No need to fill it, a few drops are enough. Oil floats on water, it spreads and forms a thin film on the surface. You get a lid that efficiently prevents water evaporation.
If we had infinite resources it would never happen. But the resources aren't infinite. Of course it would be nice if they were, but that's just wishful thinking.
for the most part it is not possible to live in the US without burning a lot of fuel even if you wanted to, and it would cost trillions of dollars to make that not the case. Will cost.
There's one thing I don't understand about black holes. I've read that a black hole is so massive that space itself is warped around it. This warping means that a straight line that starts at the center will return to the center. It returns even though in its local context it is straight. But don't gravitons move like light? So how does the force of gravity escape? No light or other signal can escape... And yet gravity can! Weird.
in presidential elections, where write-ins above a certain number (a relatively low threshold, at that--somewhere around 1000 IIRC) are counted and recorded.
Poll worker A: "Should we count the votes for mr. Matticus?"
Poll worker B: "No, there's no need, he only received 993 votes."
You're making up assumptions. I once saw an accountant spend two days tracking down an error of a few cents. Obviously the amount as such wasn't worth two days of work. But the discrepancy indicated that there was an error somewhere, and that was not acceptable. The fact that there was an error somewhere did matter quite a lot.
It is impossible to create any physical system that exists outside the boundaries of probability.
Sure, but the accuracy of computers is far higher than you think. Your computer is calculating RAM addresses several million times every second. Get one such calculation wrong and the program crashes. Such crashes do happen, but it's extremely unusual. A computer has to run for a very long time to see even one such event. All the time calculating memory addresses several million times every single second.
There will be other errors, such as incorrect voter input, misplaced memory cards, and such. But as long as the computer does receive the instruction to increment the counter, the count should be quite accurate for many millions of votes.
If you read the article, "at least eight or nine people" told him that they voted for him. Of course such claims aren't proof, but the situation certainly deserves investigation. A glitch can't lose eight or nine votes out of 36, plus his own. That would be around 25%. If such a glitch is even possible, it's hardly an acceptable error rate.
Do modern processors have such a small number of registers? I haven't looked at processors for quite a while, the last processor I knew well was the Motorola 68000. That one had eight address registers and eight data registers. In that one you could easily have spared one address register for a second data stack. Do modern x86 processors have so much fewer suitable registers?
(I wish the PC had been based on the MC68000 architecture, it was so much better in so many ways!)
The second stack could be a special part of the heap space. What I mean here is the space where you get memory when you issue memory-allocation calls.
There would be a special part of heap space that would grow and shrink as a stack. This special area could be very similar to the ordinary heap, with the difference that allocation and deallocation is very much faster, since it grows and shrinks as a stack.
With this arrangement, dynamically linked modules don't necessarily need to be aware of the second stack. They can see the data as any other data on the heap.
Very often arrays are passed by reference, by a pointer to the data. Presumably the pointer is fixed-size, even if the data isn't. Then the pointer is suitable to be passed on the main stack.
This will not work in cases where an array is passed by value rather than by pointer, so that the function expects to find the elements of the array at a known and predefined place on the main stack. Isn't this unusual? If this happens at all, but is unusual, then you could treat this as an exception, putting the value on the stack in this particular case. You should still see great gains in security.
Where's the complication? If you define simple, clear rules about what goes where, this has the same complexity as keeping track of the sizes of integers, floats etc, something compilers do all the time.
Depending on various considerations you might define, for example, that integers, floats, chars, booleans and pointers go on the main stack, along with all data types that have been defined to be implemented as these types. Everything else goes on the second stack. Thus, for example, all arrays go on the second stack, regardless of element type.
Then just stick to this rule everywhere, just like you stick to the rules about the sizes of integers, floats etc.
Of course it's not a matter of just writing a couple of lines and forgetting it. Much more work than that would be needed. But considering the huge amount of work spent on guarding against code injection, and the huge costs when code injection does occur, it seems worth the effort.
Why do compilers put buffers on the subroutine-and-return stack? Why not have the compiler use a separate stack for composite data such as buffers, arrays, variable-size data, and all similar stuff, whenever the programmer puts such data on the stack? Wouldn't that stop stack-based code injection?
The added cost in processing time should be quite negligile, as long as simple, fixed-size data, such as integers, are still on the main stack.
The same as with current nuclear fission power plants: Put the power plants near rivers and seas, where coolant water is available. This does pollute the water with some heat, but this is a very minor problem, compared to the very problematic pollution created by fossil fuels and nuclear fission.
If Google consumes so much power, maybe this will give them an incentive to contribute money to Hydrogen Fusion research. That would be great! Hydrogen Fusion is the one and only power source that would allow large amounts of power for every human on Earth without any significant pollution.
Several people have made comments about posting being disabled for a while, clearly based on this statement in CmdrTaco's writeup:... our system will take 3+ hours to do it, during which time there can be no posting.
But posting was never disabled! Only replying was disabled. (And still remains disabled, 7+ hours later.) Thus he shouldn't be flogged for downtime!
Let's try to be fair here. Stay your whips. Calm your tempers. Take a deep breath. Gather some strength.
Slashdot Mirror
insults, such as 'Jim, nice to see you finally emerge from your mother's basement'
What? Saying he's like a Slashdotter is an insult? No way! That's a compliment you insensitive clod!
Fill the trap with cooking oil
No need to fill it, a few drops are enough. Oil floats on water, it spreads and forms a thin film on the surface. You get a lid that efficiently prevents water evaporation.
then or than, that's a pretty small grammar error, especially on slashdot
C'mon, can people not even be bothered to read the article SUMMARY any more?
