The meaning is clear. The confusion only comes up when looking for a loophole. The language has changed a bit in 2 1/2 centuries, but not so much that we can't understand it if we want to.
Which "we" are you?
The "we" that believes that it empowers States to form National Guard units?
Or the "we" that believes that a "well-regulated militia" is anyone who can get together with a couple of buddies, don camo gear and run around the woods?
Or perhaps the "we" that considers one person with a den full of automatic weapons to suffice?
Each of these positions has its adherents, they generally consider theirs to be the One True Interpretation, because "it's so simple a blind man can see it". A phrase that always makes me want to punch somebody. Or, considering the topic, shoot them.
I always hate that part. some of the biggest names in history produced all their work without any form of copyright. Why do people think that if we gave "only" a measly lifetime of protection people would suddenly stop creating?
It's time to abolish copyright completely. We did fine without it before, we'll do fine without it again.
It's hard to find an archduke to sponsor a composer these days. Maybe after the next wave of Republican reforms...
Seriously, as a sometime-creator, I could argue that creator who could produce a single work of value and then sponge off it for the rest of his/her life doesn't have much financial incentive to create other works of value, but fortunately, most really good creators aren't primarily motivated by money. And the idea that the copyright extends until the point where the descendents have mutated into something no longer human is a bit much. They didn't create anything. Selling the copyright and having it live forever in the hands of strangers is even more offensive.
I'd be OK if copyrights ran to about 20 years. But what Sonny Bono did just wasn't right.
Of course, the primary topic of conversation had to do with imports. As it stands, it's fine to import cheap labor, but not to import cheap products, it seems. Unless you're Wal-Mart.
It's sad and depressing that our freedoms have fallen so low that we have to beg the government kindly to permit us to sell our property.
Our "property" slowly mutates into "temporary leased and highly restricted item". Have you tried to sell a DVD in a different country? (region encoding)
How about reselling a software license?
A used game? (special one-time use codes)
No, what's sad and depressing is that we have to strip naked (if only in the virtual sense) to travel by air within our own country.
The reason that ebooks, DVDs and media recordings are subject to such restrictions is because we went ahead and "bought" them with the restrictions attached at the time of sale.
This would be a slam-dunk case if not for certain Supreme Court Justices who can't help but give big slobbery kisses to any corporation that gives them the time of day.
I do wonder why are they doing this?
They cannot be removed or replaced or re-elected, so there are no lobbyists here. Are some justices just being bribed directly?
They can be removed. They're not elected, but the President can appoint a replacement, subject to Congressional approval.
Removal was made to be an excruciatingly difficult process with the idea that judges would thereby be immune to threats from politics and politicians. Although one of the Constitutional Amendments up for vote in Florida is intended to eliminate that protection at the state level.
This doesn't, of course, remove the political leanings of the judges themselves. The judges were traditionally expected to put those aside when considering cases.
One of the more popular ways of bribing legislators is to offer them post-term consulting or lobbying positions. However, in the case of the Supreme Court, that's not been an issue since the Justices tend to hold office until they're too old to gain much benefit.
...they'll probably say that it's not their job to decide whether the law is stupid or unjust.
And it isn't. The legislature makes the law, and the courts just figure out how it applies to each case.
Except in the case of the Supreme Courts of countries, where they must also decide whether the law is compatible with the principles of the country (i.e., the constitution).
In which case, it may go back to the legislature again in the form of a constitutional amendment.
Considering how much yelling gets done about what constitutes a "well-regulated Militia" by the time you get to the Amendments, I'd say that the "very few interpretations" thing didn't last very long.
I would love to exerts in a field become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of the academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more then an hour a week.
I would love for experts in a field to become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of their academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more than an hour a week
I'm an expert pedantic speller.
But it was all spelled correctly, just not the right words!
Actually, I have this nasty suspicion that a lot of the apps I use auto-suggest word completions when I'm not looking. Badly.
