1. I play WoW a lot. But I don't play it any more than your typical American watches TV (I don't watch TV). The "no-life" tag almost inevitably is used to mean "someone who has interests I don't share". I don't spend Friday night in a bar, so I don't have a life? Or maybe I don't have a life because I don't go to ball games? Whatever.
2. I spend more than $10 a month on coffee. Hell, I spend more than $10 a month on almost *everything*. If you read a paper with breakfast, you're probably spending about $10 a month. If you're an adult with the wife and the career and everything, $10 a month for an hour a day of entertainment is *cheap*.
3. The "winner" at any sort of game is always going to be the dedicated individual. It's true in sports, it's true in games like chess or poker or backgammon, and it's true in MMORPGs. You're going to feel like a loser if you compare yourself to those people. If the game involves directly competing with them (see online poker) you're going to feel *really* bad. You will probably compensate for your feeling of inferiority (because thats what happens when you lose) by bitching about how they must have no life and yadda yadda. The solution is to play on your own terms and define your enjoyment by your own accomplishments rather than comparing them to someone elses. This is good advice for happiness in general.
Pushing an update that closes a hole is acceptable. I've got nothing against informed consent, either - but thats not what you started saying. You posted at least 3 reponses about it being *illegal* and *criminal* to do this, which is such an incredible line of bullshit that it took me several re-reads to verify that you weren't attempting some sort of stupid joke (maybe you are still trolling? I don't give a shit, I'm in a bad mood anyway). If you'd gone with something like "Hey, updating to a crippled version without an explanation isn't the right thing to do.", then you'd at least have somewhere to stand. You'd be wrong in this specific case, because the mechanism for alerting the user to anything more detailed than a new version being available isn't present and this is the best second option, but it does point out a lack in the FF update mechanism. That lack is not fucking "criminal", violating a fucking "damages" clause of the computer fraud act.
I'm not impressed with your 25 years of coding experience either - if theres anything I've learned its that years in the industry don't amount to shit when it comes to code quality. Some of the worst crap I've ever seen has been sitting on mainframes for 20 years. The fact that you don't think that a *massive*, *critical* vulnerability - this would be earth shattering if GreaseMonkey was widely deployed - isn't something that should be closed off as quickly and as expediently as possible further reduces my total lack caring about your coding history. It would not be acceptable to leave this on updates.mozdev.org as is. It's worth noting that despite other posts in this thread, the functions removed are used fairly rarely in GM scripts, and then mostly by fairly advanced users.
The dev of GM who's responsible doesn't know a damn thing about security either, and doesn't think that way - he says as much on the ML, and he just learned a really hard lesson in it.
I can't speak for other OSS supporters, but I don't have a double standard here at all - Microsoft did the right thing in enabling it's firewall by default in SP 2, in enabling the data execution protection, and a variety of the other things it's enabled that have broken some naive programs. Doing it without a detailed explanation of why is sub optimal. I'll blame MS more for it because they have a mechanism to present that information to the user. I'll blame the Firefox devs because they didn't anticipate the need for such a mechanism in the update. I won't blame the GM dev for responding as best he can to a massive security breach.
Like or not, the legal profession is exactly that - handled by professionals. Since you're clearly an amateur in both the legal arena and in the concepts of computer security, it's irresponsible, at best, for you to go bleating about whats illegal and whats not. You know what opinions are like.
No provable increase in security, because no exploit has been found in the wild? Christ. Maybe you should just stay away from computers. This update is intended to prevent unsafe scripts from executing - this is not damage, no matter how you spin it. It *is* a reduction in functionality. It is not damage. Adding a firewall via an update in Windows XP reduced functionality - it did not cause damage. This is normal, accepted, and acceptable behavior.
Your argument is totally untenable, unsupportable, and generally bullshit. Half the updates in the history of computing would be criminal by your standards. Hell, the update to FF that added the whitelist for XPI installation would be - auto installation of extensions is a feature. Thats why IE had it. But it doesn't now. Maybe you should write your district attorney.
