He is trolling, but doing an exceptionally good job of it. The "bait the fanatics, while everyone else laughs in their beer" variety.
Notice further down, where we start to see misspellings in the post come to light, and enough general inconsistencies. In fact, the parent's point simply has no legitimate claims (obivious to anyone who is even close to understanding the math involved), but everything is just close enough to be misinterpretted (comically) by charletan mathmeticians. A most excellent troll, and an art so few people do right nowadays.
Being a student at the same school as one of these professors, I can assure you that they know EXACTLY what they are talking about.
This isn't small-scale Unix or Linux boxes having multi-year uptimes. There are two more important applications: 1) dynamicly scripted web servers, and 2) clusters.
Dynamicly scripted web servers - if one session corrupts some information, how far up the chain do things restart? Right now, I see apache or maybe just the CGI program itself rebooting. These guys are talking about rebooting single components of that CGI program - single components of JBoss, for example. OS kernels or regular applications are nice and stable - but you know the absolute junk that comes in over an HTTP connection?
An application they were talking about was designing for failure. There was a Java implementation a few years ago that, instead of using a garbage collector, simply leaked memory until it crashed. Ran incredibly fast, except the VM had to be rebooted every few hours. Cheapen the cost of that reboot, cluster appropriately, and Java-without-GC becomes extremely efficient - more efficient than ANY other dynamic scripting out there.
Or another example: the clusters that (insert major search engine) run. Statistically, each machine fails every so often - when there are thousands of machines, there's no way to avoid it. So, instead of going through a hard crash-reboot cycle whenever something fails, these clusters (today!) do a rolling reboot - every so often, one machine gives away its connections, reboots, then rejoings the cluster. If this rolling reboot is designed as a feature IN ADVANCE, reliability soars, and each reboot is much less disruptive (0 lost connections!)
Actually, I realize ROC is another point entirely. It's not about lengthening the time between reboots! In fact, this prof ignores that detail entirely. It's about minimizing the time between failure and restart - making the reboot as quick as possible, so the failure doesn't hurt as badly. Sure, your Linux box runs a year without rebooting, but then crashes, full fsck on reboot, and whatever else = hours of downtime. If the ROC computer automatically did less than a second of downtime/maintenence every day, it has less downtime than your Linux machine by all the industry ways of measuring.
Suggestion: some level of government should add a law requiring that any software their department uses HAVE A WARRENTY. Everyone right now disclaims warrenties (MS, GNU, etc.) - with a new market requiring software warrenties, the most secure software will actually win! Any guesses where I'll place my bets?
Exactly, and if MS is held responsible I could see GPL authors facing the same fate. Sadly, I'd root for MS on this one.
The flip side, however, is how often do you see MS software advertised as "secure"? (everyone raises hand). And GPL software? (no response - no advertising!). I COULD see a case for false advertising!
It's not that he's doing the wrong thing. It's that he isn't doing the right thing.
This is suspiciously like a "you are either with us or against us" argument. Very useful for advancing a radical idea, but let's face it: moderates like Linus (and myself, on this issue) don't want to get involved. Red Hat GNU/Linux may or may not be the right thing - Linus is refusing to pass judgement. Refusing to pass judgement is NOT agreeing - too many people make that mistake. Linus is under no obligation to fight a battle he doesn't believe in - in fact, I would think less of him if he did!
Very sad that perfectly good software engineering can be drowned out by politics.
C'est le guerre.
Re:Voltaire also said...
on
Linus on DRM
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· Score: 1
QED.;)
Re:Props to Linus
on
Linus on DRM
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Until RMS starts deriding Linus with the business end of a firearm or other form of force, he's free to air his views as he wishes.
RMS is like the anti-abortion protestor who sets up camp on the doctor's lawn. It's a perversion of the point of protesting. It stinks of a rules mechanic, and it's disgusting. It follows the letter of the law, but tramples all over the spirit.
RMS isn't the type that accepts that people disagree with him. If you disagree, he sees you as somehow misinformed, and it's his moral obligation to change that. Look at the "GNU/Linux" vs. "Linux" debate - Linus claimed that in his opinion "Linux" refers only to the kernel, and anything else is none of his business. Yet RMS seems to blame Linus for the lack of credit GNU gets. Linus doesn't want to fight that fight; RMS, smelling blood, wades in swinging.
Yes, Linus is an Engineer. With a capital E. Among people in the know, I would guess he is one of the most highly respected engineer around - certainly more respected than, say, RMS. RMS is really a salesman, pushing his philosophy along with his software. He also happens to be one of the best salesmen around. But, as a computer geek, I despise salesmen as manipulative, and have the utmost respect for good, honest, engineers.
I suppose that one shouldn't push the "ideology" that treating others worse than one would ever want to be treated one's self, either? Do we let others pursue their chosen "ideology" of murder?
Yes and no. You are free to advocate (in the US at least) your views on murduring whoever you feel like. Except for one test: if a reasonable person would be fearful of their life. The KKK is not outlawed, just their cross-burning rallies. And to your murder example: you are "free" to commit your first murder. It would be exceedingly difficult (i.e. thought control) for anyone to prevent that - instead, society goes to great lengths to punish and to prevent it from happening again.
And, to me, the GPL is thought control. It says (to me), "use this code, and you must agree with RMS's view of open source free software". I will never write my own code from scratch that would go under the GPL because I don't believe in the GPL's huge restrictions. I personally prefer a BSD-style license - everyone gets to use the code, regardless of race, creed, or political stance on free software. And for reference, I find RMS's advocacy of his personal breed of open source "irritating".
