If signing up to a wiki, or creating a bogus mail account means a little beneficial work is done, then even after replacing all the useful content with links, or sending out hundreds of spams your actions would still be karma neutral, right?
That's nothing, I wrote my own language, three times. If only I was joking...
Now that you have all these libraries have you considered releasing them under an open source license? I know there is no direct incentive to do so, it is extra work to give away lots of original work for free, but what benefits society benefits you.
You might even get lucky and have some bugs reported, sometimes even fixed. If you are proud of your product then the best bug is the one that is fixed before your clients ever see it.
I know of several browsers that now support SVG natively, maybe they aren't so well known but in case anyone has heard of them they are Firefox, Opera and Safari. As for browsers with native PDF support?
There is a reason my games site uses SVG and not PDF. It may not be ubiquitous yet, but it has got off to a great start despite lack of support from one of the other big browsers.
> If this user is using Adblock to screen out annoying advertisements, he is creating an unauthorized derivative work analogous to skipping television commercials.
By having a public site on the internet, complete with incoming links, that is likely to be derived from (viewed)
quite possibly using tools that are unable to copy the original in a manner satisfactory to the copyright holder,
surely you are creating a trap.
Would this be fraudulent, deceptive or some other illegal practice?
Why not just put up a page with a clear copyright notice stating that it is illegal to make any copies of this page
including the one you are presently viewing, please fill in your details so our lawyers can start proceedings.
I think the derivative work argument is nonsense. Their copyright has given me permission to download their page.
The copy I have created by downloading it is then subject to fair use (in countries that have it), which means I
can view it in anyway I like, as little or as much of it as I like, and even create a backup I believe.
If I buy an album is it illegal to play it in a rubbish stereo system? Even when it might reduce the copyright
owner's income because I think it sounds so bad I don't buy any more of their albums and otherwise would have done?
No, of course not, I've got my legal copy and now it is subject to fair use, I can listen to it or any portion
of it as I choose as long as not too many other people can hear it too.
No one is looking over my should at the web pages I visit, so I retain the legal right to display them as I please.
...is to decrease load on the server. Most of the work can be done on the client anyway, so that is where it belongs.
Here are a few tips:
Databases can get pretty slow with complicated queries, so upload your database to the client when they load the page and then your database queries are distributed.
PHP isn't very fast, and neither are Perl or Python, so you don't want to be running them on the server either. Write an interpreter for the language of your choice in Javascript and move your business logic to the client. This will also interface better with the client side database copy.
SSL is a performance killer, don't use it. If you need to send something securely just prefix it with a predetermined number of random letters and numbers, no one will think to look beyond them.
Writing to databases can be pretty bad too. Try discarding all your changes, your users might not notice the difference, but they will appreciate the performance gain.
Even with all the above you might still be getting too many requests. Try designing your site to exploit bugs in the major browsers and reconfigure your users machine to store and load everything itself.
Get better hardware.
Make your site less interesting, or less reliable. Changing your DNS entry to point to an unrelated site for one week a month can really help reduce load.
If you have had success with the other steps then you don't need a dynamic server anymore, code a simple static server in assembly, preferably for the architecture you intend to be running on, and be done with it.
Unfortunately, users like Windows.Forms a lot more than Swing.
Your Linux users probably much prefer Swing. The article is about portability after all.
You have a choice for your Java GUI widgets, if you or your users don't like Swing there are numerous alternatives. Swing just happens to come with the JVM, thats all.
If it turns out like Windows ME it will soon be forgotten (as in not used very much, except in jokes), otherwise it will be used a lot because sooner or later it will be the only version offered with a new PC.
Either way it just doesn't matter, XP may be viable competition but that is hardly the sign of a healthy market place. MS are just happy for you to run what ever you want, as long as it is Windows.
RIAs are a very simple concept - an application that works just like any other desktop application only it lives on a server and should be cross browser and thus cross platform.
To write these applications we (developers) only need the things we need to write any GUI apps - a Turing complete programming language that runs on the client and can draw to the screen and receive input events (mouse, keyboard, timers and incoming network traffic).
