My first compiler, Zortech C++ in 1991, contained the library source code, but not the compiler source code. However, you needed MASM to assemble certain parts of it.
In September or October there was an article in Scientific American about the white matter in our brains.
While the grey matter really constitutes our thinking ability, researchers are coming to the conclusion that the white matter also plays a significant role in our brain, possibly acting as the mechanism which makes our grey matter learn.
I'm an EE, not a CS, so I'm not familiar with hardcore programming tools, but I'd love it if I had something that could point out bugs in my code before I try it
You do not need any hardcore tools. Using code reviews can do a lot of good in finding bugs before production.
I thought that SQL-Ledger was written by a German, so it would surprise me if that program did not have the necessary resources for official German documents.
I have started learning LISP, and since I am used to some standard toolkits and way of working, I decided to install all LISPs that I could find, on Linux and Cygwin.
The minimum extra I need in a LISP, is the ability to run external processes, to control Continuus/CM.
Nice extra's to have are a GUI toolkit and a curses interface.
Also, quick startup time is nice and an interface to mySQL.
After evaluating all those things, I came to find that most LISPs provide either one of these, but not all in one package, and certainly not able to run both under Linux and Cygwin.
On the other hand, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl/Tk, curses, database interfaces are all easily ported and used.
So I think it is mostly a lack of standardised, easily usable toolkits which provide access to standard functionality, like Tk, GTK, QT, mySQL, postgreSQL (and I am sure you can name some other toolkits).
Besides the only reason OSX is "secure" is it's the littlest fish in the pond. Virus writing is a numbers game. What would you want to do, write a piece of code with the opportunity to infect dozens of machines or one that could infect hundreds of thousands? I assure you if Max ever managed to claw above their misserable market share then they'd see their fair share of viruses, same goes for Linux.
In the beginning of the nineties I installed Apple Mac's, and then also being the small fish in the pond, I did have the same amount of problems on Mac with viruses as on PC.
So I think that being a virus target really has to do more with the ease of infecting a platform, than with the potential number of installed systems.
In that case your organisation should start using a versioning system, so that you can look at the history of the files to track who changed what and when.
If you upgrade Red Hat the traditional way, then you have to reboot using the new install disk and then upgrade your installation.
However, since yum has become the major tool for Red Hat 9/Fedora Core, you can upgrade your installation like you do it on Debian.
What's more, you can find instructions on the web to upgrade from Red Hat 9 to Fedora, and between the different Fedora's, all using yum.
I have already done it twice for my Red Hat 9 installation, and the only issue I had was that I had to rebuild my nVidia drivers (which only takes 5 minutes).
Is there a tool which can scan the USB bus and add them automatically to/etc/fstab, or is there a daemon which can handle the mounting of such devices automatically ?
How far I have gone for my father on Linux, the handling of USB Mass Storage is a hurdle to overcome.
Once it is setup under udev and fstab, it is not a problem, but try to sell that to ordinary users.
I have 5 virtual machines running (UML) which do a daily upgrade of their software. Runs almost flawless, there is the occasional glitch where apt-get upgrade, or dpkg --reconfigure --pending must be run in a console:
Most of them like too much to make propaganda for Microsoft.
Yes, that is what I call it, propaganda. Because probably they are in a situation where they either are in blissful ignorance, or are downright paid by MS.
That is the feeling I get from several computershops here around (you want names ? You need to be from Brugge, Belgium to know them, Computerwinkeltje, Silicon Center).
I worked for a bank, and they had to migrate from WANG VS (talk about vendor lock-in) using ISAM files/COBOL, to HP/UX/Oracle/Forms/COBOL. I helped with the migration.
I think that there was even more disparity between WANG VS and Unix, than currently between Windows and Linux.
We got help from some consultants who had seen that there was money to be made by migrating people away from WANG VS to more open Unix platforms, and they had a tool which analysed the WANG VS COBOL applications and created new skeleton programs from them, and they had an API which simulated some necessary aspects of the original platform.
I think that people who know both Win32 and GNOME|KDE|GTK|Qt have a business opportunity here : to develop tools which make it easier for developers and software companies to migrate their programs to Linux.
You will never have a complete 1/1 translation from Win32 to the other platforms, but if all requirements and test specifications are written well, then probably 90% of the work can be done.
I think there are more similarities between the Win32 API and Linux graphical and system toolkits, than between WANG VS and any Unix system (especially since most people on WANG programmed in COBOL).
The rest is compilation and editing, testing and editing and hope that nobody wants to put in extra features before the application runs on the new platform.
I think that Lavoisier (the discoverer of oxygen) was beheaded in the French revolution, because someone thought that all that could be known about chemistry, was already known.
Yes, these are the people that always casue trouble, the ones who think that they know about computers and software, but do not have any technical background in both.
I had problems in the past with them, they where always the people who brought viruses on the system.
The only thing that has changed since those days, is that client software from a certain well known monopolist, has it also made possible for completely clueless users to infect systems. At least those were happy enough to do their job using the computer.
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My first compiler, Zortech C++ in 1991, contained the library source code, but not the compiler source code. However, you needed MASM to assemble certain parts of it.
You could always try with MMURTL...
In September or October there was an article in Scientific American about the white matter in our brains.
While the grey matter really constitutes our thinking ability, researchers are coming to the conclusion that the white matter also plays a significant role in our brain, possibly acting as the mechanism which makes our grey matter learn.
Good point there.
When Claudius was emperor of Rome, three of his most trusted slaves carried out most of Claudius' work.