Torvalds' political apathy, on the other hand is irritating, in the same way that Canada's wishy-washy stance on the war in Iraq is irritating: trying to please all by doing nothing.
I wouldn't call that doing nothing. I'd call that picking and choosing the winnable fights, and avoiding the tiring, unwinnable ones. The country that tries to DO right (not say right, but DO right) every time is the one that will become so exhausted, and in a short time so apathetic, that the country will no longer be able to oppose anyone else. Just look at all the great colonial empires, every one of which fell apart. Or, look at Russia in WWII: had they attempted to defend every inch of territory, they would have lost immediately. Instead, Russia's army retreated, saving its strength until the important issues (Stalingrad), and then fought for all they were worth - and won.
Linus is taking the "winnable fights" approach. He doesn't want to get Linux involved in a sticky, pro- or anti-DRM battle. DRM isn't his important issue - having an open-source, freely available, professional-grade operating system IS. And I am much happier seeing him defend open source (which he is) than embroiling a major issue in a minor one (like DRM).
Only on modern CDs and digital recordings. For tapes and older stuff, wrong.
Everything covered under the copyright acts before the DMCA does NOT give you the right to control distribution. Instead, it gives you the right to be the first distributor (i.e. no one can magically create a copy out of thin air / steal a copy - they have to buy an original from you), and ensures that anyone who uses your work a) gives you credit, and b) gives you royalties.
The reason you think distribution is controlled is the "shrink-wrap license" / FBI warning - the medium you have been sold includes an implicit contract to only be used in certain ways. Those contracts are very reasonable (even DVDs aren't high enough quality for a movie theater!), and I doubt any have ever been tested in court!
The ONLY distribution right you have is whether or not your music is distributed in the first place. If you don't sell it or copyright it or otherwise make it available to the public, anyone who has a copy must have stolen it, which IS a crime.
A better analogy would be if your girlfriend becomes a prostitute, she can't refuse any customers. It is her right to choose to be a prostitute, or just your girlfriend. Or, a less vulgar example, if you have a store in the mall, you can't refuse to serve anyone because of disabilities (the ADA) or race (Civil Rights Act). If you find it objectionable to serve people because of race, you can simply not have a store open to the public - that is the law. Likewise, you cannot control music distribution because of the use a person has for it.
You object that in fact people do pay for those extended rights? Actually true - they are negotiating a lower rate. If I use your work of music in my movie, I have to pay you some rate (I think it's about a quarter (~$.25), but I'm not sure) PER viewing PER viewer. The expense of keeping track of viewers / viewings is huge (especially after I sell my movie to other people and they watch it at home). It's much cheaper to negotiate a lower, flat rate. But if I show my movie once to five people, you cannot stop me from using your music unless you refused to sell it in the first place.
Since you seem to have such an exceptionally clear understanding of the educational system, I'd like to make a suggestion.
Go read Brave New World. It's an excellent book (yup, supported by that same educational system). Maybe, after reading it, you'll understand why your post was flamebait. (I would mod it down, but you don't learn anything from that - you'd just dismiss me as "a blockhead who didn't understand my point").
First, as someone else mentioned before you reamed them, learn to spell correctly and use proper grammar. Maybe it's the educational system's fault for not teaching you well enough, maybe it's your own fault for never bothering to learn; and frankly, I don't care which it is. Good grammar makes writing easier to read and understand, and tells me that what you have to say is important enough for you to spend the time on to making it readable, rather than the rantings of some illiterate adolescent upset at the world.
Second, get off your high horse. You seem quite cavalier about abandoning "the dumb people" in favor of giving presumably "better" people - people like you, perhaps? - a better education. Everyone who's not as capable as you gets shuffled off into a "K-mart management school educational system". The modern educational system does not do that. It bends over backwards to give everyone a chance. "Some kids aren't college material, let's not kid ourselves": then perhaps you should be the one to tell every one of those kids that he or she is not smart enough to go to college (but you apparently are). By your logic, Einstein wasn't smart enough to go to college either. You seem to have given a lot of thought to how to educate the top 5% of students; now I challenge you to spend more than a half-second thinking about the other 95%. Many of the best people I know are in that 95%, and I will not have you dismiss them as useless to the world.
Third. You are dismissing the entire educational system based on your personal experiences. Your AP textbooks were bull? I found mine exceptionally well written. What half-truths and partial histories do you feel were there? Have you ever looked at any textbooks beyond the handful you used? And what sort of un-learning do you see college professors having to do? So far, all I've seen are college lessons filling in a lot of details that would simply overwhelm me had I not spent most of my education learning how to deal with that influx of information.
And finally, you want to push calculus back to eigth grade? Are you insane? Perhaps you think you could have handled it then; I doubt you actually could have. Calculus requires trig, a strong foundation in algebra, and analytical skills usually taught in geometry. Start compressing all this down into middle school and even elementary school, and you've just given a way to burn out 99.9% of the students in this country. Congratulations, you've just killed scientific achievement.
The college professors you admire so much aren't teaching you new material that you've never seen before. Instead, they're forcing you to think about it. The better teachers I've had used the textbook only to fill in background so they didn't have to cover everything in class; the worse teachers rehashed the book for an hour each day. Read that again: the better teachers have done as much teaching as the worse teachers, and STILL have every hour of class time to use for whatever purpose they need. How dare you presume that there are no good teachers before college? It's insulting to some of the best teachers I've ever known.
Perhaps you never had a good teacher until college. Maybe your school couldn't afford to bring in the teachers you needed; maybe those teachers were too busy teaching everyone else who tried to learn and left out those who rejected their help. Fine. But whatever you do, don't insist on throwing away an educational system that many others, myself included, have found productive and useful, simply because it didn't work for you.