What? Reading the summary? Come on, be serious. This is Slashdot.
Be grateful to the few who read the title.
If we had infinite resources it would never happen. But the resources aren't infinite. Of course it would be nice if they were, but that's just wishful thinking.
The question is when, not if.
Resources are finite, get over it.
There's one thing I don't understand about black holes. I've read that a black hole is so massive that space itself is warped around it. This warping means that a straight line that starts at the center will return to the center. It returns even though in its local context it is straight. But don't gravitons move like light? So how does the force of gravity escape? No light or other signal can escape... And yet gravity can! Weird.
No it wasn't.
"10 Years of Frozen Astronaut Shit and Piss From the ISS."
Only the shit. The piss is recycled to become water. This is one of the less romantic aspects of humanity's great quest into space.
in presidential elections, where write-ins above a certain number (a relatively low threshold, at that--somewhere around 1000 IIRC) are counted and recorded.
Poll worker A: "Should we count the votes for mr. Matticus?"
Poll worker B: "No, there's no need, he only received 993 votes."
Miscounting nine votes out of 36 is a ridiculously high error rate.
You're making up assumptions. I once saw an accountant spend two days tracking down an error of a few cents. Obviously the amount as such wasn't worth two days of work. But the discrepancy indicated that there was an error somewhere, and that was not acceptable. The fact that there was an error somewhere did matter quite a lot.
It is impossible to create any physical system that exists outside the boundaries of probability.
Sure, but the accuracy of computers is far higher than you think. Your computer is calculating RAM addresses several million times every second. Get one such calculation wrong and the program crashes. Such crashes do happen, but it's extremely unusual. A computer has to run for a very long time to see even one such event. All the time calculating memory addresses several million times every single second.
There will be other errors, such as incorrect voter input, misplaced memory cards, and such. But as long as the computer does receive the instruction to increment the counter, the count should be quite accurate for many millions of votes.
If you read the article, "at least eight or nine people" told him that they voted for him. Of course such claims aren't proof, but the situation certainly deserves investigation. A glitch can't lose eight or nine votes out of 36, plus his own. That would be around 25%. If such a glitch is even possible, it's hardly an acceptable error rate.
Stack-smashing attacks are not the only sort of exploit.
Indeed. But I think that, among those exploits that have really severe consequences, this is one of the most frequent.
Do modern processors have such a small number of registers? I haven't looked at processors for quite a while, the last processor I knew well was the Motorola 68000. That one had eight address registers and eight data registers. In that one you could easily have spared one address register for a second data stack. Do modern x86 processors have so much fewer suitable registers?
(I wish the PC had been based on the MC68000 architecture, it was so much better in so many ways!)
The second stack could be a special part of the heap space. What I mean here is the space where you get memory when you issue memory-allocation calls.
There would be a special part of heap space that would grow and shrink as a stack. This special area could be very similar to the ordinary heap, with the difference that allocation and deallocation is very much faster, since it grows and shrinks as a stack.
With this arrangement, dynamically linked modules don't necessarily need to be aware of the second stack. They can see the data as any other data on the heap.
Very often arrays are passed by reference, by a pointer to the data. Presumably the pointer is fixed-size, even if the data isn't. Then the pointer is suitable to be passed on the main stack.
This will not work in cases where an array is passed by value rather than by pointer, so that the function expects to find the elements of the array at a known and predefined place on the main stack. Isn't this unusual? If this happens at all, but is unusual, then you could treat this as an exception, putting the value on the stack in this particular case. You should still see great gains in security.
Where's the complication? If you define simple, clear rules about what goes where, this has the same complexity as keeping track of the sizes of integers, floats etc, something compilers do all the time.
Depending on various considerations you might define, for example, that integers, floats, chars, booleans and pointers go on the main stack, along with all data types that have been defined to be implemented as these types. Everything else goes on the second stack. Thus, for example, all arrays go on the second stack, regardless of element type.
Then just stick to this rule everywhere, just like you stick to the rules about the sizes of integers, floats etc.
Of course it's not a matter of just writing a couple of lines and forgetting it. Much more work than that would be needed. But considering the huge amount of work spent on guarding against code injection, and the huge costs when code injection does occur, it seems worth the effort.
Why do compilers put buffers on the subroutine-and-return stack? Why not have the compiler use a separate stack for composite data such as buffers, arrays, variable-size data, and all similar stuff, whenever the programmer puts such data on the stack? Wouldn't that stop stack-based code injection?
The added cost in processing time should be quite negligile, as long as simple, fixed-size data, such as integers, are still on the main stack.
What do you do with the waste heat?
The same as with current nuclear fission power plants: Put the power plants near rivers and seas, where coolant water is available. This does pollute the water with some heat, but this is a very minor problem, compared to the very problematic pollution created by fossil fuels and nuclear fission.
If Google consumes so much power, maybe this will give them an incentive to contribute money to Hydrogen Fusion research. That would be great! Hydrogen Fusion is the one and only power source that would allow large amounts of power for every human on Earth without any significant pollution.
Several people have made comments about posting being disabled for a while, clearly based on this statement in CmdrTaco's writeup: ... our system will take 3+ hours to do it, during which time there can be no posting.
But posting was never disabled! Only replying was disabled. (And still remains disabled, 7+ hours later.) Thus he shouldn't be flogged for downtime!
Let's try to be fair here. Stay your whips. Calm your tempers. Take a deep breath. Gather some strength.
And now flog him for disinformation instead!
And this is why you should not have arbitrary limits in your programs, ladies and gentlemen. Not even limits on the values your numbers can represent
Now this is a real Slashdotter! This guy knows how to build an infinite computer!
(OT) The link in your sig is broken.