These are such simple, fundamental and obvious requirements it amazes me that there isn't a standard for them. Javascript does provide the programmability, but browsers still need to expose a socket programming interface for it. The canvas tag does allow 2D drawing, but the lack of support in IE and the missing text drawing functions make it useless for now. So we are still left relying on plugins that we know aren't always going to be enabled or installed or even available.
It doesn't have to be any harder than this, and it shouldn't be any harder than this, RIAs should be a solved problem by now.
Having a monopoly can be very damaging, especially when it is used to create more monopolies. A desktop dominance became a browser dominance with a single new bundled application. This nearly extended into the server market as well, a lock in between IE and IIS was quite probable before some competition was introduced saving both markets.
But despite the IE monopoly crumbling the browser is still being used and holding back innovation. If I develop a site that doesn't work for 98% of its visitors that would be pretty bad, but just to exclude 50% of visitors is bad enough, so I am still compelled to make my site work with IE.
Most modern browsers have support for the canvas tag, which allows dynamic drawing using primitives such as lines and rectangles, and also provides input event handling. This is great for developing interactive applications, and can in many instances replace Java and Flash applets. The best part is that no plugins are required so canvas support is as ubiquitous as the browser being used - people aren't left hoping that some controlling company will one day bless them with a plugin for their platform.
IE 6 doesn't support the canvas tag, which is hardly surprising as it predates it by many years, but IE 7 doesn't support canvases either despite being released when all of the others did have support. So instead of being content that my canvas applets are usable by pretty much anyone and getting on with creating more of them I am spending a significant amount of time making Java versions so that IE users can use my site too. I am not bitter, this is often the way things go with web development and just one example of how any significant player in the browser market can cause problems for developers.
In many ways massive innovation will only come when competition is so fierce (and users so quick to change browsers) that any browser not supporting every standard out there will soon be forgotten. I hope this never happens because I don't want to run one of the bloated browsers that would ensue, but I also hope that some steady progress is made with well thought out standards that are then accurately implemented across the board in a timely manner.
One thing is for certain, IE 6 was not helping with innovation in the five (or was it more) years that it stayed exactly the same. Now that a new release has been forced, others will hopefully follow, and if they do a decent job of conforming to web standards then developers will finally get an opportunity to make the most of these new technologies without alienating significant portions of their target audience.
The new zooming is a welcome feature, previously I had to adapt my games site to be a better size for displaying on the Wii, but now that is much less of an issue.
Its a real shame that there hasn't been any mention of Java support though, a JVM (and preferably Flash 9.0 too) would have made this far more useful just because of all the content currently out there. If it had featured a fast JVM with an API for the WiiMote this could have sparked off a huge wave of homebrew developments. This is possible with the current support for Flash 7.0, but both have their advantages so why be forced into just one?
Its a shame this won't remain free, the Wii shortage is bad enough already without some people being hurried into getting their console even sooner. In the mean time this is a very attractively priced internet appliance, and with some great games too, bargain!
I do not own a Wii, apparently there is something of a shortage of them, but I do hope to get one some day as the games I have played on it are fun and it isn't too expensive.
If that wasn't reason enough then there is the added advantage of begin able to browse from your TV, great for those like me who don't already have a PC in their living room. If there is nothing worth watching on the telly you can head over to sites like www.stumblupon.com, and if you get bored with your games you can find some internet ones.
The WiiMote is an excellent mouse replacement for a living room, making this a reasonable experience, and a bluetooth keyboard would turn a Wii into an adequate and cheap desktop replacement for occasional users. My mother might end up with one before I do for this very reason. It would probably save me hours of support phone calls too.
Sorry, I wasn't being very clear, that is only the first step.
It does one very usefull thing, it tells you exactly what it would have done if you didn't add the -p so is fundamental to making sure that only the things you want to happen, well, happen.
If I don't like the version it is suggesting, it can be tweaked. If I don't like what it is going to do by way of dependancies, they can be tweaked too.
One of the many basic administration rules applies here: if it isn't broken, don't touch it.
Changing a production system is a dangerous thing to do, and it is one of the benifits of unix systems that, if left alone, they normally manage to keep on working all by themselves. If you have to touch a system people are relying on, check that you are only doing what is necessary, do it carefully, by hand, one package at a time, and be sure to read the useful stuff at the end of the emerge.