Maybe, but I didn't take it that way. The point as written simply rails against partisanship.
From what I can tell, anybody who really thinks either candidate^W party is "the answer" is not thinking clearly.
(no, I'm not the AC.)
We're being given a binary choice between monsters who eat their own babies and monsters who will eat everyone else's babies. And we're accepting it. People call themselves Libertarian, but vote Republican. People call themselves "Tea Party" vote Republican. Even some Democrats vote Republican. Republicans who vote Democrat are virtually extinct at the moment, and even suggesting to compromise gets you accused of the heresy of being a RINO. People are so afraid that the wrong lizard will get in that they won't even stand up for their own lizards.
SNL regularly doesn't post sketches that involve music in some way. Even if they can defend themselves with fair use, a lawyer probably decided it's simply not worth the hassle for the ad revenue it generates.
And here I was thinking that Oceana had ALWAYS been at war with EastAsia!
I don't see how this is even relevant. its clearly the getting in the motor vehicle while impaired that is the issue, not the ingestion of the substance.
That some people do stupid things doesn't justify the collective punishment of every person, preemptively.
I don't want punishment. Punishment is overrated. If punishment was all it took, we would have punished our way to Paradise ages ago. In a lot of cases, "punishment" is actually just a way of doing things that would ordinarily be considered criminal and making a virtue of it.
I would argue that the stupid thing was ingesting whatever it was in the first place. The main reason I don't have any use for tripping out is that the buzz is rarely worth the consequences.
But that's neither here nor there. Idiots will be idiots. Punishment won't undo damage already done. All I really care about is preventing the fatal consequences, and whether that's done at the ingestion phase or the getting-into-the-vehicle phase is, to me, immaterial. It's not about punishing, it's about preventing.
The real question is, when is it ethical to stop consenting adults from putting something into their own body? I don't think so. A person's body is his own, he must live with whatever it does or whatever its lack doesn't do.
I am not talking about children, or the mentally retarded of course, those are other matters, but in general, if a person is taking it thesmself, based on their own (however limited) knowledge, then I see no ethical issue.
When they take that body outside, put it in a motor vehicle, drive off and kill people. Speaking from personal experience.
An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of vengeance.
that's right, i just said the lord of the rings is a parable about drug addiction
Actually, I've often wondered whether Tolkein knew any opiate users - maybe WWI veterans who got hooked on morphine? I don't have any firsthand experience with them myself (aside from having my wisdom teeth removed, and Vicodin is pretty tame stuff compared to injected morphine), but the description of Gollum's cravings sounds a lot like what I've read about opiate addiction.
Not to discredit their diligent use of dirty tactics, but Microsoft got where they were through more than just skulduggery. They were sometimes at the right place at the right time, sometimes not at the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes they saw a good thing and bought it out. The original Dartmouth BASIC was nowhere near as flexible as what Gates & Allen produced. You don't get that big through dirty work alone, even though it helps.
And I really hope you weren't referring to a certain other CEO recently departed as "good". He did finally qualify legitimately for his handicapped parking space, however.
Gates is no saint, but I'd say he's considerably less abusive and psychopathic than most of his peers, living or dead.
If you don't budget for upgrades, you'd better either plan to be gone by then or be fortunate enough to be able to toss the whole thing.
You seem do not realize that in many industries the traditional upgrade cycle for expensive equipment is 15-25 years! So they did plan for upgrade, but that time may be 10 or more years away from now.
So if anyone has the Wal-Mart Shopper mentality here, it is those who think that the typical PC update cycle is suitable for everyone. It is not about updating PC, but updating the whole infrastructure (which relies on a lot of crappy third-party software) and re-training the whole personal to use it. It is completely unrealistic to do that every 3-5 years as you do in the IT-world...
If I tell you that you need to buy a new PC and replace all software (which you got used to) every 6 months, how would you like this idea?