Not a stuntman, actually him. There was an interview or two when the movie came out - try searching on Google. Apparently "Spiderman" was trying really hard to not pass out from hanging up-side down for so long and had to breath out of the side of his mouth you DIDN'T see... Kirsten Dunst did all the kissing there. I feel kinda bad - all that effort and he didn't even get to enjoy the one kiss everyone else talks about?
I disagree; I think the idea of "everything's already been done at least twice" is a common phallacy. Some people claim that all good music has already been done, or all good movies, or even all good paintings.
Yes, yes, yes!
Everything WE KNOW HOW TO DO has been done at least twice. I see an idea, I'll use it to do something, someone watching me will copy the idea and do something else, until eventually everyone gets sick of my idea.
But what about anything we DON'T know how to do yet? Duh! It hasn't been done yet! Come up with an original idea, useful enough that other people like it, and suddenly that idea is everywhere, and the whole process repeats.
So to anyone who says "Everything has been done already", I'd like to know what makes you so absolutely sure that you're right. What you're really saying is that you haven't come up with anything new, and are complaining about not being able to magically turn a "old" product into a "new" product and make gobs of money like the last "new" product. Well duh! We consumers may be stupid most of the time, but we aren't completely ignorant.
One of the very common business fallacies (IMO) is to assume that the past predicts the future. If something sold well before, then it's going to sell well in the future. I admit the past is a pretty good indicator of the future, but historically, when you're wrong, you're really wrong (Great Depression anyone?). So to any future game publishers out there, repeat after me: "The past does not predict the future. The past does not predict the future. The past does not predict the future."
My company takes the risk the risk to develop a new product or process. We patent it, market it, it becomes successful, and we profit. Then it becomes wildly successful and we should give up the profit just because it is SO useful!?!
The point is that your product hasn't just become successful, it has become completely mainstream. By that point, you've ALREADY sold it to everyone and their dog... You've stopped using your IP to repay R&D investment (it's gotta be almost entirely repaid already - everyone's bought your product!), you have "name brand" recognition that is more valuable than the remaining profits to be had, and the only people you haven't sqeezed yet are the people who are behind the times - and likely don't have the money to catch up anyway. I'm not at all saying you shouldn't profit (you should!), but at some point the government needs to say "enough".
Admittedly, the CD-ROM patent was probably a bad example; it was the first thing that came to mind. How about other patents... the x86 architecture, the PCI bus, the GIF graphics format? The point, as you put it, is "there should be some way to prevent abuse of a patent that has become a mainstream need" - and I have not heard even whispers of such a mechanism. And, the point I raised above: Philips has been very generous with their patent. But if Philips lost control of it... if the restrictions that are on DVDs were to be applied to CD-ROMs as well, where's the line? And, since Philips HAS established the industry standard, do they still need that patent? It's not like anyone else will be duplicating their efforts - any competing technology would fail in the already established market.
Here's probably a better hypothetical example. Coca-Cola and aluminum cans. Coca-Cola has a patent on the formula for their recipie (actually, they don't, but they're willing to risk going without); no one else can produce Coca-Cola-tasting drinks. They raise the price - fine, I'm switching to Pepsi. What about the supplier of all those aluminum cans? If he raises the price, I'm not going to be able to avoid it. And the industry is locked in - they can't afford to revert production to glass bottles when aluminum cans are so widespread. So if that supplier uses his patents to raise the price of aluminum cans, I as the customer get abused. The only good news is that the patent on aluminum cans is (I think) long since expired - or enough of multiple patents are expired that it wouldn't be very expensive to get around the remaining patents.
Sorry if I sound like I'm ranting, but my dad controls many patents in the corregated box business, and has had to fight to protect them many times over the years. Yes, plain old cardboard boxes have patents too. You'd be amazed at how many specialized containers the auto industry needs.
I probably have more sympathy than you think:). My (late) grandfather held several patents on locks (the circular kind used on good bike U-locks), and did go to court to defend them against reverse-engineering. But here, as I see it, is the deciding factor: are your dad's box designs the industry standard? I.e., if I'm buying a new widget for my car, would I automatically reject any widget that wasn't in your dad's specialty box as inferior? If your dad is using his patents to hold onto a position of sole supplier of widget boxes that the auto industry depends on, I object to the patents. But if the boxes are just a convenience (i.e. they're somewhat cheaper, or they ship better, or they look nicer - but the widget would do just as well sold in a generic box), then your dad has a nice patent and a nice business. Economists call this "price elasticity" and the "substitution effect" - if I raise prices, will you a) switch to another product, or b) have to pass on costs to your customers or go out of business yourself? (a) is a good use of patents (protecting an inventor), (b) is not (exploiting consumers).
A quick test: what if your dad jumped the price of his boxes up by 10? If he goes out of business he's got small but productive patents; if he stays in business but the auto industry raises prices on sold cars by that much, he's abusing his patents. And even if your dad swore he wouldn't raise prices, what's to prevent Acme Monopoly Corp from buying him out, taking over the patent, and raising prices in his stead? The problem isn't patents that can't be abused (probably your dad's); it's the patents that CAN be abused I'm afraid of.
The problem is that IP "regulation" is reactive instead of proactive. Two large companies want to merge, they have to get regulator approval beforehand. But if I want to own a piece of IP, I just claim it (copyright) or come up with an obscure description and pay a small fee (patent); I basically own it until someone proves I don't - the onus is on YOU to challenge MY ownership. And I can threaten all sorts of lawsuits until you succeed in that challenge. If I hold a patent that's "obvious", guess what - you've got to sue to break my monopoly.