"emerge world" is for people on the cutting edge, "emerge -p <package-i-really-need-to-update>" is for production servers. It's a shame that because both are supported, some people get misled and use the wrong one, in a cron job, without considering if that is really the most suitable thing to do.
I do consider security updates as required, it would be nice to get a list of just the security updates so that they can be carefully applied. This probably exists, I just havn't found it yet.
A happy Gentoo admin, not because it's perfect, but because everything else I tried was that much worse.
With so many open source language implementations around these days, developing a VM that any of them can take advantage of is a fantastic idea.
One focussed effort on providing efficient JIT compilation will improve performance, and similarly this one layer to address portability could do more to break down OS barriers than java managed.
I'm excited about Parrot just for that, but if there is any possibility that different languages will be able to make use of libraries written in others, then that would be the icing on the cake. I can't tell if it should be possible, but if I could make use of someone else's library written in their favourite languge, from my favourite languge (by virtue of them both running on Parrot), software would be a whole lot more fun.
why are brainfuck and machine code unreadable
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Perl 5.8.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
to oppose some claims that the only reason brainfuck and machine code are unreadable is because the reader doesn't know HOW to read it I will go into why they are inherently less readable than some other languages DESPITE being able to read them.
thankyou elflord for already getting the point;)
at one level brainfuck is extremely easy to read, it only has 8 characters, each of which corresponds to one of 8 simple to understand operations. Anyone could learn to read off the code operations given 10 minutes because there isn't very much to learn. brainfuck is still inherently unreadable because it is very hard to work out what a peice of code's functionality is when only given a list of low level operations. In brainfuck there are no function names to give a big clue as to what the function does, there are no variable names, and there are no comments.
Just imagine trying to write readable code in perl if you were forced to call all your functions f1, f2, f3.... and all your variables $v1 $v2 $v3.... and you are not allowed to create any comments, and you have to build your own strings at run time too, none of these abstract types thank you. Just to finish off remove all the whitespace from your perl script and tell me if it is readable. brainfuck forces all of those points, so although the operations are very readable, the functionality isn't.
machine code is also quite readable, it is perfectly possible to learn how to read machine code, but it is much harder to read machine code than it is assembly. Again this has nothing to do with the posibility of learning to read either, it is infact purely based on how quickly you can read them. There is a one to one translation between machine code and assembly (apart from label names) but whereas I can read an assembly op in well under a second, I would have to spend a fair amount of time deciphering which op code is being used, with which options and registers and data. Even if I knew everything I needed to know to work out what the instruction is, I am still having to calculate it each time I read a code. In variable length instruction sets I have an even worse time as although I can see one assembly instruction followed by another, and I can simply skip looking at a few I am not interested in, in the machine code I have to work out every instruction before I know where the next intruction begins.
Now, for a stupid example that knowing how to read two languages does not imply equality in ease of reading them, as appropriate for a comparison of assembly to machine code: I pick english for one language and english with each letter offset by one for the second, so that 'a' is translated to 'b'.
The languages are almost identical, and you have been given everything you need to know how to read both, but how long does it take you to READ AND UNDERSTAND e"readable" compared to e1"vosfbebcmf"?
machine code is harder (but possible) to read because you have to work more things out than you do with assembly.
brainfuck is harder to read than C like languages because you don't have any names or comments to give you clues as to the functionality. If you wrote C with random function names, random variable names, no comments and agreed to never use any number except 0, and never use any strings then your code would be on par with brainfuck : but brainfuck manadates this style, which is why it inherently difficult to understand.
Re:Will it enforce readable code?
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Perl 5.8.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I would include it in this body but it fails the lameness filter for having too many 'junk' characters, but its a program....;)
as you are not allowed comments and none of the operations are particularly obvious because of the lack of verbosity, its very hard to understand what it does even if you know brainfuck.
it prints out 'Hello World' by the way.
things are even worse when programming in machine code, because the commands' binary syntax is not very human readable, although at least you can put comments in machine code.
In short, some languages are better than others for promoting code readability, but I think the exact opposite of your statement is true : you can
write unreadable code in any language.