I thought that was supposed to be the ideal according to the software vendors! But the IRS expects you're going to replace computer equipment every 3-5 years, which is why they changed the depreciation rules to allow for computer equipment.
Your scenario isn't hypothetical to me, though. My Windows machine came with XP welded in. I have doubts about its ability to stand the strain of Windows 7, and already am hurting because I cannot install IE9 on XP.
If you want to run in isolation and you have the ability to (re)create the environment, that's fine. As far as I'm concerned, the only really compelling reason to move off Office 97 was to see the end of Clippy.
However, it can get really cumbersome once you move outside the box. DOS wasn't originally designed for the Internet, so just emailing the resulting document to someone else means doing things that the original setup wasn't designed to handle. The world in which the software lives has changed.
Windows XP is a whole different can of worms, though. It's immensely more complex than DOS, and requires a constant stream of of security fixes, bugfixes, etc., which Microsoft plans to turn off shortly. But, as I said, the exploiters will keep going, so the system is going to have progressively more holes over time up to the point where the existing XP base is so small that nobody wants to hack in anymore, even though the software itself freezes.
That's not even mentioning the fact that unlike DOS, Windows XP "phones home" to Microsoft. Who could presumably switch the whole thing off, if they felt like it.
I work in a hospital setting where most, if not all, computers run XP. In radiology specifically, the PACS software we run is only certified for windows XP and ie 6.
Hospital doesn't want to invest money into upgrading pacs software.
I do quite a bit of work in veterinary medicine and the costs associated with upgrading is pretty large. The scary part of a lot of this software isn't that it's certified to work on XP, it's that its so crappily written that it only works on XP with admin access and any number of bandaids to make it work. What I've done in a few cases is virtualized the XP box where it was possible. Trying to keep this stuff running over the long term is going to be fun.
The Wal-Mart Shopper mentality.
1. Thinking that the cost of something is the cost at the cash register. Despite what everyone thinks, computers are not a fixed cost, there is ongoing expense. Sooner or later, all software becomes obsolete. Not because there's something wrong with the software, but because the world in which the software lives changes. Sooner or later, you not only cannot run the old software on the new OS, you often cannot get replacement hardware that can run it when the original equipment dies. If you don't budget for upgrades, you'd better either plan to be gone by then or be fortunate enough to be able to toss the whole thing. Emulators only go so far - Windows 98 is dead and getting no new security updates but that doesn't mean hackers don't still consider exploits.
2. Expecting that "IT doesn't matter" and that whoever delivers fastest and/or cheapest is "good enough". So much software out there is crap, just because people won't accept that quality takes time, effort, and money.
In S/3x0 and z/Architecture machine code; srn,n is the conventional (and, I think, fastest) "clear register n" instruction. I.e., the subtract is there as a way of clearing the register, not as an actual semantic "subtract" operation, just as, in x86,
If subtracting a value from itself produces an arithmetic overflow, your hardware is broken.
Thanks for the details. They are informative, but informal, so I think they missed this one.
The original S/360 and S/370 architectures did not have a distinct "Clear Register" instruction. You could either subtract a register from itself or you could XOR it with itself if you wanted to zero it. Or, you could use the Load Address instruction, but that one required more overhead, and on certain machines, I think it would return alternative values if the addressing mode was set to certain values.
I'd have to go back and RTFM (Principles of Operation), but unless I was mislead, there is, in fact, a single case where subtracting 2 numbers could throw an Arithmetic Exception (0C4), due to overflow in the sign bit. So the instruction:
SR 15,15
Could fail in extremely rare cases. Although since the sign bit was used as a sentinel bit for addresses, not as rare as it might have been. Therefore one of the IEBFR14 updates replaced it with:
X 15,15
Exclusive OR has no sign bit, nor carry operations, and therefore could safely zap all 4-billion-odd possible values that General Register 15 could contain.