I'm an EE, not a CS, so I'm not familiar with hardcore programming tools, but I'd love it if I had something that could point out bugs in my code before I try it
You do not need any hardcore tools. Using code reviews can do a lot of good in finding bugs before production.
I think I read somewhere that HP's plans where to run all VMS related processing in an emulator on Itanium.
I thought that SQL-Ledger was written by a German, so it would surprise me if that program did not have the necessary resources for official German documents.
I have started learning LISP, and since I am used to some standard toolkits and way of working, I decided to install all LISPs that I could find, on Linux and Cygwin.
The minimum extra I need in a LISP, is the ability to run external processes, to control Continuus/CM.
Nice extra's to have are a GUI toolkit and a curses interface.
Also, quick startup time is nice and an interface to mySQL.
After evaluating all those things, I came to find that most LISPs provide either one of these, but not all in one package, and certainly not able to run both under Linux and Cygwin.
On the other hand, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl/Tk, curses, database interfaces are all easily ported and used.
So I think it is mostly a lack of standardised, easily usable toolkits which provide access to standard functionality, like Tk, GTK, QT, mySQL, postgreSQL (and I am sure you can name some other toolkits).
Besides the only reason OSX is "secure" is it's the littlest fish in the pond. Virus writing is a numbers game. What would you want to do, write a piece of code with the opportunity to infect dozens of machines or one that could infect hundreds of thousands? I assure you if Max ever managed to claw above their misserable market share then they'd see their fair share of viruses, same goes for Linux.
In the beginning of the nineties I installed Apple Mac's, and then also being the small fish in the pond, I did have the same amount of problems on Mac with viruses as on PC.
So I think that being a virus target really has to do more with the ease of infecting a platform, than with the potential number of installed systems.
I have something here from an American, about France anf the hours they work.
In that case your organisation should start using a versioning system, so that you can look at the history of the files to track who changed what and when.
MURTL ?
If you upgrade Red Hat the traditional way, then you have to reboot using the new install disk and then upgrade your installation.
However, since yum has become the major tool for Red Hat 9/Fedora Core, you can upgrade your installation like you do it on Debian.
What's more, you can find instructions on the web to upgrade from Red Hat 9 to Fedora, and between the different Fedora's, all using yum.
I have already done it twice for my Red Hat 9 installation, and the only issue I had was that I had to rebuild my nVidia drivers (which only takes 5 minutes).
Spares me the pain of diagnosing broken software. When my dad needs help now, its always a hardware problem.
So that means that they want a patent on a veil over a C library, which presumably does a test on two pointers, like p1 == p2 ?
How does FC3 handle USB Mass Storage devices ?
Is there a tool which can scan the USB bus and add them automatically to /etc/fstab, or is there a daemon which can handle the mounting of such devices automatically ?
How far I have gone for my father on Linux, the handling of USB Mass Storage is a hurdle to overcome.
Once it is setup under udev and fstab, it is not a problem, but try to sell that to ordinary users.
Just what I wanted to reply.
I have 5 virtual machines running (UML) which do a daily upgrade of their software. Runs almost flawless, there is the occasional glitch where apt-get upgrade, or dpkg --reconfigure --pending must be run in a console:
IMHO the OEM's are the hardest part to crack.
Most of them like too much to make propaganda for Microsoft.
Yes, that is what I call it, propaganda. Because probably they are in a situation where they either are in blissful ignorance, or are downright paid by MS.
That is the feeling I get from several computershops here around (you want names ? You need to be from Brugge, Belgium to know them, Computerwinkeltje, Silicon Center).
I worked for a bank, and they had to migrate from WANG VS (talk about vendor lock-in) using ISAM files/COBOL, to HP/UX/Oracle/Forms/COBOL. I helped with the migration.
I think that there was even more disparity between WANG VS and Unix, than currently between Windows and Linux.
We got help from some consultants who had seen that there was money to be made by migrating people away from WANG VS to more open Unix platforms, and they had a tool which analysed the WANG VS COBOL applications and created new skeleton programs from them, and they had an API which simulated some necessary aspects of the original platform.
I think that people who know both Win32 and GNOME|KDE|GTK|Qt have a business opportunity here : to develop tools which make it easier for developers and software companies to migrate their programs to Linux.
You will never have a complete 1/1 translation from Win32 to the other platforms, but if all requirements and test specifications are written well, then probably 90% of the work can be done.
I think there are more similarities between the Win32 API and Linux graphical and system toolkits, than between WANG VS and any Unix system (especially since most people on WANG programmed in COBOL).
The rest is compilation and editing, testing and editing and hope that nobody wants to put in extra features before the application runs on the new platform.
Comment on your .sig : I have 3984.58 bogomips.
What I find lacking in this whole discussion is that nobody seems to run their code through lint or splint.
I think that would narrow down a whole lot of errors.
I think that Lavoisier (the discoverer of oxygen) was beheaded in the French revolution, because someone thought that all that could be known about chemistry, was already known.
Just FORMAT is enough.
I had this in the past. People would want to FORMAT a floppy, and instead of entering FORMAT A:, they just did FORMAT.
Luckily, we had Norton Utilities.
CMM model of software engineering :
I think that much programming projects are stuck in the concepts phase.
But when do you know that you have all concepts, to then step back and reorganise the lot ?
Yes, these are the people that always casue trouble, the ones who think that they know about computers and software, but do not have any technical background in both.
I had problems in the past with them, they where always the people who brought viruses on the system.
The only thing that has changed since those days, is that client software from a certain well known monopolist, has it also made possible for completely clueless users to infect systems. At least those were happy enough to do their job using the computer.