My personal favorite bit is the way you can suddenly create a new instance variable on a whim, just by assigning a value to
$this->varName, halfway down a random function.
Oh, actually my favorite bit is the way a piece of code will start referring to the value stored in a local variable that has never been declared or apparently assigned anywhere previously, and eventually you find out that it has been created out of thin air, because earlier it was passed as an argument to a function that took the parameter by reference.
Or the way that php's idea of variable typing is that if you perform a string operation on an array it has a habit of overwriting the array with the string "Array" rather than, oh, I don't know, a compile time error?
I find features like that really help code maintenance.
I know you were mainly just joking, but I should point out anyway that you can't get something for nothing.
You split water into H2 and O2, ignite them, and get water again. Hoorah! But as I said, energy can't be created, so the energy taken to split up the water would never be less than the energy given out by combustion.
As an aside, several prototype cars have been manufactured that do exactly this: they electrolyse the water, and then burn the H2. Presumably they found it gave greater power than electric motors (just my guess) but at the end of the day, the battery still had to be recharged every so often, just like lame electric cars.
Now a nuclear car, *that* would be fun
'Oh yeah, she does 7500 Miles to the plutonium rod...'
Well obviously I was exaggerating the whole thing for effect, but my point of view hardly differs from yours:
/. is 'news for nerds, stuff that matters' a general discussion board, but restricted to the (not exactly small) field of geekery. As you said, such a general board should ignore this story. However,/. has a subsection for stories about Linux, and there will be some die hard Linux geeks who want to read this story (which really is of little interest to most geeks who could just download anyway). However, my (unclear) point was that it is hardly front page material. The/. front page should cover stories of interest for geeks, not stories of interest to a minority of geeks interested in *any* Linux story, no matter how trite.
Heinz have had to delay bringing their new type of beans to market, as they are having difficulty getting the cans in time.
Slashdot: So?
s/Heinz/Mandrake/
s/beans/Linux/
s/cans/CDs/
Slashdot: Quick! Hot news!
Hmm. I know how useful sed is, but I never realised it was powerful enough to turn boring tripe into news in just 3 simple commands. Maybe I should read the man more carefully.
Troll? Yes. Dumb and flawed logic? I think that should point to yourself. Sugar most definitely is a carbohydrate.
Just because something in class X breaks down into something of class Y doesn't mean that X isn't in class Y to start with. Take an alkane: A long chain alkane - crack it - what do you get an alkane! magic.
Take a sugar (carbohydrate) break it down, what do you get? A sugar!
But the error was not *in* the SuSE inststaller, the error was in the kernel. Admittedly the installer used 'interesting' techniques, but they were correct, and should have worked (that's why it was the kernel code that was fixed ultimately)
In a way you've reiterated my point - realistically this bug would not have been found pre-release as it is an unusual circumstance, and would likely only be found when used with the SuSE installer. So it's not the SuSE developers' fault - their code is fine (if ugly). It's understandable that it would slip through the kernel dev team - such a little used feature. So who's fault(in a culpable sense) was it that a kernel could be released which doesn't even work with a fscking installer? As far as I can tell, nobody; it's an inherent problem with the distributed (for want of a better word) nature of Linux development/deployment.
The only way to release a stable kernel is to have it tested by every distribution company - so kernel testing must be done by an organisation not related to kernel dev/testing? Sounds like a pretty major problem to me. If I maintained a distribution I wouldn't like to test every pre-release version of a kernel to point out bugs before *my* customers patched it.
This is what I meant about the bad points - they are inherent in the model, not that any one organisation is to blame.
The bug was only out for one day, and its already been fixed!! You wouldn't see that with most commercial software now, would you?
From Linus' mail:
...It looks like at least the SuSE installer (yast2) does...
So yes, if there was a bug that stopped an installer working, I would expect it to be fixed so soon. Traditionaly before it was released.
I realise that the installer in question is not a standard part of every Linux distribution, but then you can't point out all of the good things of distributed open source developments, and then gloss over bad things like this as being impossible to spot before release.