If you accept the idea that products like Prime's RTOS are OS's, then the resulting Intel calculator did, in fact have an OS
This does not follow. An RTOS is indeed an OS, and I work with RTOSes every day, but an RTOS is still a piece of software that has a definition, and you can run an processor without an RTOS. I would assume most very simple calculators do run without even an RTOS. There is certainly nothing about the 4004 in your example that would force it to run an RTOS. It can, and did, run just fine without an OS, RTOS or not.
In theory, ALL my programs have a definition, even if I sometimes despair of what they turn into in practice. That includes things like the control program that I used to develop for the 8085 that ran a sewage processing plant, or the core software that comes pre-installed in the Arduino and runs the user-written code.
The OS for a basic 4-banger calculator is typically going to be something like a master loop that invokes a keyboard scanning module, numeric encode/decode modules, an arithmetic function dispatcher and arithmetic calculation routines. Some or all of these can be interrupt-driven, depending on hardware design.
I fail to understand why such a program does not qualify as an OS merely because it's a relatively small number of lines of code or because it doesn't allow arbitrary binary code to be installed and run. PRIMOS RTOS systems could be disqualified on both those counts. Conversely, I don't see any reason why the definition of OS should be "control program supplied by a third-party commercial software vendor". By that definition, early versions of Linux wouldn't have made the cut.
What about when the WoW/LoL servers themselves get pwned?
It's actually not a bad idea to run Windows in a VM that boots from a clean snapshot every time.
It would be an even better idea if the machine in question was ONLY used for the games in question, but all it takes is one "Let me look that up on Google/Start IE" or "Gotta check my FaceBook" to start the can opener.
I didn't have a specific definition in mind, but was considering the fact that most computer science has mathematical underpinnings (for example, the Turing Machine). And when you look at almost any problem mathematically and abstractly, you tend to come up with variants that differ considerably from common usage. Which is, in fact one of the best reasons to do so, since the Way We've Always Done Things isn't always the best way for a given class of real-world problems.
I think most people consider an OS to be a program that runs other programs. But I can name at least 2 instances where that is not the case.
Back in the 1970s, one of the better-known names in the minicomputer business was Prime Computer. The primary OS options were known as DOS (Primos2) and DOS/VS (Primos3). But they also had another option: RTOS, the Real Time Operating System. I have a copy of the RTOS manual. Basically, RTOS was a skeleton system where you added custom functionality to provide a bootable standalone real-time process control system.
RIght about the same time, Per Brinch Hansen created Concurrent Pascal. Concurrent Pascal was designed to provide a means of creating provably correct real-time systems by using the concepts he called Processes, Monitors and Classes. Which actually takes us back to the original topic, since a provably-correct system is (in theory) not exploitable. Concurrent Pascal in its pure form didn't require an OS, because - as with Prime's RTOS, the application was the OS. However, instead of providing a set of components to wire together with user-written code, Concurrent Pascal did it all in the VM, and therefore the entire "OS" was user-written code.
I definitely would take exception to the definition that an OS is how applications talk to hardware. Most OS's do at least some form of software resource management as well. Some OS's devote entire address spaces to load-balancing and resource management (for example, IBM's OS/MVS and later products).
Finally, don't forget that the very first mass-market microprocessor: Intel's 4004, was a general-purpose CPU created specifically to be the core of a calculator. If you accept the idea that products like Prime's RTOS are OS's, then the resulting Intel calculator did, in fact have an OS, even if your definition of OS would otherwise rule out the possibility only software could be an OS component and that hard-wired logic circuits could not be OS components in an OS considered as an abstract concept.
Slashdot Mirror
The meaning is clear. The confusion only comes up when looking for a loophole. The language has changed a bit in 2 1/2 centuries, but not so much that we can't understand it if we want to.
Which "we" are you?
The "we" that believes that it empowers States to form National Guard units?
Or the "we" that believes that a "well-regulated militia" is anyone who can get together with a couple of buddies, don camo gear and run around the woods?