If I got fed an update that demonstrably improved security, as this one does - by an *enormous* amount, and the fact that you consider it a minor detail demonstrates a lack of knowledge I find unsettling - at the expense of functionality - rarely used functionality, at that - no, I would not be pissed. At worst, if I needed that functionality, I would investigate the reasons behind the update and find a work around. But thats because I'm responsible about my computing habits and don't expect the little fucking computer fairy to sprinkle dust on my computer when I'm sleeping.
Sorry, but I'm not a district attorney. It's not up to me to prosecute criminal offenses.
Maybe you shouldn't be telling people whats illegal and whats not, then.
Acceptance requires that you have been informed as to what you are accepting. Your argument would allow for all trojans that people click on to be considered "acceptance" - after all, they clicked on "AnnaKorina.jpg.exe"...
This is, in fact, generally what the courts have decided. Spyware bundling is *legal*. Not that has any bearing whatsoever on the Greasemonkey update, because you'd have to prove your position that increased security is "damaging".
. The original author has absolutely zero rights to try to take such an action "under the radar," and the courts have taken this position time and again.
The courts have done no such thing. In fact, they have done the opposite, in far more underhanded situations - such as Claria. Your argument, in fact, would demand that *any* update would have to be a 100% superset featurewise (and who decides exactly what a "feature" is, anyway - immunity to an enourmously dangerous exploit is a feature in my book), or else it would be "illegal".
Would it be nice if the Firefox update feature included a mechanism for showing a changelog or whatever? Yes it would. Maybe you should go file an RFE. Getting your panties in a bunch and screaming all over Slashdot about how it's illegal and damaging the computer is you blowing a load of stupid crap.
Tell you what. You sue the GM developer responsible, and then I'll give a shit about your whining. Security updates that disable insecure functionality are normal and accepted. Furthermore, the manual update process is at least as much an acceptance as an EULA is.
Gator and Weatherbug are not illegal, sadly - the EULA as justification for inclusion has been upheld. The user is in fact getting a bug fix - the bug that allowed for a major security breach is being removed. You may not like that bug fix, but sucks to be you. GM is not disabled by this update and many scripts will continue to run. Insecure scripts will not.
Just to clarify things for people, yes lamda is a poor cousin in Python, but no, that doesn't mean it doesn't have real higher order functions. Python has first class functions, and you can do every single one of the functional programming tricks with them, except write them inline as lambdas - you have to put them somewhere (although local functions work fine). Now, this bugs people who're used to writing functional code as little inline snippets all over the place, but the Pythonic way of doing this is no less powerful.
I'm not familiar with the Ruby implementation, but it's certainly possible to write belongs_to in Python. I doubt it would be signifigantly more complicated than the Ruby implementation, too - dynamically adding methods to classes is a pretty common Python trick.
Consider using twisted for your quick server creation needs with Python. Sadly, while it's powerful and expressive and really cool the documentation is poor so you may lose the time you save from the great implementation to the learning curve. If the performance problems of SimpleHTTPServer is your concern, though (and it certainly lives up to it's name), then twisted may be a good solution for you.
I have no affiliation with twisted beyond being impressed by the library, btw.
On a serious note, I honestly doubt the typical programmer can go from Idea to Working Code in Ruby any faster than you can do the same thing in Java. If you can personally, then I'd suspect you just aren't very good at Java.
I honestly doubt that you know anything about Ruby (or Python, for that matter). Java is a heavyweight language. There's a lot of boilerplate (especially in crap like J2EE. There are lots and lots of testimonials about working with Ruby being easier and faster than working in Java - is everyone lying? Ruby does more for you than Java, requires less hoops, and has equally functional libraries. Ruby's standard library wasn't written by Sun, either, so it doesn't even have that crappy stench of poor quality implementation on it.
Now, I personally am a Python guy. I've been writing C++ code for about 3 times longer than I have Python. I'm pretty good with C++ in general, and I have a lot of experience with some specific libraries and domains, and I can write apps really fast there. My very first Python app in that area came out in about the same amount of time as the equivilent C++ one. My second was faster. I can now write a Python app in half the time (at least) as the C++ one.