I for one think Perl suffers from write-only tendancies, mainly due to the horrible mess that is called array access. Good clear types really help maintainability, and the last time I saw Perl's collection type(s) it was neither good nor clear.
I was happy to move over to Python mainly based
on the quality of its type system, not that this
was the only strength. But I must confess to being
fully able to produce unreadable bits of Python
that could make some Perl fragments look like angels.
History isn't just in the past. AMD's next processor, codenamed the Hammer, will be the first x86-64 instruction set CPU. To kick start projects wishing to make good use of this 64bit extension to x86, AMD developed and made freely (beer) available virtual machine called SimNow over a year before the chip is due to launch.
What I found particularly interesting was that this seemingly hopefull project was taken up so well that Simics thought it prudent to add x86-64 support to thier existing commercial multi-architecture simulator.
The good news in all of this is that Linux and a fair few of the GNU tools are x86-64 ready now, well in advance of any x86-64 chips' release.
I spend more of my time trying to make my computers quiet than worrying about performance. To be able to upgrade from my 1GHz thunderbird to a 1700+ thoroughbred and see a 9% decrease in heat dissipation is good news.
The only time I am soley conserned with performance is when upgrading my server, and for that I will be waiting for the hammers. A recent hammer review at THG showed an 800MHz hammer out-perform a 1600Mhz pentium 4, and that was just for 32 bit tasks.
As soon as the hammer is available at a decent frequency (AMD might start with a ~1500 model) the race for performance will be on again, so for now I am not too surprised that AMD arn't doing that much to keep the XP on the bleeding edge (more cache will help, but it is hardly revolutionary).
Right now VIA are winning more of my CPU money for their excellent C3, but that is purely a heat thing. Unfortunately they aren't suitable for my server or games box.
Still, with all these companies comming to market with different viewpoints the choices have never been so good, I think these are interesting times for CPUs and as much as I like AMD, I am glad that neither they nor any other company is at the top for too long because complacency always puts a damper on things.
Too true, any secure system can be made insecure by a poor admin, but not all systems can be made secure by a competant admin.
These secure distros try to be by default very secure and should only normally become insecure by an admin doing something silly or not keeping up to date with patches. Some of the other distros don't pay as much attention to security, but a really good admin can nail these systems down too. I for one like the fact that this distro comes with no setuid-root programs, its a good precautionary measure.
In some systems, admins do not have a chance to secure the machine because of lack of control. This is normally the case where closed source software kindly leaves you with a gaping security hole, and until someone eventually comes out with a patch the best you can do is stop using it. Ofcourse you were probably using this software for a purpose, and so not using it for a while could not be an option, hence an all too common situation of knowingly running insecurely, and there is nothing the admins can do.
Infact millions of people have done this recently, with the realease of XP the installation was vulnerable to network based attacks from the start. The only way to correct the problem was to install a patch - which meant you had to connect to the internet using that machine to register the software and get the patch from 'the company that shall not be named'. When you have to make yourself vulnerable to get the patch that stops you being vulnerable, security is impossible.
The most valuable part of EnGarde Secure Linux is probably the patch system, if it (or something just like it) was taken up by more distros then securing boxes would be easier and therefor might happen more. I would like to see something similar in gentoo keeping me up to date, because finding out what is going on is often the hardest part. Was there a ptrace vulnerability I missed? Ohh damn.
Why should the government or indeed anyone in South Africa claim right to a convention that is used by the entire world to simply refer to them?
.za should not belong to South Africa because it refers to them,.za belongs to every single entity on the internet (using the current domain name system) because it is there to serve us as a reference to South Africa.
I think if myself and the other residents on my street joined together and tried to seize control of our postal code (after all, it is how people send stuff to our street) we would be laughed at because it makes no sense.
Now I realise that puchasing of domain names has lead to a way of thinking that domain names belong to their owners, and therefor who better to own a country wide domain name than a body in that country, but I feel that is a misconception.
A more correct term for purchasing domain names is registering domain names (which can involve the transfer of money) which actualy implies the assignment of rights rather than the assignment of ownership. You get the exclusive right to have that name point at you, but it is never owned because it is just a name, and it belongs to the people using it to refer to you as much as anyone else.