Or perhaps the "we" that considers one person with a den full of automatic weapons to suffice?
Each of these positions has its adherents, they generally consider theirs to be the One True Interpretation, because "it's so simple a blind man can see it". A phrase that always makes me want to punch somebody. Or, considering the topic, shoot them.
I always hate that part. some of the biggest names in history produced all their work without any form of copyright. Why do people think that if we gave "only" a measly lifetime of protection people would suddenly stop creating?
It's time to abolish copyright completely. We did fine without it before, we'll do fine without it again.
It's hard to find an archduke to sponsor a composer these days. Maybe after the next wave of Republican reforms...
Seriously, as a sometime-creator, I could argue that creator who could produce a single work of value and then sponge off it for the rest of his/her life doesn't have much financial incentive to create other works of value, but fortunately, most really good creators aren't primarily motivated by money. And the idea that the copyright extends until the point where the descendents have mutated into something no longer human is a bit much. They didn't create anything. Selling the copyright and having it live forever in the hands of strangers is even more offensive.
I'd be OK if copyrights ran to about 20 years. But what Sonny Bono did just wasn't right.
Of course, the primary topic of conversation had to do with imports. As it stands, it's fine to import cheap labor, but not to import cheap products, it seems. Unless you're Wal-Mart.
It's sad and depressing that our freedoms have fallen so low that we have to beg the government kindly to permit us to sell our property.
Our "property" slowly mutates into "temporary leased and highly restricted item".
Have you tried to sell a DVD in a different country? (region encoding)
How about reselling a software license?
A used game? (special one-time use codes)
No, what's sad and depressing is that we have to strip naked (if only in the virtual sense) to travel by air within our own country.
The reason that ebooks, DVDs and media recordings are subject to such restrictions is because we went ahead and "bought" them with the restrictions attached at the time of sale.
This would be a slam-dunk case if not for certain Supreme Court Justices who can't help but give big slobbery kisses to any corporation that gives them the time of day.
I do wonder why are they doing this?
They cannot be removed or replaced or re-elected, so there are no lobbyists here. Are some justices just being bribed directly?
They can be removed. They're not elected, but the President can appoint a replacement, subject to Congressional approval.
Removal was made to be an excruciatingly difficult process with the idea that judges would thereby be immune to threats from politics and politicians. Although one of the Constitutional Amendments up for vote in Florida is intended to eliminate that protection at the state level.
This doesn't, of course, remove the political leanings of the judges themselves. The judges were traditionally expected to put those aside when considering cases.
One of the more popular ways of bribing legislators is to offer them post-term consulting or lobbying positions. However, in the case of the Supreme Court, that's not been an issue since the Justices tend to hold office until they're too old to gain much benefit.
...they'll probably say that it's not their job to decide whether the law is stupid or unjust.
And it isn't. The legislature makes the law, and the courts just figure out how it applies to each case.
Except in the case of the Supreme Courts of countries, where they must also decide whether the law is compatible with the principles of the country (i.e., the constitution).
In which case, it may go back to the legislature again in the form of a constitutional amendment.
Considering how much yelling gets done about what constitutes a "well-regulated Militia" by the time you get to the Amendments, I'd say that the "very few interpretations" thing didn't last very long.
I would love to exerts in a field become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of the academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more then an hour a week.
I would love for experts in a field to become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of their academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more than an hour a week
I'm an expert pedantic speller.
But it was all spelled correctly, just not the right words!
Actually, I have this nasty suspicion that a lot of the apps I use auto-suggest word completions when I'm not looking. Badly.
Maybe, but I didn't take it that way. The point as written simply rails against partisanship.
From what I can tell, anybody who really thinks either candidate^W party is "the answer" is not thinking clearly.
(no, I'm not the AC.)