People who talk about how nice and useful the Java libraries are just haven't experienced anything else, in my opinion. Hell, if you know where to look (half the problem, of course) you can get a C++/C library for anything you can get for Java.
How many black hats can get into a mainframe, anyway, and know the mainframe utilities?
Does it take more than one?
In my personal experience (note lack of generalization to the common case), the reliability of mainframes is highly overrated. The one I leared to hate was up all the time, sure - because they took it down for 6 hours *every day*. My experience with extracting data from VSAM files, compiled over 10 years from applications with none (thats right, zero) input validation was fun too. Everyone bragging about the superior power of the mainframe can just go bite me.
Why should I sell you a digitally delivered movie for $5.00 when I can make you rent it at $1.50 a shot? Not that you'll ever get a digitally delivered movie for $5.00 - you'll pay as much as you would for a DVD for it. Remember that in our current IP system, there is one and only one source for any given piece of media - the copyright holder.
There is only a benefit to user-friendly features (like content replacement) if there are alternatives - competition, in other words. The *vast* majority of popular media is controlled by very large and powerful cartels, which, while they may stop short of outright collusion, all have pretty much the same basic goal in mind - control of the market. And universal delivery is still accomplished with the pay-per-view system.
Renting digital property rather than selling it is incredibly more profitable than renting physical equipment, because your duplication cost is zero, and there's no maintenance. Thats why software providers who make the most money make it off of licensing, not sales, why Microsoft pushes recurrent licensing schemes rather than sales at every opportunity, and, yes, why media companies want DRMed digitial distrubution rather than classic physical media sales.
Baring a massive clue-bomb landing on Washington and massively consumer-friendly legislation being enacted, you will never, ever, ever see DRM that allows you continued access to content that you've already paid for. Because that is a *revenue stream*. The Holy Grail of the content company (Disney, Sony et all) is that you pay per device, per payback. The goal of DRM is not, and never has been, the consumer experience. It's never been about prevention of piracy, either - not to the people who understand it and who craft policy. Piracy has never seriously hurt a large content provider. The "need for DRM" before they're "willing" to digitally distribute movies is a load of crap - they *know* they can make money doing it. What they want is to make *more* money, forever, which is why they want a DRM solution - so you don't buy a movie, you rent it. You watch it once, and you never watch it again. No, you can't time shift it. And you don't get to skip the commercials. And oh yes, there will be commercials. Not right away. But after a couple years, they'll start trickling in.
DRM is just like region coding - it's about controlling and manipulating your market, not about piracy reduction. Selling things is not profitable. Renting them is where the money is, especially when it's non-physical. The magic word is "recurring revenue stream". And thats why everyone in the media wants DRM so bad.
Consult with a lawyer. You may be up the creek - banks have lots of legal protection - but it certainly seems to me that the bank misrepresented the validity of a transaction. Perhaps you have a case against the specific branch that cleared the transaction. At the very least a lawsuit threat will get you in touch with someone who can do something, like the manager who gave you your 10k in cash.
The PDF of the memo, which spells out the methodology in some detail, specifically says that he's looking for exact and near-exact textual matches. It's possible that the the email author mis-remembered, or that further studies/analysis were done between the memo and the email (3 years, remember), but Stowells statement is not an out and out lie (he's characterising the memo, not the email).
Which is not to say that the memo is worth a shit anyway, since whatever the results were they were discared in later analysis, as the email demonstrates, and in any case analysis by far more qualified people (like Brian Khernigan) has come up empty as well.
While Groklaw/PJ is hardly impartial in editorializing, the court documents and rulings provided certainly are. You need not rely on her analysis of them, either.
If you had been following (I know, you're bored), SCO has not, to date, provided *any* evidence of code infringment in court. None. Dec 22 is the deadline for any evidence of code infringment to be shown. SCOs public statements as to the nature of the case vary hugely from what actually happens in the court room - they spin it as copyright about Linux in the media, but as a contract dispute about AIX in court. The impression that "they must have a case because it's lasted this long" is exactly one of the things they rely one - TV court drama to the contrary, judges very rarely toss cases early on. Especially technical ones like this, where even though the lack of merit may be obvious, it takes signifigant technical analysis to prove it.