Just the usual rebuttal to the usual 'open source fixes bugs quickly' post.
Flamebait, yeah you're right. I stand corrected - I'd hardly call it a good troll though, no mention of O(n)NP complete VM algorithms, or kernel programming in VB.
But maybe it is a good troll, after all since my reply to it (and someone else saying the same thing) it's been modded about 7 times, and its a vacuous little sentence...
This parent is not a troll. Our company's software has a DB abstraction layer allowing us to write database drivers for any relational database.
Except MySQL of course, because of its lack of nested queries. Perhaps we will be able to support MySQL when this newer version comes out - this will be a good thing, as it still holds the performance crown over Postgres (our current DB of choice).
Firstly, thank you so much for writing a comment consisting of entirely copy/paste text.
Secondly, and a bit more on topic, Given that most of the code here is used to pass options, what this really means is that we have a more flexible pipe implementation. If you need these options, is there a parallel on Linux? If you don't need these options, write a convenience method that reduces the complexity to something similar to the Linux version.
Flexibility is almost always the best option, as it is easy to later add simpler versions that just supply defaults.
Hmm. No evidence of Microsoft restricting benchmarks to submit as a story to slashdot. No evidence of Microsoft planning to quash the story.
*ponders* What to do....
Of Course! We'll speculate about Microsoft hypothetically quashing the story under an imaginary license clause, and then we can start flaming!
Phew, thanks MaxwellStreet, for a minute I thought we'd have to do performance comparisons wrt pipes between different OSs, but thankfully you've brought us back on topic, and got a +1 Interesting for the effort.
If you download an ssh client for your palm, you can really do interesting stuff with decent bandwidth (I've seen it done over a standard crappy cellphone connection)
I bet BOFH wouldn't be so pissed off if he knew he could delete a user's work or kill their processes whilst sipping a pint at the pub.
Oh, no, please stop trolling me. 4 out of 27? Mod him down further.
If he'd said 0 out of 27 would that be flamebait? Maybe 26 out of 27 is insightful. Perhaps 20 out of 27 and providing a link to his company's homepage would be informative?
I guess somebody must've been giving mod points to cyborg_monkey or something.
Back on topic, we've possibly got a similar story to many companies: desktop pcs are all Win2k, but all development/web/file servers run RedHat.
I don't claim to have the biggest deployment of Linux, this post was mainly to rant at dumb moderators.
I did understand the distinction you are drawing, but it is so easy to assume that Windows==IIS etc. when you're not really thinking about it.
As for your comment "Windows users use Apache more than IIS" I am surprised at this. I don't recall seeing that in the article, so are the figures available from another source, or was I just not reading carefully enough? I'm not implying you're wrong, it's just I'd never heard this before.
while the number of sites hosted by Apache continues to grow, the number of physical webservers running some variety of Windows is about half of the total
Not really surprising. Imagine the two scenarios:
I am the unqualified systems admin for our company, and I've been asked to set us up a crappy website. I only use windows, so I use IIS
I am the systems admin for a hosting company, with several dozen servers, each with many virtual hosts for my clients. Naturally I use Apache on L/Unix, as it's secure and reliable, and I know how to use a CLI.
Naturally Apache is going to have a greater number of sites per machine, whereas IIS is going to have a large number of physical machines hosting a single crappy home-made site.
I hate the ludicrous number of banner ads on websites as much as anyone, but is it really that hard to understand why sites would want to force people to download/display them? I mean, the vast majority of sites out there (no, I'm not talking about pr0n) are free. Some, especially topical sites, take a great deal of time and effort to maintain, and yet we are quite happy to sit here, blocking the ads that pay for their maintenance, on the flimsy moral objection that somehow they are 'bad'.
Now I don't extend this to all ads - pop-up windows suck ass; there is a reasonable objection here, as spawning new windows on your system definitely interferes with the normal operation of your computer. But harmless banner ads - if they piss you off too much, as they sometimes do with me, don't visit the website. You can't expect to get a product (the website) for free just because you don't like how you're paying for it.
As an alternative, I wonder how many people (I am one, btw) have donated to SatireWire via the Amazon Honour System?