Now what would help people (myself included) understand the situation better is an explaination of what you can actually do once you have 'seized control of.za'. Is this actually an issue?
Please would someone care to explain the implications of such a situation. If it has all sorts of potential implications on how the internet or other global systems could pan out then it would be of great interest if these were explored in detail, otherwise who has control of a domain name seems rather irrelevant news.
Slashdot Mirror
If signing up to a wiki, or creating a bogus mail account means a little beneficial work is done, then even after replacing all the useful content with links, or sending out hundreds of spams your actions would still be karma neutral, right?
Time to get linking...
That's nothing, I wrote my own language, three times. If only I was joking...
Now that you have all these libraries have you considered releasing them under an open source license? I know there is no direct incentive to do so, it is extra work to give away lots of original work for free, but what benefits society benefits you.
You might even get lucky and have some bugs reported, sometimes even fixed. If you are proud of your product then the best bug is the one that is fixed before your clients ever see it.
Are you kidding? That thing used up all my memory.
I know of several browsers that now support SVG natively, maybe they aren't so well known but in case anyone has heard of them they are Firefox, Opera and Safari.
As for browsers with native PDF support?
There is a reason my games site uses SVG and not PDF. It may not be ubiquitous yet, but it has got off to a great start despite lack of support from one of the other big browsers.
By having a public site on the internet, complete with incoming links, that is likely to be derived from (viewed) quite possibly using tools that are unable to copy the original in a manner satisfactory to the copyright holder, surely you are creating a trap.
Would this be fraudulent, deceptive or some other illegal practice?
Why not just put up a page with a clear copyright notice stating that it is illegal to make any copies of this page including the one you are presently viewing, please fill in your details so our lawyers can start proceedings.
I think the derivative work argument is nonsense. Their copyright has given me permission to download their page. The copy I have created by downloading it is then subject to fair use (in countries that have it), which means I can view it in anyway I like, as little or as much of it as I like, and even create a backup I believe.
If I buy an album is it illegal to play it in a rubbish stereo system? Even when it might reduce the copyright owner's income because I think it sounds so bad I don't buy any more of their albums and otherwise would have done? No, of course not, I've got my legal copy and now it is subject to fair use, I can listen to it or any portion of it as I choose as long as not too many other people can hear it too.
No one is looking over my should at the web pages I visit, so I retain the legal right to display them as I please.
Here are a few tips:
Best of luck!
Municipal WiFi is hard. Municipal WiMax would be a lot easier.
Unfortunately, users like Windows.Forms a lot more than Swing.
Your Linux users probably much prefer Swing. The article is about portability after all.
You have a choice for your Java GUI widgets, if you or your users don't like Swing there are numerous alternatives. Swing just happens to come with the JVM, thats all.
There should be at least two, maybe even as many as three companies with more information than any other, it's called a free market!
If it turns out like Windows ME it will soon be forgotten (as in not used very
much, except in jokes), otherwise it will be used a lot because sooner or later
it will be the only version offered with a new PC.
Either way it just doesn't matter, XP may be viable competition but that is
hardly the sign of a healthy market place. MS are just happy for you to run
what ever you want, as long as it is Windows.
I want a computer that I can trust, and one day I might not
be able to buy that from any of the major manufacturers.
As long as there are designs available, and places that can
make them, we will at least have options should the industry
giants do something stupid.
RIAs are a very simple concept - an application that works just like any other desktop
application only it lives on a server and should be cross browser and thus cross platform.
To write these applications we (developers) only need the things we need to write any GUI
apps - a Turing complete programming language that runs on the client and can draw to the
screen and receive input events (mouse, keyboard, timers and incoming network traffic).
These are such simple, fundamental and obvious requirements it amazes me that there isn't
a standard for them. Javascript does provide the programmability, but browsers still need
to expose a socket programming interface for it. The canvas tag does allow 2D drawing,
but the lack of support in IE and the missing text drawing functions make it useless for
now. So we are still left relying on plugins that we know aren't always going to be
enabled or installed or even available.
It doesn't have to be any harder than this, and it shouldn't be any harder than this,
RIAs should be a solved problem by now.
Having a monopoly can be very damaging, especially when it is used to create more monopolies.