The solution I'd like to see, instead, would be the government taking a proactive stand. Instead of granting patents and waiting for the mess to sort itself out, I want the government to go out and bust patents. Presidents like to portray themselves as trustbusters; well, "patent cartels" are one large trust that's never been busted. If some technology covered by a patent becomes truly umbiquitous - that is, so widely used that the inventor has ALREADY recouped his R&D investment - I'd like to see the government force the patent into the public domain. Example: CD-ROMs... Philips hold the patent, and has been very generous with it. But the technology protected by that patent is SO widespread that any abuse of the CD-ROM patent would ruin the technology sector. Think of how much some companies (or the RIAA, to supress non-DRM formats) would pay to control that patent - the value is inconceivable.
At this point, CD-ROM technology ceases to be a useful patent and starts to become something that the general public has a vital interest in... and here's the point where the government should "seize" the patent and turn the IP over to the public BEFORE the patent expires of its own accord. A widely used piece of IP (or any of the "obvious" patents we regularly complain about here on Slashdot) has passed the point where the inventors NEED a monopoly to protect their idea and has reached the point where the only purpose of that patent is profit at the expense of the public.
Monopolies are useful, but powerful monopolies are not; patents are useful, but exploitable patents are not. The government has an active role in regulating all other monopolies; it needs to take an active role in regulating IP monopolies as well.
Serious, folks, Reason 2 comes through a research paper from someone who works with (major search engine).
Sometimes nodes go down. So, if (insert favorite search engine here) hits 1024 nodes for your search, there's a reasonable chance that one of them will time out, or be down / rebooting, or whatever. The search results would differ, and a few of the lower-ranked pages wouldn't show up, but the most important pages (the first ~1000?) will be on multiple nodes so they'll always show up. Really, if the company's choices are be down for one day a year or give only 99.9% accurate results 24/7/365, what are you going to choose, especially when you can count the people who will encounter problems with the remaining.1% on one hand? And a simple refresh will solve the problem?
And nodes WILL be down. (Insert major search engine here) cycles server reboots so that the nodes fail in a controlled fashion, instead of crashing and potentially causing problems. When there are thousands of nodes, statistically one's always down at any given time in a rolling reboot situation like this.
I don't doubt that the Google guy's explaination is probably true. But there can also be more than one reason... and I DO know that (major search engine) is doing active research on the topic.
Definitely won't - you're absolutely right it's not an emulator, it runs x86 code directly on the processor, and makes LOTS of assumptions about the underlying hardware being x86.
I admit that what you describe is exactly what I see around me. People who take the time to do all their work usually get A's, people who don't take the time usually drop off from there.
But the better standard (arguably better) is "above and beyond" is required for an A. I have had classes (few and far between) where knowing grading standards and managing to grab every single point guarantees... a B+. You have to come up with your OWN extensions, and do a good job of it, before the teacher considers it worthy of an A.
But papers are RARELY, if ever perfect. Math homework, most engineering homework, and so on can be graded objectively... and anyone who can claim to grade an English paper objectively is lying. The absolute most consistency with which I've ever seen non-technical papers graded still has about a 10% spread - and that's from Advanced placement people who've been grading English papers for 15 years. With enough work, anyone can pump out a "B" paper... it takes talent and a little bit of luck to eek out an "A" when the teacher doesn't inflate grades.
I've also had another professor who had a different take on study habits in general. His claim is that there are two types of people: those who cram the night before the final, and those who work all quarter, do all the homeworks and readings and attend class, then don't need to study. Because they've learned everything. I don't have much sympathy for the crammer, because he didn't really learn the material - he just went through the motions. But the student who worked all quarter is probably the A student - and it takes a very good professor to bring out that difference in actual grades. Which brings everything right back to the old "there aren't enough good teachers" argument:).
Apache Tomcat is actually very high performance, nearly as fast as Apache itself I've been told by people who would know.
Sun seems to continuously pull off miricles with Java. Humbug.:-) But in all seriousness, I think it might be worthwhile to consider memory load (and the associated problems with running out of memory, using swap, etc.) in the term "performance" (yeah, I have to pick on Java's weakness to get anywhere...).
But I also happen to think that Java itself isn't that far removed from straight C++, it can be about as efficient algorithmically and so any debate devolves into inefficiencies of garbage collection versus advantages of HotSpot. Of course, all this assumes good C++ coders and good Java coders!
No, it's a memory management bug. If the CVS server has a poor design that's a separate issue, but manual memory management is a pain in the ass and very easy to get wrong.
It's still poor design. Java could have a similar bug - an old pointer in a static class. It wouldn't create an exploit (I agree), but it would likely throw a null pointer exception or cause data corruption. And I'll lump good Java exception handling right there with manual memory management in terms of difficulty. Not just catching the exception, but handling it in a fail-safe way.
But it's also like saying that fatal accidents are more common when cars are travelling above 40MPH, so we'll add a device to prevent high speed - oops, your house burned down because the fire truck couldn't get there in time? Sorry, hope the decreased risk of an accident was worth it. Or, saying that your seat belt is so heavy that your car only goes half as fast - not such a good deal anymore, is it?
The point is software is about tradeoffs. Take Windows 95, for example. Any time something becomes corrupted, you get a Blue Screen. If MS wanted to prevent the bug from spreading and corrupting anything else, they'd reboot immediately. But people are willing to take the risk of running with a potentially unstable system because there are advantages: the risk of further bugs is small, I'd like to save the document I've been working on the past three hours, or it's just not worth my time to wait through a reboot.
Choosing C is about tradeoffs too. Coding in C means you get a fast language that produces a well-understood output. And you are also very sure that no language vendor is ever going to change the underlying behavior and break your code. Plus, the C source can be compiled and run on practically every OS out there with minimal overhead.