For christ's sake, why was this modded down, but all of the other usual uninformed anti-MS shite is left alone or modded up?
If you want to read something informative, check THIS POST out - it's the only post so far with any information. If you know bugger all about networking and just want a laugh, read this post's parent. If you don't know anything about networking, but your parents have let you boot up into Linux for a quick play on Lynx, then I suggest writing a post along the lines of 'Microsoft should be sued for letting this happen' Don't worry, you've got plenty of company.
By the way, I DID KEEP UP WITH THE DOWNLOADS when SIRCAM came out and it did not help to prevent NIMDA.
Strange, I could have sworn nimda only used a selection of old, well known exploits, the patches having been available for anywhere between 1 and 6 months...
I know people are joking about it being the whole point that you can't find it in use, but reading the article, this is not far from the truth. The researchers admitted that the method they used only hunted for known, commercially available techniques, and that there were other techniques available that would not have been spotted. Add in any totally novel methods people may have used themselves.
Still, if we're going to give these researchers funding...
Sorry for the vagueness of this post, but I don't have time to look up the specifics.
I don't believe that quantum entanglement is the only way of applying quantum encryption. The fundamentally important part is that somebody snooping on a transmission measuring values will irreversibly change the data, with the side effect that the transmitter immediately knows that somebody is snooping
IIRC quantum encryption has been implemented (under lab conditions at least) although not with the entanglement method you were talking about
Distributing the key is an irrelevant issue, as I believe that for quantum encryption to work, there must be a dedicated link built between two sites.
As for your attestation that we can't guarantee it is safe, I have to agree with you. The reassurance however, is that if it is crackable, then we have made a fundamental error in accepted modern physics; the theory of quantum physics asserts that this method would be uncrackable. However it is only a theory...
Disclaimer: I really am dredging this up from the corners of my mind, so I'm sorry if lots of it is wrong. Oh, except the last point, I'm pretty sure of that.
Disgusting. I have written a more appropriate version:
Woeful and terrible how the WTC disaster has shone a light on technology (I flagellate myself at the mere hint of puns). LIDAR (Light Detecting and Ranging) is the optical equivalent of RADAR. It's being used to create hyper-detailed - yet morbidly terrible - maps of the WTC disaster site from an altitude of 5000 feet to detect shifts in the rubble as well as areas in danger of collapse."
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine how easy it would be to write code using this?
My personal favorite bit is the way you can suddenly create a new instance variable on a whim, just by assigning a value to
$this->varName, halfway down a random function.
Oh, actually my favorite bit is the way a piece of code will start referring to the value stored in a local variable that has never been declared or apparently assigned anywhere previously, and eventually you find out that it has been created out of thin air, because earlier it was passed as an argument to a function that took the parameter by reference.
Or the way that php's idea of variable typing is that if you perform a string operation on an array it has a habit of overwriting the array with the string "Array" rather than, oh, I don't know, a compile time error?
I find features like that really help code maintenance.
I have never felt as sorry for anybody as I do for you now.
I know you were mainly just joking, but I should point out anyway that you can't get something for nothing.
You split water into H2 and O2, ignite them, and get water again. Hoorah! But as I said, energy can't be created, so the energy taken to split up the water would never be less than the energy given out by combustion.
As an aside, several prototype cars have been manufactured that do exactly this: they electrolyse the water, and then burn the H2. Presumably they found it gave greater power than electric motors (just my guess) but at the end of the day, the battery still had to be recharged every so often, just like lame electric cars.
Now a nuclear car, *that* would be fun
'Oh yeah, she does 7500 Miles to the plutonium rod...'
Well obviously I was exaggerating the whole thing for effect, but my point of view hardly differs from yours: /. has a subsection for stories about Linux, and there will be some die hard Linux geeks who want to read this story (which really is of little interest to most geeks who could just download anyway). However, my (unclear) point was that it is hardly front page material. The /. front page should cover stories of interest for geeks, not stories of interest to a minority of geeks interested in *any* Linux story, no matter how trite.