We're being given a binary choice between monsters who eat their own babies and monsters who will eat everyone else's babies. And we're accepting it. People call themselves Libertarian, but vote Republican. People call themselves "Tea Party" vote Republican. Even some Democrats vote Republican. Republicans who vote Democrat are virtually extinct at the moment, and even suggesting to compromise gets you accused of the heresy of being a RINO. People are so afraid that the wrong lizard will get in that they won't even stand up for their own lizards.
for large enough values of 2
Only for small enough values of 5.
SNL regularly doesn't post sketches that involve music in some way. Even if they can defend themselves with fair use, a lawyer probably decided it's simply not worth the hassle for the ad revenue it generates.
And here I was thinking that Oceana had ALWAYS been at war with EastAsia!
I don't see how this is even relevant. its clearly the getting in the motor vehicle while impaired that is the issue, not the ingestion of the substance.
That some people do stupid things doesn't justify the collective punishment of every person, preemptively.
I don't want punishment. Punishment is overrated. If punishment was all it took, we would have punished our way to Paradise ages ago. In a lot of cases, "punishment" is actually just a way of doing things that would ordinarily be considered criminal and making a virtue of it.
I would argue that the stupid thing was ingesting whatever it was in the first place. The main reason I don't have any use for tripping out is that the buzz is rarely worth the consequences.
But that's neither here nor there. Idiots will be idiots. Punishment won't undo damage already done. All I really care about is preventing the fatal consequences, and whether that's done at the ingestion phase or the getting-into-the-vehicle phase is, to me, immaterial. It's not about punishing, it's about preventing.
The real question is, when is it ethical to stop consenting adults from putting something into their own body? I don't think so. A person's body is his own, he must live with whatever it does or whatever its lack doesn't do.
I am not talking about children, or the mentally retarded of course, those are other matters, but in general, if a person is taking it thesmself, based on their own (however limited) knowledge, then I see no ethical issue.
When they take that body outside, put it in a motor vehicle, drive off and kill people. Speaking from personal experience.
An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of vengeance.
that's right, i just said the lord of the rings is a parable about drug addiction
Actually, I've often wondered whether Tolkein knew any opiate users - maybe WWI veterans who got hooked on morphine? I don't have any firsthand experience with them myself (aside from having my wisdom teeth removed, and Vicodin is pretty tame stuff compared to injected morphine), but the description of Gollum's cravings sounds a lot like what I've read about opiate addiction.
Or alcohol addiction. But yeah.
in the short term, it gives you superpowers. in the long term, it turns you into a soulless ghoul
You become a lawyer?
Fully actualized humans alter their brain and body chemistry all the time.
. . .
So what are you on, and didn't your teacher tell you to bring enough for everyone?
I'm on caffeine. And they can make their own damn coffee. And turn the pot off so I don't have to scrape it out!
Now you are assistant manager?
Instead of CEO. Where ADHD is considered an asset.
Just like steroids in sports right?
Let's all go down to the ballpark and watch the mutants play!
Speaking in Absolutes, we are?
Not to discredit their diligent use of dirty tactics, but Microsoft got where they were through more than just skulduggery. They were sometimes at the right place at the right time, sometimes not at the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes they saw a good thing and bought it out. The original Dartmouth BASIC was nowhere near as flexible as what Gates & Allen produced. You don't get that big through dirty work alone, even though it helps.
And I really hope you weren't referring to a certain other CEO recently departed as "good". He did finally qualify legitimately for his handicapped parking space, however.
Gates is no saint, but I'd say he's considerably less abusive and psychopathic than most of his peers, living or dead.
If you don't budget for upgrades, you'd better either plan to be gone by then or be fortunate enough to be able to toss the whole thing.
You seem do not realize that in many industries the traditional upgrade cycle for expensive equipment is 15-25 years! So they did plan for upgrade, but that time may be 10 or more years away from now.
