether the umpires have a valid argument.
Really, I read the article more as a "This is the future of baseball, and listen to how these umpires complain" type thing than something with details to allow me to decide if the system appeared good/bad/promising based on current trials.
RagManX
Wow! Thanks for that link. It explains beautifully how my head works. I've shared it with the wife so maybe she'll stop giving me so much grief about my inability to watch a movie in one sitting or pay attention to her when she's talking.
RagManX
I'm pretty sure the "pay for support" comment was in regards to an ongoing support and maintainance contract, not in regards to finding someone to help them make the software work. In other words, Microsoft Licensing 6.0. Check the pricing problems and see why some people aren't eager to have that ongoing cost.
RagManX
But see, that's exactly the problem - OSS/FS can't win or lose based on merits in most institutions unless the body overseeing that institution actively encourages its use or forces consideration of said solution.
The site where I work (for a USA gov't entity), would not allow me to use Linux/Snort/Nessus until we started using a package (developed by another site within the same gov't agency) which used these tools. Since seeing that we get better results from these tools, I've been allowed to bring in more and more OSS/FS to the site. But I was actively opposed on all attempts to use them until another branch of our agency delivered their tools along with an agency directive to consider these tools in addition to or in place of the proprietary tools we were using.
Without a mandate to consider OSS/FS, most organizations appear to be unwilling to use them, even when in-house expertise is available to make them viable solutions. I've seen it at every site I've worked in the past 6 years, and I'm sure others have seen it even further back than that.
RagManX
Yeah! How dare we protect everyone in the country? That whole innocent until proven guilty idea is over-rated anyway. The Constitution really should have listed by name (and maybe social security number) all the people to whom it actually applied, so we wouldn't have to protect criminals.
Idiotic troll - go away.
RagManX
RagManX
Didn't Courtney Love do this?
Oh, wait, you said major artist. Sorry - my bad.
RagManX
RagManX
Pardon me if I'm dumb, but how does the number of times I play a CD/DVD or the attention required to "enjoy" it affect the cost to produce it? I'm not sure I follow your logic, but would love to hear this explained.
RagManX
Color me lazy, but I haven't even bothered reading the article yet. However, I do wonder about this "can't be explained due to DMCA" stuff. I mean, can't you just read the source of the patch to figure out what it does? Or are they releasing a binary only patch?
RagManX
OK, so how do you install Windows on that laptop without a CD-ROM? I don't think it is too much of a stretch for them to assume you have a CD-ROM, and they provide instructions for installing on a system without a bootable CD on the same page as the instructions for the standard install.
RagManX
Well, actually, it isn't a first step. The first step is reviewing policies. If no policies are in place, knowing what is secure or insecure is almost irrelevent. Once you've analyzed the policies, go over what is missing, clarify what is unclear, ensure that what is required is sensible, and work through everything to make sure the policy is clear and enforced.
Now, once you know what is and isn't allowed, you might want to scan and see what's there. Remember, just because something is a potential vulnerability doesn't mean it has to be changed. A cost/risks analysis may have been done with the determination that a given "hole" has sufficient reward to justify the risk. But until you've gone over the policies and reviewed the business reasons for any given service, you can't determine if it is a hole or not.
RagManX