A desktop dominance became a browser dominance with a single new bundled application. This nearly
extended into the server market as well, a lock in between IE and IIS was quite probable before
some competition was introduced saving both markets.
But despite the IE monopoly crumbling the browser is still being used and holding back innovation.
If I develop a site that doesn't work for 98% of its visitors that would be pretty bad, but
just to exclude 50% of visitors is bad enough, so I am still compelled to make my site work with IE.
Most modern browsers have support for the canvas tag, which allows dynamic drawing using primitives
such as lines and rectangles, and also provides input event handling. This is great for developing
interactive applications, and can in many instances replace Java and Flash applets. The best part is
that no plugins are required so canvas support is as ubiquitous as the browser being used - people
aren't left hoping that some controlling company will one day bless them with a plugin for their
platform.
IE 6 doesn't support the canvas tag, which is hardly surprising as it predates it by many years, but IE 7
doesn't support canvases either despite being released when all of the others did have support. So instead
of being content that my canvas applets are usable by pretty much anyone and getting on with creating more
of them I am spending a significant amount of time making Java versions so that IE users can use my site too.
I am not bitter, this is often the way things go with web development and just one example of how any
significant player in the browser market can cause problems for developers.
In many ways massive innovation will only come when competition is so fierce (and users so quick to
change browsers) that any browser not supporting every standard out there will soon be forgotten. I
hope this never happens because I don't want to run one of the bloated browsers that would ensue,
but I also hope that some steady progress is made with well thought out standards that are then
accurately implemented across the board in a timely manner.
One thing is for certain, IE 6 was not helping with innovation in the five (or was it more) years that
it stayed exactly the same. Now that a new release has been forced, others will hopefully follow, and
if they do a decent job of conforming to web standards then developers will finally get an opportunity
to make the most of these new technologies without alienating significant portions of their target
audience.
The new zooming is a welcome feature, previously I had to adapt my games site to be a better size for displaying on the Wii, but now that is much less of an issue.
Its a real shame that there hasn't been any mention of Java support though, a JVM (and preferably Flash 9.0 too) would have made this far more useful just because of all the content currently out there. If it had featured a fast JVM with an API for the WiiMote this could have sparked off a huge wave of homebrew developments. This is possible with the current support for Flash 7.0, but both have their advantages so why be forced into just one?
Its a shame this won't remain free, the Wii shortage is bad enough already without some people being hurried into getting their console even sooner. In the mean time this is a very attractively priced internet appliance, and with some great games too, bargain!
I do not own a Wii, apparently there is something of a shortage of them, but I do hope to get one some day as the games I have played on it are fun and it isn't too expensive.
If that wasn't reason enough then there is the added advantage of begin able to browse from your TV, great for those like me who don't already have a PC in their living room. If there is nothing worth watching on the telly you can head over to sites like www.stumblupon.com, and if you get bored with your games you can find some internet ones.
The WiiMote is an excellent mouse replacement for a living room, making this a reasonable experience, and a bluetooth keyboard would turn a Wii into an adequate and cheap desktop replacement for occasional users. My mother might end up with one before I do for this very reason. It would probably save me hours of support phone calls too.
All you have to do for phase 2 is kill all but 10 children.
Sorry, I wasn't being very clear, that is only the first step.
It does one very usefull thing, it tells you exactly what it would have done if you didn't add the -p so is fundamental to making sure that only the things you want to happen, well, happen.
If I don't like the version it is suggesting, it can be tweaked. If I don't like what it is going to do by way of dependancies, they can be tweaked too.
Then come the proper emerges...
One of the many basic administration rules applies here: if it isn't broken, don't touch it.
Changing a production system is a dangerous thing to do, and it is one of the benifits of unix systems that, if left alone, they normally manage to keep on working all by themselves. If you have to touch a system people are relying on, check that you are only doing what is necessary, do it carefully, by hand, one package at a time, and be sure to read the useful stuff at the end of the emerge.
"emerge world" is for people on the cutting edge, "emerge -p <package-i-really-need-to-update>" is for production servers. It's a shame that because both are supported, some people get misled and use the wrong one, in a cron job, without considering if that is really the most suitable thing to do.