The person who writes the software gets to decide where the software sits on this tradeoff. If you disagree, you are free to write your own server in whatever language you want.
Ah, but the phrase that jumped out at me was "global pointer variable" - a synchronization-type problem that could hit just about any language (yes, Java included). Java would probably crash with some sort of exception instead of happily running in an invalid state... but do you really want anyone to remotely crash the server daemon either?
But, banning C is the LAST thing you'd want to do in a case like this. C is absolutely, bar none, the fastest language for slinging raw bytes around (err... ignoring assembly, but it's close) - and that's pretty much what a CVS server (or FTP, or HTTP, or...) does. Switch over to a "safer" language (Java, Perl, whatever) and the commands to run the connection will be safer, but the server as a whole will suffer - and thus less people will use it.
The best case here would probably be to set up two layers - a Perl wrapper that parses and verifies input before passing it on to a C program that actually does the serving. But this is a server - emphasis on the C core, not the Perl wrapper. The parsing/verify is the special case, while the data transfer is the general case, and so designing for the general case makes the language of choice C.
But getting back to the topic, the bug here isn't a memory management bug. It's a flawed PROGRAM design that RESULTS IN a memory management bug. Global variables are bad in general, and should only be used with due diligence - and here's simply a case where that diligence didn't work.
Slashdot Mirror
Enjoy!
Notice further down, where we start to see misspellings in the post come to light, and enough general inconsistencies. In fact, the parent's point simply has no legitimate claims (obivious to anyone who is even close to understanding the math involved), but everything is just close enough to be misinterpretted (comically) by charletan mathmeticians. A most excellent troll, and an art so few people do right nowadays.
Mmm... perhaps the XBox was too much of an embarassment there?
This isn't small-scale Unix or Linux boxes having multi-year uptimes. There are two more important applications: 1) dynamicly scripted web servers, and 2) clusters.
Dynamicly scripted web servers - if one session corrupts some information, how far up the chain do things restart? Right now, I see apache or maybe just the CGI program itself rebooting. These guys are talking about rebooting single components of that CGI program - single components of JBoss, for example. OS kernels or regular applications are nice and stable - but you know the absolute junk that comes in over an HTTP connection?
An application they were talking about was designing for failure. There was a Java implementation a few years ago that, instead of using a garbage collector, simply leaked memory until it crashed. Ran incredibly fast, except the VM had to be rebooted every few hours. Cheapen the cost of that reboot, cluster appropriately, and Java-without-GC becomes extremely efficient - more efficient than ANY other dynamic scripting out there.
Or another example: the clusters that (insert major search engine) run. Statistically, each machine fails every so often - when there are thousands of machines, there's no way to avoid it. So, instead of going through a hard crash-reboot cycle whenever something fails, these clusters (today!) do a rolling reboot - every so often, one machine gives away its connections, reboots, then rejoings the cluster. If this rolling reboot is designed as a feature IN ADVANCE, reliability soars, and each reboot is much less disruptive (0 lost connections!)
Actually, I realize ROC is another point entirely. It's not about lengthening the time between reboots! In fact, this prof ignores that detail entirely. It's about minimizing the time between failure and restart - making the reboot as quick as possible, so the failure doesn't hurt as badly. Sure, your Linux box runs a year without rebooting, but then crashes, full fsck on reboot, and whatever else = hours of downtime. If the ROC computer automatically did less than a second of downtime/maintenence every day, it has less downtime than your Linux machine by all the industry ways of measuring.
Suggestion: some level of government should add a law requiring that any software their department uses HAVE A WARRENTY. Everyone right now disclaims warrenties (MS, GNU, etc.) - with a new market requiring software warrenties, the most secure software will actually win! Any guesses where I'll place my bets?
The flip side, however, is how often do you see MS software advertised as "secure"? (everyone raises hand). And GPL software? (no response - no advertising!). I COULD see a case for false advertising!
This is suspiciously like a "you are either with us or against us" argument. Very useful for advancing a radical idea, but let's face it: moderates like Linus (and myself, on this issue) don't want to get involved. Red Hat GNU/Linux may or may not be the right thing - Linus is refusing to pass judgement. Refusing to pass judgement is NOT agreeing - too many people make that mistake. Linus is under no obligation to fight a battle he doesn't believe in - in fact, I would think less of him if he did!
C'est le guerre.
QED. ;)
RMS is like the anti-abortion protestor who sets up camp on the doctor's lawn. It's a perversion of the point of protesting. It stinks of a rules mechanic, and it's disgusting. It follows the letter of the law, but tramples all over the spirit.
RMS isn't the type that accepts that people disagree with him. If you disagree, he sees you as somehow misinformed, and it's his moral obligation to change that. Look at the "GNU/Linux" vs. "Linux" debate - Linus claimed that in his opinion "Linux" refers only to the kernel, and anything else is none of his business. Yet RMS seems to blame Linus for the lack of credit GNU gets. Linus doesn't want to fight that fight; RMS, smelling blood, wades in swinging.
Yes, Linus is an Engineer. With a capital E. Among people in the know, I would guess he is one of the most highly respected engineer around - certainly more respected than, say, RMS. RMS is really a salesman, pushing his philosophy along with his software. He also happens to be one of the best salesmen around. But, as a computer geek, I despise salesmen as manipulative, and have the utmost respect for good, honest, engineers.
Yes and no. You are free to advocate (in the US at least) your views on murduring whoever you feel like. Except for one test: if a reasonable person would be fearful of their life. The KKK is not outlawed, just their cross-burning rallies. And to your murder example: you are "free" to commit your first murder. It would be exceedingly difficult (i.e. thought control) for anyone to prevent that - instead, society goes to great lengths to punish and to prevent it from happening again.