/. is 'news for nerds, stuff that matters' a general discussion board, but restricted to the (not exactly small) field of geekery. As you said, such a general board should ignore this story. However,
A little opinionated, I realise...
Heinz have had to delay bringing their new type of beans to market, as they are having difficulty getting the cans in time.
Slashdot: So?
s/Heinz/Mandrake/
s/beans/Linux/
s/cans/CDs/
Slashdot: Quick! Hot news!
Hmm. I know how useful sed is, but I never realised it was powerful enough to turn boring tripe into news in just 3 simple commands. Maybe I should read the man more carefully.
Troll? Yes. Dumb and flawed logic? I think that should point to yourself. Sugar most definitely is a carbohydrate.
Just because something in class X breaks down into something of class Y doesn't mean that X isn't in class Y to start with. Take an alkane: A long chain alkane - crack it - what do you get an alkane! magic.
Take a sugar (carbohydrate) break it down, what do you get? A sugar!
Fucking magic.
But the error was not *in* the SuSE inststaller, the error was in the kernel. Admittedly the installer used 'interesting' techniques, but they were correct, and should have worked (that's why it was the kernel code that was fixed ultimately)
In a way you've reiterated my point - realistically this bug would not have been found pre-release as it is an unusual circumstance, and would likely only be found when used with the SuSE installer. So it's not the SuSE developers' fault - their code is fine (if ugly). It's understandable that it would slip through the kernel dev team - such a little used feature. So who's fault(in a culpable sense) was it that a kernel could be released which doesn't even work with a fscking installer? As far as I can tell, nobody; it's an inherent problem with the distributed (for want of a better word) nature of Linux development/deployment.
The only way to release a stable kernel is to have it tested by every distribution company - so kernel testing must be done by an organisation not related to kernel dev/testing? Sounds like a pretty major problem to me. If I maintained a distribution I wouldn't like to test every pre-release version of a kernel to point out bugs before *my* customers patched it.
This is what I meant about the bad points - they are inherent in the model, not that any one organisation is to blame.
Just the usu....Oh, sod it.
From Linus' mail:
So yes, if there was a bug that stopped an installer working, I would expect it to be fixed so soon. Traditionaly before it was released.
I realise that the installer in question is not a standard part of every Linux distribution, but then you can't point out all of the good things of distributed open source developments, and then gloss over bad things like this as being impossible to spot before release.
Just the usual rebuttal to the usual 'open source fixes bugs quickly' post.
Flamebait, yeah you're right. I stand corrected - I'd hardly call it a good troll though, no mention of O(n)NP complete VM algorithms, or kernel programming in VB.
But maybe it is a good troll, after all since my reply to it (and someone else saying the same thing) it's been modded about 7 times, and its a vacuous little sentence...
This parent is not a troll. Our company's software has a DB abstraction layer allowing us to write database drivers for any relational database.
Except MySQL of course, because of its lack of nested queries. Perhaps we will be able to support MySQL when this newer version comes out - this will be a good thing, as it still holds the performance crown over Postgres (our current DB of choice).
Firstly, thank you so much for writing a comment consisting of entirely copy/paste text.
Secondly, and a bit more on topic, Given that most of the code here is used to pass options, what this really means is that we have a more flexible pipe implementation. If you need these options, is there a parallel on Linux? If you don't need these options, write a convenience method that reduces the complexity to something similar to the Linux version.
Flexibility is almost always the best option, as it is easy to later add simpler versions that just supply defaults.
Hmm. No evidence of Microsoft restricting benchmarks to submit as a story to slashdot.
No evidence of Microsoft planning to quash the story.
*ponders* What to do....
Of Course! We'll speculate about Microsoft hypothetically quashing the story under an imaginary license clause, and then we can start flaming!
Phew, thanks MaxwellStreet, for a minute I thought we'd have to do performance comparisons wrt pipes between different OSs, but thankfully you've brought us back on topic, and got a +1 Interesting for the effort.
Sterling job.