I do consider security updates as required, it would be nice to get a list of just the security updates so that they can be carefully applied. This probably exists, I just havn't found it yet.
A happy Gentoo admin, not because it's perfect, but because everything else I tried was that much worse.
With so many open source language implementations around these days, developing a VM that any of them can take advantage of is a fantastic idea.
One focussed effort on providing efficient JIT compilation will improve performance, and similarly this one layer to address portability could do more to break down OS barriers than java managed.
I'm excited about Parrot just for that, but if there is any possibility that different languages will be able to make use of libraries written in others, then that would be the icing on the cake. I can't tell if it should be possible, but if I could make use of someone else's library written in their favourite languge, from my favourite languge (by virtue of them both running on Parrot), software would be a whole lot more fun.
to oppose some claims that the only reason brainfuck and machine code are unreadable is because the reader doesn't know HOW to read it I will go into why they are inherently less readable than some other languages DESPITE being able to read them.
;)
thankyou elflord for already getting the point
at one level brainfuck is extremely easy to read, it only has 8 characters, each of which corresponds to one of 8 simple to understand operations. Anyone could learn to read off the code operations given 10 minutes because there isn't very much to learn. brainfuck is still inherently unreadable because it is very hard to work out what a peice of code's functionality is when only given a list of low level operations. In brainfuck there are no function names to give a big clue as to what the function does, there are no variable names, and there are no comments.
Just imagine trying to write readable code in perl if you were forced to call all your functions f1, f2, f3.... and all your variables $v1 $v2 $v3.... and you are not allowed to create any comments, and you have to build your own strings at run time too, none of these abstract types thank you. Just to finish off remove all the whitespace from your perl script and tell me if it is readable. brainfuck forces all of those points, so although the operations are very readable, the functionality isn't.
machine code is also quite readable, it is perfectly possible to learn how to read machine code, but it is much harder to read machine code than it is assembly. Again this has nothing to do with the posibility of learning to read either, it is infact purely based on how quickly you can read them. There is a one to one translation between machine code and assembly (apart from label names)
but whereas I can read an assembly op in well under a second, I would have to spend a fair amount of time deciphering which op code is being used, with which options and registers and data. Even if I knew everything I needed to know to work out what the instruction is, I am still having to calculate it each time I read a code. In variable length instruction sets I have an even worse time as although I can see one assembly instruction followed by another, and I can simply skip looking at a few I am not interested in, in the machine code I have to work out every instruction before I know where the next intruction begins.
Now, for a stupid example that knowing how to read two languages does not imply equality in ease of reading them, as appropriate for a comparison of assembly to machine code: I pick english for one language and english with each letter offset by one for the second, so that 'a' is translated to 'b'.
The languages are almost identical, and you have been given everything you need to know how to read both, but how long does it take you to READ AND UNDERSTAND e"readable" compared to e1"vosfbebcmf"?
machine code is harder (but possible) to read because you have to work more things out than you do with assembly.
brainfuck is harder to read than C like languages because you don't have any names or comments to give you clues as to the functionality. If you wrote C with random function names, random variable names, no comments and agreed to never use any number except 0, and never use any strings then your code would be on par with brainfuck : but brainfuck manadates this style, which is why it inherently difficult to understand.
not true, here is a sample brainfuck program :
;)
hello world
I would include it in this body but it fails the lameness filter for having too many 'junk' characters, but its a program....
as you are not allowed comments and none of the operations are particularly obvious because of the lack of verbosity, its very hard to understand what it does even if you know brainfuck.
it prints out 'Hello World' by the way.
things are even worse when programming in machine code, because the commands' binary syntax is not very human readable, although at least you can put comments in machine code.
In short, some languages are better than others for promoting code readability, but I think the exact opposite of your statement is true : you can write unreadable code in any language.
I for one think Perl suffers from write-only tendancies, mainly due to the horrible mess that is called array access. Good clear types really help maintainability, and the last time I saw Perl's collection type(s) it was neither good nor clear.
I was happy to move over to Python mainly based on the quality of its type system, not that this was the only strength. But I must confess to being fully able to produce unreadable bits of Python that could make some Perl fragments look like angels.