And, to me, the GPL is thought control. It says (to me), "use this code, and you must agree with RMS's view of open source free software". I will never write my own code from scratch that would go under the GPL because I don't believe in the GPL's huge restrictions. I personally prefer a BSD-style license - everyone gets to use the code, regardless of race, creed, or political stance on free software. And for reference, I find RMS's advocacy of his personal breed of open source "irritating".
Torvalds' political apathy, on the other hand is irritating, in the same way that Canada's wishy-washy stance on the war in Iraq is irritating: trying to please all by doing nothing.
I wouldn't call that doing nothing. I'd call that picking and choosing the winnable fights, and avoiding the tiring, unwinnable ones. The country that tries to DO right (not say right, but DO right) every time is the one that will become so exhausted, and in a short time so apathetic, that the country will no longer be able to oppose anyone else. Just look at all the great colonial empires, every one of which fell apart. Or, look at Russia in WWII: had they attempted to defend every inch of territory, they would have lost immediately. Instead, Russia's army retreated, saving its strength until the important issues (Stalingrad), and then fought for all they were worth - and won.
Linus is taking the "winnable fights" approach. He doesn't want to get Linux involved in a sticky, pro- or anti-DRM battle. DRM isn't his important issue - having an open-source, freely available, professional-grade operating system IS. And I am much happier seeing him defend open source (which he is) than embroiling a major issue in a minor one (like DRM).
Everything covered under the copyright acts before the DMCA does NOT give you the right to control distribution. Instead, it gives you the right to be the first distributor (i.e. no one can magically create a copy out of thin air / steal a copy - they have to buy an original from you), and ensures that anyone who uses your work a) gives you credit, and b) gives you royalties.
The reason you think distribution is controlled is the "shrink-wrap license" / FBI warning - the medium you have been sold includes an implicit contract to only be used in certain ways. Those contracts are very reasonable (even DVDs aren't high enough quality for a movie theater!), and I doubt any have ever been tested in court!
The ONLY distribution right you have is whether or not your music is distributed in the first place. If you don't sell it or copyright it or otherwise make it available to the public, anyone who has a copy must have stolen it, which IS a crime.
A better analogy would be if your girlfriend becomes a prostitute, she can't refuse any customers. It is her right to choose to be a prostitute, or just your girlfriend. Or, a less vulgar example, if you have a store in the mall, you can't refuse to serve anyone because of disabilities (the ADA) or race (Civil Rights Act). If you find it objectionable to serve people because of race, you can simply not have a store open to the public - that is the law. Likewise, you cannot control music distribution because of the use a person has for it.
You object that in fact people do pay for those extended rights? Actually true - they are negotiating a lower rate. If I use your work of music in my movie, I have to pay you some rate (I think it's about a quarter (~$.25), but I'm not sure) PER viewing PER viewer. The expense of keeping track of viewers / viewings is huge (especially after I sell my movie to other people and they watch it at home). It's much cheaper to negotiate a lower, flat rate. But if I show my movie once to five people, you cannot stop me from using your music unless you refused to sell it in the first place.
Go read Brave New World. It's an excellent book (yup, supported by that same educational system). Maybe, after reading it, you'll understand why your post was flamebait. (I would mod it down, but you don't learn anything from that - you'd just dismiss me as "a blockhead who didn't understand my point").
First, as someone else mentioned before you reamed them, learn to spell correctly and use proper grammar. Maybe it's the educational system's fault for not teaching you well enough, maybe it's your own fault for never bothering to learn; and frankly, I don't care which it is. Good grammar makes writing easier to read and understand, and tells me that what you have to say is important enough for you to spend the time on to making it readable, rather than the rantings of some illiterate adolescent upset at the world.
Second, get off your high horse. You seem quite cavalier about abandoning "the dumb people" in favor of giving presumably "better" people - people like you, perhaps? - a better education. Everyone who's not as capable as you gets shuffled off into a "K-mart management school educational system". The modern educational system does not do that. It bends over backwards to give everyone a chance. "Some kids aren't college material, let's not kid ourselves": then perhaps you should be the one to tell every one of those kids that he or she is not smart enough to go to college (but you apparently are). By your logic, Einstein wasn't smart enough to go to college either. You seem to have given a lot of thought to how to educate the top 5% of students; now I challenge you to spend more than a half-second thinking about the other 95%. Many of the best people I know are in that 95%, and I will not have you dismiss them as useless to the world.
Third. You are dismissing the entire educational system based on your personal experiences. Your AP textbooks were bull? I found mine exceptionally well written. What half-truths and partial histories do you feel were there? Have you ever looked at any textbooks beyond the handful you used? And what sort of un-learning do you see college professors having to do? So far, all I've seen are college lessons filling in a lot of details that would simply overwhelm me had I not spent most of my education learning how to deal with that influx of information.
And finally, you want to push calculus back to eigth grade? Are you insane? Perhaps you think you could have handled it then; I doubt you actually could have. Calculus requires trig, a strong foundation in algebra, and analytical skills usually taught in geometry. Start compressing all this down into middle school and even elementary school, and you've just given a way to burn out 99.9% of the students in this country. Congratulations, you've just killed scientific achievement.
The college professors you admire so much aren't teaching you new material that you've never seen before. Instead, they're forcing you to think about it. The better teachers I've had used the textbook only to fill in background so they didn't have to cover everything in class; the worse teachers rehashed the book for an hour each day. Read that again: the better teachers have done as much teaching as the worse teachers, and STILL have every hour of class time to use for whatever purpose they need. How dare you presume that there are no good teachers before college? It's insulting to some of the best teachers I've ever known.