For what it's worth, the judge has been seeming rather fed up with it too - when he issued his ruling on deadlines for discovery, he specifically pointed out SCOs misrepresentation in the media as compared to the total lack of evidence they've presented in court.
As pointed out in numerous places in the Groklaw comments, this doesn't neccesarily affect the actual case that much - it does explain why SCO has so carefully approached but never quite stepped over into making (legal) copyright infingement claims.
What I want to know is where the fuck the SEC is. Daryl McBride, over the course of *over a year* made repeated, public statements that he, at best, had signifigant reason to believe were not 100% correct (and thats being amazingly generous - a more normal person would simply say he lied). SCOs stock rose by an order of magnitude based directly on these claims.
Pathfinding requires heavy computation even for crappy versions (WoWs is a little better than you describe, but not much). Even the best pathfinding algorithms have poor worst case performance - which is why developers put early bail out with "cheats", like the walking through walls or jumping to the player you see so often, in.
In one of the articles, one of the sky-falling guys blathers about how "any internet-savvy child could unlock this terrible pornography yadda yadda yadda". Who here thinks that "an internet savvy child" who wants porn can't find it *without* resorting to modding his video games?
A: The subexpression i++ causes a side effect -- it modifies i's value -- which leads to undefined behavior since i is also referenced elsewhere in the same expression, and there's no way to determine whether the reference (in a[i] on the left-hand side) should be to the old or the new value. (Note that although the language in K&R suggests that the behavior of this expression is unspecified, the C Standard makes the stronger statement that it is undefined -- see question 11.33.) 3.3b: Here's a slick expression: a ^= b ^= a ^= b It swaps a and b without using a temporary.
A: Not portably, it doesn't. It attempts to modify the variable a twice between sequence points, so its behavior is undefined. For example, it has been reported that when given the code int a = 123, b = 7654; a ^= b ^= a ^= b; the SCO Optimizing C compiler (icc) sets b to 123 and a to 0.
See also questions 3.1, 3.8, 10.3, and 20.15c.
3.8: How can I understand these complex expressions? What's a "sequence point"?
A: A sequence point is a point in time (at the end of the evaluation of a full expression, or at the ||, &&, ?:, or comma operators, or just before a function call) at which the dust has settled and all side effects are guaranteed to be complete. The ANSI/ISO C Standard states that
Between the previous and next sequence point an object shall have its stored value modified at most once by the evaluation of an expression. Furthermore, the prior value shall be accessed only to determine the value to be stored.
The second sentence can be difficult to understand. It says that if an object is written to within a full expression, any and all accesses to it within the same expression must be for the purposes of computing the value to be written. This rule effectively constrains legal expressions to those in which the accesses demonstrably precede the modification.
See also question 3.9 below.
References: ISO Sec. 5.1.2.3, Sec. 6.3, Sec. 6.6, Annex C; Rationale Sec. 2.1.2.3; H&S Sec. 7.12.1 pp. 228-9.
3.9: So given
a[i] = i++;
we don't know which cell of a[] gets written to, but i does get incremented by one, right?
A: *No*. Once an expression or program becomes undefined, *all* aspects of it become undefined. See questions 3.2, 3.3, 11.33, and 11.35.
10.3: How can I write a generic macro to swap two values?
A: There is no good answer to this question. If the values are integers, a well-known trick using exclusive-OR could perhaps be used, but it will not work for floating-point values or pointers, or if the two values are the same variable. (See questions 3.3b and 20.15c.) If the macro is intended to be used on values of arbitrary type (the usual goal), it cannot use a temporary, since it does not know what type of temporary it needs (and would have a hard time picking a name for it if it did), and standard C does not provide a typeof operator.