History isn't just in the past. AMD's next processor, codenamed the Hammer, will be the first x86-64 instruction set CPU. To kick start projects wishing to make good use of this 64bit extension to x86, AMD developed and made freely (beer) available virtual machine called SimNow over a year before the chip is due to launch.
What I found particularly interesting was that this seemingly hopefull project was taken up so well that Simics thought it prudent to add x86-64 support to thier existing commercial multi-architecture simulator.
The good news in all of this is that Linux and a fair few of the GNU tools are x86-64 ready now, well in advance of any x86-64 chips' release.
I spend more of my time trying to make my computers quiet than worrying about performance. To be able to upgrade from my 1GHz thunderbird to a 1700+ thoroughbred and see a 9% decrease in heat dissipation is good news.
The only time I am soley conserned with performance is when upgrading my server, and for that I will be waiting for the hammers. A recent hammer review at THG showed an 800MHz hammer out-perform a 1600Mhz pentium 4, and that was just for 32 bit tasks.
As soon as the hammer is available at a decent frequency (AMD might start with a ~1500 model) the race for performance will be on again, so for now I am not too surprised that AMD arn't doing that much to keep the XP on the bleeding edge (more cache will help, but it is hardly revolutionary).
Right now VIA are winning more of my CPU money for their excellent C3, but that is purely a heat thing. Unfortunately they aren't suitable for my server or games box.
Still, with all these companies comming to market with different viewpoints the choices have never been so good, I think these are interesting times for CPUs and as much as I like AMD, I am glad that neither they nor any other company is at the top for too long because complacency always puts a damper on things.
Too true, any secure system can be made insecure by a poor admin, but not all systems can be made secure by a competant admin.
These secure distros try to be by default very secure and should only normally become insecure by an admin doing something silly or not keeping up to date with patches. Some of the other distros don't pay as much attention to security, but a really good admin can nail these systems down too. I for one like the fact that this distro comes with no setuid-root programs, its a good precautionary measure.
In some systems, admins do not have a chance to secure the machine because of lack of control. This is normally the case where closed source software kindly leaves you with a gaping security hole, and until someone eventually comes out with a patch the best you can do is stop using it. Ofcourse you were probably using this software for a purpose, and so not using it for a while could not be an option, hence an all too common situation of knowingly running insecurely, and there is nothing the admins can do.
Infact millions of people have done this recently, with the realease of XP the installation was vulnerable to network based attacks from the start. The only way to correct the problem was to install a patch - which meant you had to connect to the internet using that machine to register the software and get the patch from 'the company that shall not be named'. When you have to make yourself vulnerable to get the patch that stops you being vulnerable, security is impossible.
The most valuable part of EnGarde Secure Linux is probably the patch system, if it (or something just like it) was taken up by more distros then securing boxes would be easier and therefor might happen more. I would like to see something similar in gentoo keeping me up to date, because finding out what is going on is often the hardest part. Was there a ptrace vulnerability I missed? Ohh damn.
Why should the government or indeed anyone in South Africa claim right to a convention that is used by the entire world to simply refer to them?
.za belongs to every single entity on the internet (using the current domain name system) because it is there to serve us as a reference to South Africa.
.za'. Is this actually an issue?
.za should not belong to South Africa because it refers to them,
I think if myself and the other residents on my street joined together and tried to seize control of our postal code (after all, it is how people send stuff to our street) we would be laughed at because it makes no sense.
Now I realise that puchasing of domain names has lead to a way of thinking that domain names belong to their owners, and therefor who better to own a country wide domain name than a body in that country, but I feel that is a misconception.
A more correct term for purchasing domain names is registering domain names (which can involve the transfer of money) which actualy implies the assignment of rights rather than the assignment of ownership. You get the exclusive right to have that name point at you, but it is never owned because it is just a name, and it belongs to the people using it to refer to you as much as anyone else.
Now what would help people (myself included) understand the situation better is an explaination of what you can actually do once you have 'seized control of
Please would someone care to explain the implications of such a situation. If it has all sorts of potential implications on how the internet or other global systems could pan out then it would be of great interest if these were explored in detail, otherwise who has control of a domain name seems rather irrelevant news.