So if anyone has the Wal-Mart Shopper mentality here, it is those who think that the typical PC update cycle is suitable for everyone. It is not about updating PC, but updating the whole infrastructure (which relies on a lot of crappy third-party software) and re-training the whole personal to use it. It is completely unrealistic to do that every 3-5 years as you do in the IT-world...
If I tell you that you need to buy a new PC and replace all software (which you got used to) every 6 months, how would you like this idea?
I thought that was supposed to be the ideal according to the software vendors! But the IRS expects you're going to replace computer equipment every 3-5 years, which is why they changed the depreciation rules to allow for computer equipment.
Your scenario isn't hypothetical to me, though. My Windows machine came with XP welded in. I have doubts about its ability to stand the strain of Windows 7, and already am hurting because I cannot install IE9 on XP.
If you want to run in isolation and you have the ability to (re)create the environment, that's fine. As far as I'm concerned, the only really compelling reason to move off Office 97 was to see the end of Clippy.
However, it can get really cumbersome once you move outside the box. DOS wasn't originally designed for the Internet, so just emailing the resulting document to someone else means doing things that the original setup wasn't designed to handle. The world in which the software lives has changed.
Windows XP is a whole different can of worms, though. It's immensely more complex than DOS, and requires a constant stream of of security fixes, bugfixes, etc., which Microsoft plans to turn off shortly. But, as I said, the exploiters will keep going, so the system is going to have progressively more holes over time up to the point where the existing XP base is so small that nobody wants to hack in anymore, even though the software itself freezes.
That's not even mentioning the fact that unlike DOS, Windows XP "phones home" to Microsoft. Who could presumably switch the whole thing off, if they felt like it.
I work in a hospital setting where most, if not all, computers run XP. In radiology specifically, the PACS software we run is only certified for windows XP and ie 6.
Hospital doesn't want to invest money into upgrading pacs software.
I do quite a bit of work in veterinary medicine and the costs associated with upgrading is pretty large. The scary part of a lot of this software isn't that it's certified to work on XP, it's that its so crappily written that it only works on XP with admin access and any number of bandaids to make it work. What I've done in a few cases is virtualized the XP box where it was possible. Trying to keep this stuff running over the long term is going to be fun.
The Wal-Mart Shopper mentality.
1. Thinking that the cost of something is the cost at the cash register. Despite what everyone thinks, computers are not a fixed cost, there is ongoing expense. Sooner or later, all software becomes obsolete. Not because there's something wrong with the software, but because the world in which the software lives changes. Sooner or later, you not only cannot run the old software on the new OS, you often cannot get replacement hardware that can run it when the original equipment dies. If you don't budget for upgrades, you'd better either plan to be gone by then or be fortunate enough to be able to toss the whole thing. Emulators only go so far - Windows 98 is dead and getting no new security updates but that doesn't mean hackers don't still consider exploits.
2. Expecting that "IT doesn't matter" and that whoever delivers fastest and/or cheapest is "good enough". So much software out there is crap, just because people won't accept that quality takes time, effort, and money.
In S/3x0 and z/Architecture machine code; sr n , n is the conventional (and, I think, fastest) "clear register n" instruction. I.e., the subtract is there as a way of clearing the register, not as an actual semantic "subtract" operation, just as, in x86,
If subtracting a value from itself produces an arithmetic overflow, your hardware is broken.
Thanks for the details. They are informative, but informal, so I think they missed this one.
The original S/360 and S/370 architectures did not have a distinct "Clear Register" instruction. You could either subtract a register from itself or you could XOR it with itself if you wanted to zero it. Or, you could use the Load Address instruction, but that one required more overhead, and on certain machines, I think it would return alternative values if the addressing mode was set to certain values.
I'd have to go back and RTFM (Principles of Operation), but unless I was mislead, there is, in fact, a single case where subtracting 2 numbers could throw an Arithmetic Exception (0C4), due to overflow in the sign bit. So the instruction:
Could fail in extremely rare cases. Although since the sign bit was used as a sentinel bit for addresses, not as rare as it might have been. Therefore one of the IEBFR14 updates replaced it with:
Exclusive OR has no sign bit, nor carry operations, and therefore could safely zap all 4-billion-odd possible values that General Register 15 could contain.