The best all-around solution is probably to forget about using a macro, unless you're willing to pass in the type as a third argument. A: The standard hoary old assembly language programmer's trick is:
a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
But this sort of code has little place in modern, HLL programming. Temporary variables are essentially free, and the idiomatic code using three assignments, namely int t = a; a = b; b = t;
is not only clearer to the human reader, it is more likely to be recognized by the compiler and turned into the most-efficient code (e.g. using a swap instruction, if available). The latter code is obviously also amenable to use with pointers and floating-point values, unlike the XOR trick. See also questions 3.3b and 10.3.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't have a lot of experience with professional software development, especially in a large company? You don't have to treat the customer as an idiot, but incorrect and (especially!) unstated requirements are the main reasons for cost/time overruns and project failures. If you're interviewing for an position higher than code monkey, then looking for hidden/forgotten/unstated requirements is *precisely* what you should be doing - because finding those early is what will get your projects shipped on time.
Now, whether or not this sort of thing is appropriate in an interview setting is questionable - I don't like the "trick" sort of interview, because an interview isn't a normal conversation. It depends on how the question was phrased, though. Something like "Suppose you were asked to design an in-car coffee maker. How would you proceeed?" would invite the sort of grilling questions.
Neither of those is either correct or safe. Thats above and beyond all the other (very good) reasons for not doing this sort of moronic bitflipping. See the comp.lang.c FAQ for more reasons why your code doesn't work as written, paying special attention to "sequence points".
A much better question, and one that should be asked for a C programmer, would be something like "Why shouldn't you use Duffs Device", and "Why shouldn't you use the xor swap trick". Cute tricks are clever and cool, but even more important than knowing when to use them is knowing when NOT to use them. Duffs Device is especially egregious in this respect - there's almost no reason to ever use it, but people insist on using it for simple blitting, because they think it's faster or cooler or whatever.
I don't see how they get from from needing 100 people per square mile to it being unfeasible. Any reasonably populated metro area has several times that number. Urban or suburban wi-fi would be dicier, but I think everyone already knew that.
Slashdot Mirror
2. I spend more than $10 a month on coffee. Hell, I spend more than $10 a month on almost *everything*. If you read a paper with breakfast, you're probably spending about $10 a month. If you're an adult with the wife and the career and everything, $10 a month for an hour a day of entertainment is *cheap*. 3. The "winner" at any sort of game is always going to be the dedicated individual. It's true in sports, it's true in games like chess or poker or backgammon, and it's true in MMORPGs. You're going to feel like a loser if you compare yourself to those people. If the game involves directly competing with them (see online poker) you're going to feel *really* bad. You will probably compensate for your feeling of inferiority (because thats what happens when you lose) by bitching about how they must have no life and yadda yadda. The solution is to play on your own terms and define your enjoyment by your own accomplishments rather than comparing them to someone elses. This is good advice for happiness in general.
I'm not impressed with your 25 years of coding experience either - if theres anything I've learned its that years in the industry don't amount to shit when it comes to code quality. Some of the worst crap I've ever seen has been sitting on mainframes for 20 years. The fact that you don't think that a *massive*, *critical* vulnerability - this would be earth shattering if GreaseMonkey was widely deployed - isn't something that should be closed off as quickly and as expediently as possible further reduces my total lack caring about your coding history. It would not be acceptable to leave this on updates.mozdev.org as is. It's worth noting that despite other posts in this thread, the functions removed are used fairly rarely in GM scripts, and then mostly by fairly advanced users.
The dev of GM who's responsible doesn't know a damn thing about security either, and doesn't think that way - he says as much on the ML, and he just learned a really hard lesson in it.
I can't speak for other OSS supporters, but I don't have a double standard here at all - Microsoft did the right thing in enabling it's firewall by default in SP 2, in enabling the data execution protection, and a variety of the other things it's enabled that have broken some naive programs. Doing it without a detailed explanation of why is sub optimal. I'll blame MS more for it because they have a mechanism to present that information to the user. I'll blame the Firefox devs because they didn't anticipate the need for such a mechanism in the update. I won't blame the GM dev for responding as best he can to a massive security breach.
No provable increase in security, because no exploit has been found in the wild? Christ. Maybe you should just stay away from computers. This update is intended to prevent unsafe scripts from executing - this is not damage, no matter how you spin it. It *is* a reduction in functionality. It is not damage. Adding a firewall via an update in Windows XP reduced functionality - it did not cause damage. This is normal, accepted, and acceptable behavior.