Perhaps you never had a good teacher until college. Maybe your school couldn't afford to bring in the teachers you needed; maybe those teachers were too busy teaching everyone else who tried to learn and left out those who rejected their help. Fine. But whatever you do, don't insist on throwing away an educational system that many others, myself included, have found productive and useful, simply because it didn't work for you.
Not a stuntman, actually him. There was an interview or two when the movie came out - try searching on Google. Apparently "Spiderman" was trying really hard to not pass out from hanging up-side down for so long and had to breath out of the side of his mouth you DIDN'T see... Kirsten Dunst did all the kissing there. I feel kinda bad - all that effort and he didn't even get to enjoy the one kiss everyone else talks about?
Yes, yes, yes!
Everything WE KNOW HOW TO DO has been done at least twice. I see an idea, I'll use it to do something, someone watching me will copy the idea and do something else, until eventually everyone gets sick of my idea.
But what about anything we DON'T know how to do yet? Duh! It hasn't been done yet! Come up with an original idea, useful enough that other people like it, and suddenly that idea is everywhere, and the whole process repeats.
So to anyone who says "Everything has been done already", I'd like to know what makes you so absolutely sure that you're right. What you're really saying is that you haven't come up with anything new, and are complaining about not being able to magically turn a "old" product into a "new" product and make gobs of money like the last "new" product. Well duh! We consumers may be stupid most of the time, but we aren't completely ignorant.
One of the very common business fallacies (IMO) is to assume that the past predicts the future. If something sold well before, then it's going to sell well in the future. I admit the past is a pretty good indicator of the future, but historically, when you're wrong, you're really wrong (Great Depression anyone?). So to any future game publishers out there, repeat after me: "The past does not predict the future. The past does not predict the future. The past does not predict the future."
If you don't like one publisher, go find another.
Last time I checked, Microsoft, Sierra, and Blizzard didn't completely dominate the market. There ARE other publishers out there.
The point is that your product hasn't just become successful, it has become completely mainstream. By that point, you've ALREADY sold it to everyone and their dog... You've stopped using your IP to repay R&D investment (it's gotta be almost entirely repaid already - everyone's bought your product!), you have "name brand" recognition that is more valuable than the remaining profits to be had, and the only people you haven't sqeezed yet are the people who are behind the times - and likely don't have the money to catch up anyway. I'm not at all saying you shouldn't profit (you should!), but at some point the government needs to say "enough".
Admittedly, the CD-ROM patent was probably a bad example; it was the first thing that came to mind. How about other patents... the x86 architecture, the PCI bus, the GIF graphics format? The point, as you put it, is "there should be some way to prevent abuse of a patent that has become a mainstream need" - and I have not heard even whispers of such a mechanism. And, the point I raised above: Philips has been very generous with their patent. But if Philips lost control of it... if the restrictions that are on DVDs were to be applied to CD-ROMs as well, where's the line? And, since Philips HAS established the industry standard, do they still need that patent? It's not like anyone else will be duplicating their efforts - any competing technology would fail in the already established market.
Here's probably a better hypothetical example. Coca-Cola and aluminum cans. Coca-Cola has a patent on the formula for their recipie (actually, they don't, but they're willing to risk going without); no one else can produce Coca-Cola-tasting drinks. They raise the price - fine, I'm switching to Pepsi. What about the supplier of all those aluminum cans? If he raises the price, I'm not going to be able to avoid it. And the industry is locked in - they can't afford to revert production to glass bottles when aluminum cans are so widespread. So if that supplier uses his patents to raise the price of aluminum cans, I as the customer get abused. The only good news is that the patent on aluminum cans is (I think) long since expired - or enough of multiple patents are expired that it wouldn't be very expensive to get around the remaining patents.
I probably have more sympathy than you think :). My (late) grandfather held several patents on locks (the circular kind used on good bike U-locks), and did go to court to defend them against reverse-engineering. But here, as I see it, is the deciding factor: are your dad's box designs the industry standard? I.e., if I'm buying a new widget for my car, would I automatically reject any widget that wasn't in your dad's specialty box as inferior? If your dad is using his patents to hold onto a position of sole supplier of widget boxes that the auto industry depends on, I object to the patents. But if the boxes are just a convenience (i.e. they're somewhat cheaper, or they ship better, or they look nicer - but the widget would do just as well sold in a generic box), then your dad has a nice patent and a nice business. Economists call this "price elasticity" and the "substitution effect" - if I raise prices, will you a) switch to another product, or b) have to pass on costs to your customers or go out of business yourself? (a) is a good use of patents (protecting an inventor), (b) is not (exploiting consumers).
A quick test: what if your dad jumped the price of his boxes up by 10? If he goes out of business he's got small but productive patents; if he stays in business but the auto industry raises prices on sold cars by that much, he's abusing his patents. And even if your dad swore he wouldn't raise prices, what's to prevent Acme Monopoly Corp from buying him out, taking over the patent, and raising prices in his stead? The problem isn't patents that can't be abused (probably your dad's); it's the patents that CAN be abused I'm afraid of.
The solution I'd like to see, instead, would be the government taking a proactive stand. Instead of granting patents and waiting for the mess to sort itself out, I want the government to go out and bust patents. Presidents like to portray themselves as trustbusters; well, "patent cartels" are one large trust that's never been busted. If some technology covered by a patent becomes truly umbiquitous - that is, so widely used that the inventor has ALREADY recouped his R&D investment - I'd like to see the government force the patent into the public domain. Example: CD-ROMs... Philips hold the patent, and has been very generous with it. But the technology protected by that patent is SO widespread that any abuse of the CD-ROM patent would ruin the technology sector. Think of how much some companies (or the RIAA, to supress non-DRM formats) would pay to control that patent - the value is inconceivable.