If you accept the idea that products like Prime's RTOS are OS's, then the resulting Intel calculator did, in fact have an OS
This does not follow. An RTOS is indeed an OS, and I work with RTOSes every day, but an RTOS is still a piece of software that has a definition, and you can run an processor without an RTOS. I would assume most very simple calculators do run without even an RTOS. There is certainly nothing about the 4004 in your example that would force it to run an RTOS. It can, and did, run just fine without an OS, RTOS or not.
In theory, ALL my programs have a definition, even if I sometimes despair of what they turn into in practice. That includes things like the control program that I used to develop for the 8085 that ran a sewage processing plant, or the core software that comes pre-installed in the Arduino and runs the user-written code.
The OS for a basic 4-banger calculator is typically going to be something like a master loop that invokes a keyboard scanning module, numeric encode/decode modules, an arithmetic function dispatcher and arithmetic calculation routines. Some or all of these can be interrupt-driven, depending on hardware design.
I fail to understand why such a program does not qualify as an OS merely because it's a relatively small number of lines of code or because it doesn't allow arbitrary binary code to be installed and run. PRIMOS RTOS systems could be disqualified on both those counts. Conversely, I don't see any reason why the definition of OS should be "control program supplied by a third-party commercial software vendor". By that definition, early versions of Linux wouldn't have made the cut.
What about when the WoW/LoL servers themselves get pwned?
It's actually not a bad idea to run Windows in a VM that boots from a clean snapshot every time.
It would be an even better idea if the machine in question was ONLY used for the games in question, but all it takes is one "Let me look that up on Google/Start IE" or "Gotta check my FaceBook" to start the can opener.
Some of us are more accepting in our definitions.
So what is this definition of yours, then?
I didn't have a specific definition in mind, but was considering the fact that most computer science has mathematical underpinnings (for example, the Turing Machine). And when you look at almost any problem mathematically and abstractly, you tend to come up with variants that differ considerably from common usage. Which is, in fact one of the best reasons to do so, since the Way We've Always Done Things isn't always the best way for a given class of real-world problems.
I think most people consider an OS to be a program that runs other programs. But I can name at least 2 instances where that is not the case.
Back in the 1970s, one of the better-known names in the minicomputer business was Prime Computer. The primary OS options were known as DOS (Primos2) and DOS/VS (Primos3). But they also had another option: RTOS, the Real Time Operating System. I have a copy of the RTOS manual. Basically, RTOS was a skeleton system where you added custom functionality to provide a bootable standalone real-time process control system.
RIght about the same time, Per Brinch Hansen created Concurrent Pascal. Concurrent Pascal was designed to provide a means of creating provably correct real-time systems by using the concepts he called Processes, Monitors and Classes. Which actually takes us back to the original topic, since a provably-correct system is (in theory) not exploitable. Concurrent Pascal in its pure form didn't require an OS, because - as with Prime's RTOS, the application was the OS. However, instead of providing a set of components to wire together with user-written code, Concurrent Pascal did it all in the VM, and therefore the entire "OS" was user-written code.
I definitely would take exception to the definition that an OS is how applications talk to hardware. Most OS's do at least some form of software resource management as well. Some OS's devote entire address spaces to load-balancing and resource management (for example, IBM's OS/MVS and later products).
Finally, don't forget that the very first mass-market microprocessor: Intel's 4004, was a general-purpose CPU created specifically to be the core of a calculator. If you accept the idea that products like Prime's RTOS are OS's, then the resulting Intel calculator did, in fact have an OS, even if your definition of OS would otherwise rule out the possibility only software could be an OS component and that hard-wired logic circuits could not be OS components in an OS considered as an abstract concept.
Q.E.D.