Your argument is totally untenable, unsupportable, and generally bullshit. Half the updates in the history of computing would be criminal by your standards. Hell, the update to FF that added the whitelist for XPI installation would be - auto installation of extensions is a feature. Thats why IE had it. But it doesn't now. Maybe you should write your district attorney.
If I got fed an update that demonstrably improved security, as this one does - by an *enormous* amount, and the fact that you consider it a minor detail demonstrates a lack of knowledge I find unsettling - at the expense of functionality - rarely used functionality, at that - no, I would not be pissed. At worst, if I needed that functionality, I would investigate the reasons behind the update and find a work around. But thats because I'm responsible about my computing habits and don't expect the little fucking computer fairy to sprinkle dust on my computer when I'm sleeping.
Maybe you shouldn't be telling people whats illegal and whats not, then.
Acceptance requires that you have been informed as to what you are accepting. Your argument would allow for all trojans that people click on to be considered "acceptance" - after all, they clicked on "AnnaKorina.jpg.exe" ...
This is, in fact, generally what the courts have decided. Spyware bundling is *legal*. Not that has any bearing whatsoever on the Greasemonkey update, because you'd have to prove your position that increased security is "damaging".
. The original author has absolutely zero rights to try to take such an action "under the radar," and the courts have taken this position time and again.
The courts have done no such thing. In fact, they have done the opposite, in far more underhanded situations - such as Claria. Your argument, in fact, would demand that *any* update would have to be a 100% superset featurewise (and who decides exactly what a "feature" is, anyway - immunity to an enourmously dangerous exploit is a feature in my book), or else it would be "illegal".
Would it be nice if the Firefox update feature included a mechanism for showing a changelog or whatever? Yes it would. Maybe you should go file an RFE. Getting your panties in a bunch and screaming all over Slashdot about how it's illegal and damaging the computer is you blowing a load of stupid crap.
Gator and Weatherbug are not illegal, sadly - the EULA as justification for inclusion has been upheld. The user is in fact getting a bug fix - the bug that allowed for a major security breach is being removed. You may not like that bug fix, but sucks to be you. GM is not disabled by this update and many scripts will continue to run. Insecure scripts will not.
I'm not familiar with the Ruby implementation, but it's certainly possible to write belongs_to in Python. I doubt it would be signifigantly more complicated than the Ruby implementation, too - dynamically adding methods to classes is a pretty common Python trick.
I have no affiliation with twisted beyond being impressed by the library, btw.
I honestly doubt that you know anything about Ruby (or Python, for that matter). Java is a heavyweight language. There's a lot of boilerplate (especially in crap like J2EE. There are lots and lots of testimonials about working with Ruby being easier and faster than working in Java - is everyone lying? Ruby does more for you than Java, requires less hoops, and has equally functional libraries. Ruby's standard library wasn't written by Sun, either, so it doesn't even have that crappy stench of poor quality implementation on it.
Now, I personally am a Python guy. I've been writing C++ code for about 3 times longer than I have Python. I'm pretty good with C++ in general, and I have a lot of experience with some specific libraries and domains, and I can write apps really fast there. My very first Python app in that area came out in about the same amount of time as the equivilent C++ one. My second was faster. I can now write a Python app in half the time (at least) as the C++ one.
People who talk about how nice and useful the Java libraries are just haven't experienced anything else, in my opinion. Hell, if you know where to look (half the problem, of course) you can get a C++/C library for anything you can get for Java.
Of course, you could always post a tantalizing Ask Slashdot and attract coders that way ;)
Does it take more than one?
In my personal experience (note lack of generalization to the common case), the reliability of mainframes is highly overrated. The one I leared to hate was up all the time, sure - because they took it down for 6 hours *every day*. My experience with extracting data from VSAM files, compiled over 10 years from applications with none (thats right, zero) input validation was fun too. Everyone bragging about the superior power of the mainframe can just go bite me.
There is only a benefit to user-friendly features (like content replacement) if there are alternatives - competition, in other words. The *vast* majority of popular media is controlled by very large and powerful cartels, which, while they may stop short of outright collusion, all have pretty much the same basic goal in mind - control of the market. And universal delivery is still accomplished with the pay-per-view system.