At this point, CD-ROM technology ceases to be a useful patent and starts to become something that the general public has a vital interest in... and here's the point where the government should "seize" the patent and turn the IP over to the public BEFORE the patent expires of its own accord. A widely used piece of IP (or any of the "obvious" patents we regularly complain about here on Slashdot) has passed the point where the inventors NEED a monopoly to protect their idea and has reached the point where the only purpose of that patent is profit at the expense of the public.
Monopolies are useful, but powerful monopolies are not; patents are useful, but exploitable patents are not. The government has an active role in regulating all other monopolies; it needs to take an active role in regulating IP monopolies as well.
Look up VMWare. Two of their three main products are designed for just that. And guess which (two) get the big R&D money?
Sometimes nodes go down. So, if (insert favorite search engine here) hits 1024 nodes for your search, there's a reasonable chance that one of them will time out, or be down / rebooting, or whatever. The search results would differ, and a few of the lower-ranked pages wouldn't show up, but the most important pages (the first ~1000?) will be on multiple nodes so they'll always show up. Really, if the company's choices are be down for one day a year or give only 99.9% accurate results 24/7/365, what are you going to choose, especially when you can count the people who will encounter problems with the remaining .1% on one hand? And a simple refresh will solve the problem?
And nodes WILL be down. (Insert major search engine here) cycles server reboots so that the nodes fail in a controlled fashion, instead of crashing and potentially causing problems. When there are thousands of nodes, statistically one's always down at any given time in a rolling reboot situation like this.
I don't doubt that the Google guy's explaination is probably true. But there can also be more than one reason... and I DO know that (major search engine) is doing active research on the topic.
Definitely won't - you're absolutely right it's not an emulator, it runs x86 code directly on the processor, and makes LOTS of assumptions about the underlying hardware being x86.
But the better standard (arguably better) is "above and beyond" is required for an A. I have had classes (few and far between) where knowing grading standards and managing to grab every single point guarantees... a B+. You have to come up with your OWN extensions, and do a good job of it, before the teacher considers it worthy of an A.
But papers are RARELY, if ever perfect. Math homework, most engineering homework, and so on can be graded objectively... and anyone who can claim to grade an English paper objectively is lying. The absolute most consistency with which I've ever seen non-technical papers graded still has about a 10% spread - and that's from Advanced placement people who've been grading English papers for 15 years. With enough work, anyone can pump out a "B" paper... it takes talent and a little bit of luck to eek out an "A" when the teacher doesn't inflate grades.
I've also had another professor who had a different take on study habits in general. His claim is that there are two types of people: those who cram the night before the final, and those who work all quarter, do all the homeworks and readings and attend class, then don't need to study. Because they've learned everything. I don't have much sympathy for the crammer, because he didn't really learn the material - he just went through the motions. But the student who worked all quarter is probably the A student - and it takes a very good professor to bring out that difference in actual grades. Which brings everything right back to the old "there aren't enough good teachers" argument :).
Sun seems to continuously pull off miricles with Java. Humbug. :-) But in all seriousness, I think it might be worthwhile to consider memory load (and the associated problems with running out of memory, using swap, etc.) in the term "performance" (yeah, I have to pick on Java's weakness to get anywhere...).
But I also happen to think that Java itself isn't that far removed from straight C++, it can be about as efficient algorithmically and so any debate devolves into inefficiencies of garbage collection versus advantages of HotSpot. Of course, all this assumes good C++ coders and good Java coders!
It's still poor design. Java could have a similar bug - an old pointer in a static class. It wouldn't create an exploit (I agree), but it would likely throw a null pointer exception or cause data corruption. And I'll lump good Java exception handling right there with manual memory management in terms of difficulty. Not just catching the exception, but handling it in a fail-safe way.
The point is software is about tradeoffs. Take Windows 95, for example. Any time something becomes corrupted, you get a Blue Screen. If MS wanted to prevent the bug from spreading and corrupting anything else, they'd reboot immediately. But people are willing to take the risk of running with a potentially unstable system because there are advantages: the risk of further bugs is small, I'd like to save the document I've been working on the past three hours, or it's just not worth my time to wait through a reboot.
Choosing C is about tradeoffs too. Coding in C means you get a fast language that produces a well-understood output. And you are also very sure that no language vendor is ever going to change the underlying behavior and break your code. Plus, the C source can be compiled and run on practically every OS out there with minimal overhead.
The person who writes the software gets to decide where the software sits on this tradeoff. If you disagree, you are free to write your own server in whatever language you want.
But, banning C is the LAST thing you'd want to do in a case like this. C is absolutely, bar none, the fastest language for slinging raw bytes around (err... ignoring assembly, but it's close) - and that's pretty much what a CVS server (or FTP, or HTTP, or ...) does. Switch over to a "safer" language (Java, Perl, whatever) and the commands to run the connection will be safer, but the server as a whole will suffer - and thus less people will use it.
The best case here would probably be to set up two layers - a Perl wrapper that parses and verifies input before passing it on to a C program that actually does the serving. But this is a server - emphasis on the C core, not the Perl wrapper. The parsing/verify is the special case, while the data transfer is the general case, and so designing for the general case makes the language of choice C.
But getting back to the topic, the bug here isn't a memory management bug. It's a flawed PROGRAM design that RESULTS IN a memory management bug. Global variables are bad in general, and should only be used with due diligence - and here's simply a case where that diligence didn't work.