If you download an ssh client for your palm, you can really do interesting stuff with decent bandwidth (I've seen it done over a standard crappy cellphone connection)
I bet BOFH wouldn't be so pissed off if he knew he could delete a user's work or kill their processes whilst sipping a pint at the pub.
Oh, no, please stop trolling me. 4 out of 27? Mod him down further.
If he'd said 0 out of 27 would that be flamebait? Maybe 26 out of 27 is insightful. Perhaps 20 out of 27 and providing a link to his company's homepage would be informative?
I guess somebody must've been giving mod points to cyborg_monkey or something.
Back on topic, we've possibly got a similar story to many companies: desktop pcs are all Win2k, but all development/web/file servers run RedHat.
I don't claim to have the biggest deployment of Linux, this post was mainly to rant at dumb moderators.
Damn, I hate it when other people are right.
I did understand the distinction you are drawing, but it is so easy to assume that Windows==IIS etc. when you're not really thinking about it.
As for your comment "Windows users use Apache more than IIS" I am surprised at this. I don't recall seeing that in the article, so are the figures available from another source, or was I just not reading carefully enough? I'm not implying you're wrong, it's just I'd never heard this before.
- I am the unqualified systems admin for our company, and I've been asked to set us up a crappy website. I only use windows, so I use IIS
- I am the systems admin for a hosting company, with several dozen servers, each with many virtual hosts for my clients. Naturally I use Apache on L/Unix, as it's secure and reliable, and I know how to use a CLI.
Naturally Apache is going to have a greater number of sites per machine, whereas IIS is going to have a large number of physical machines hosting a single crappy home-made site.I hate the ludicrous number of banner ads on websites as much as anyone, but is it really that hard to understand why sites would want to force people to download/display them? I mean, the vast majority of sites out there (no, I'm not talking about pr0n) are free. Some, especially topical sites, take a great deal of time and effort to maintain, and yet we are quite happy to sit here, blocking the ads that pay for their maintenance, on the flimsy moral objection that somehow they are 'bad'.
Now I don't extend this to all ads - pop-up windows suck ass; there is a reasonable objection here, as spawning new windows on your system definitely interferes with the normal operation of your computer. But harmless banner ads - if they piss you off too much, as they sometimes do with me, don't visit the website. You can't expect to get a product (the website) for free just because you don't like how you're paying for it.
As an alternative, I wonder how many people (I am one, btw) have donated to SatireWire via the Amazon Honour System?
For christ's sake, why was this modded down, but all of the other usual uninformed anti-MS shite is left alone or modded up?
If you want to read something informative, check THIS POST out - it's the only post so far with any information. If you know bugger all about networking and just want a laugh, read this post's parent. If you don't know anything about networking, but your parents have let you boot up into Linux for a quick play on Lynx, then I suggest writing a post along the lines of 'Microsoft should be sued for letting this happen' Don't worry, you've got plenty of company.
</rant>
Sorry, from the rest of your post I guess you do actually know what steganography is, but I couldn't resist.
I know people are joking about it being the whole point that you can't find it in use, but reading the article, this is not far from the truth. The researchers admitted that the method they used only hunted for known, commercially available techniques, and that there were other techniques available that would not have been spotted. Add in any totally novel methods people may have used themselves.
Still, if we're going to give these researchers funding...
I'm putting Windows 3.11 on my Dreamcast
- I don't believe that quantum entanglement is the only way of applying quantum encryption. The fundamentally important part is that somebody snooping on a transmission measuring values will irreversibly change the data, with the side effect that the transmitter immediately knows that somebody is snooping
- IIRC quantum encryption has been implemented (under lab conditions at least) although not with the entanglement method you were talking about
- Distributing the key is an irrelevant issue, as I believe that for quantum encryption to work, there must be a dedicated link built between two sites.
- As for your attestation that we can't guarantee it is safe, I have to agree with you. The reassurance however, is that if it is crackable, then we have made a fundamental error in accepted modern physics; the theory of quantum physics asserts that this method would be uncrackable. However it is only a theory...
Disclaimer: I really am dredging this up from the corners of my mind, so I'm sorry if lots of it is wrong. Oh, except the last point, I'm pretty sure of that.