Renting digital property rather than selling it is incredibly more profitable than renting physical equipment, because your duplication cost is zero, and there's no maintenance. Thats why software providers who make the most money make it off of licensing, not sales, why Microsoft pushes recurrent licensing schemes rather than sales at every opportunity, and, yes, why media companies want DRMed digitial distrubution rather than classic physical media sales.
I use CSS Expressions (in IE, most CSS attributes can be arbitrary JavaScript) to mask my IE styles from other browsers.
DRM is just like region coding - it's about controlling and manipulating your market, not about piracy reduction. Selling things is not profitable. Renting them is where the money is, especially when it's non-physical. The magic word is "recurring revenue stream". And thats why everyone in the media wants DRM so bad.
Consult with a lawyer. You may be up the creek - banks have lots of legal protection - but it certainly seems to me that the bank misrepresented the validity of a transaction. Perhaps you have a case against the specific branch that cleared the transaction. At the very least a lawsuit threat will get you in touch with someone who can do something, like the manager who gave you your 10k in cash.
Which is not to say that the memo is worth a shit anyway, since whatever the results were they were discared in later analysis, as the email demonstrates, and in any case analysis by far more qualified people (like Brian Khernigan) has come up empty as well.
If you had been following (I know, you're bored), SCO has not, to date, provided *any* evidence of code infringment in court. None. Dec 22 is the deadline for any evidence of code infringment to be shown. SCOs public statements as to the nature of the case vary hugely from what actually happens in the court room - they spin it as copyright about Linux in the media, but as a contract dispute about AIX in court. The impression that "they must have a case because it's lasted this long" is exactly one of the things they rely one - TV court drama to the contrary, judges very rarely toss cases early on. Especially technical ones like this, where even though the lack of merit may be obvious, it takes signifigant technical analysis to prove it.
For what it's worth, the judge has been seeming rather fed up with it too - when he issued his ruling on deadlines for discovery, he specifically pointed out SCOs misrepresentation in the media as compared to the total lack of evidence they've presented in court.
Or, maybe, you wrote something you thing is really neato and clever and are taking the opportunity to hype your own wares.
What I want to know is where the fuck the SEC is. Daryl McBride, over the course of *over a year* made repeated, public statements that he, at best, had signifigant reason to believe were not 100% correct (and thats being amazingly generous - a more normal person would simply say he lied). SCOs stock rose by an order of magnitude based directly on these claims.
Pathfinding requires heavy computation even for crappy versions (WoWs is a little better than you describe, but not much). Even the best pathfinding algorithms have poor worst case performance - which is why developers put early bail out with "cheats", like the walking through walls or jumping to the player you see so often, in.
In one of the articles, one of the sky-falling guys blathers about how "any internet-savvy child could unlock this terrible pornography yadda yadda yadda". Who here thinks that "an internet savvy child" who wants porn can't find it *without* resorting to modding his video games?
Now, whether or not this sort of thing is appropriate in an interview setting is questionable - I don't like the "trick" sort of interview, because an interview isn't a normal conversation. It depends on how the question was phrased, though. Something like "Suppose you were asked to design an in-car coffee maker. How would you proceeed?" would invite the sort of grilling questions.
Neither of those is either correct or safe. Thats above and beyond all the other (very good) reasons for not doing this sort of moronic bitflipping. See the comp.lang.c FAQ for more reasons why your code doesn't work as written, paying special attention to "sequence points".
A much better question, and one that should be asked for a C programmer, would be something like "Why shouldn't you use Duffs Device", and "Why shouldn't you use the xor swap trick". Cute tricks are clever and cool, but even more important than knowing when to use them is knowing when NOT to use them. Duffs Device is especially egregious in this respect - there's almost no reason to ever use it, but people insist on using it for simple blitting, because they think it's faster or cooler or whatever.
I don't see how they get from from needing 100 people per square mile to it being unfeasible. Any reasonably populated metro area has several times that number. Urban or suburban wi-fi would be dicier, but I think everyone already knew that.