Have you ever tried to maintain code for 5 or 10 years in any language?
Yes. Almost 17 years worth of code for industrial test machines written in Z80 asm, x86 asm and C.
400K of hand optimized assembly code is probably lightning fast. It will be difficult to maintain, and utterly unportable.
Funny, 4 months ago I quit my programming job that I had since 1986 so I could better attend family needs. One of my last assignments there was to upgrade the software of one of the first machines I helped program in '86. It consisted of around 80K of data and Z80 machine code (written in assembler). I did an end run around the 'portability' issue by writing a Z80 emulator in C that also emulated some obsolete graphics hardware on an new, embedded PC platform. Along the way, I fixed some bugs in the old Z80 code.
Higher level languages have evolved to give us safety, abstraction, maintainability, and portability at the cost of speed.
I have to agree. I was able to 'maintain' that Z80 code 'cause I'd been steeped in it for at least 8 years. I was able to complete the emulator (and various feature upgrades) in about 2 months by the grace of C.
I tried editting it a little for readability. Still didn't make any sense to me.
Then I clicked the first link and, viola!
"Create a foundation for a perfect world in the next century (2250 A.D.) that would sustain life and habitat in the future but would not interfere in the surrounding eco-system. The structure should have basic functional areas catering to 5000 families."
Perhaps if that description of the challenge had been in the article summary...
I've been working on a file system (inspired by an old Signetics memory device) that's likely to *really* be the last word. It's still in alpha because I'm having trouble verifying its functionality, but it seems to work very well so far.
I don't suppose the referrer field that says "slashdot.org" that all the browsers will passing out like bus tokens will cause any notice at google, eh?
Nah, they'd have to be pretty web-savvy to notice that.
Not sure about the 'original' radio broadcast, but every Halloween there's usually at least a few radio stations that play Jeff Wayne's Musical War of the Worlds
Richard Burton narrates (great voice) and at least one member of the Moody Blues) Justin Hayward wrote and performed [some/all?] of the music.
The music is great, the story is excellent... a timeless classic, in my book. Well worth the listen.
Are these objectors not earning sick leave or, at least, vacation hours? Work a day, get paid a day. Don't, then use accrued leave or don't get paid. Sure, you'd be being penalized for things beyond your control... and so too the company.
There's an option in (I believe in the [Components] section of) the winnt.sif/syspref.inf files to remove all "visible entry points" to Internet Explorer. Not quite the same as removing it, but goes a long way to steering end users to another browser if that's what an admin wishes.
Ask the North American Operator's Group They are just starting to comment on this item but, other than participating in blacklists like SPEWS, they don't seem to have as much clout as one would expect (or at least hope). Hmmm, maybe is story is evidence that it may be changing?
Interesting, looks like maybe Paul Vixie reads slashdot too (or maybe he surfs the BBC all day?).
There's as much cosmic electronics in a new tractor as there is in a new car.
At my previous job, I wrote software to test thistractortransmission at the end of the assembly line. The TCM communicates with the ECM and other sensors to modify the profile of ramping the pressures of up to 6 clutches at a time during a shift. This ain't yer Grandads Deere. With 18 forward speeds, a feller can dial in just the perfect speed to balance efficiency with soil conditions and emplement type. It adjusts its shifting to compensate for clutch material wear. In fact, one of the design engineers described to me one early "flaw". The transmission would keep shifting perfectly smoothly right up to the point that there was no material left on the clutch plates. Now the tractor lets the farmer know when the transmission needs servicing before it's too late.
You know, it's kinda funny. I had no idea we produced even a bit of gensing in the US until I saw some for sale in China and S. Korea. I asked someone about it in Beijing and they said something to the effect of "Oh, yeah. American gensing is the best!"
I think the net may also be able to help an enterprising few farmers by allowing them to garner international contacts and perhaps to broker there own deals and cut out at least one middleman.
I agree with you. I also think that, while it's good to be contrast our broadband coverage with other nations in order to keep the pressure on our own progress, I think broadband coverage is a problem that will take care of itself. The very last people to have highly usable broadband available will be those in deep rural areas.
Here's my situation, I live in Stillwater, OK, which is an unusually connected city for its size with redundant fiber loops through the town nerve centers. Alas, my house is just barely outside the usable range of DSL from the CO. I can get broadband via cable (TV) but if I lived about 1/2 mile further out, that wouldn't be an option either. Fortunately, there's another option that turns out to be a little cheaper too. This wireless option also serves the smaller, rural communities surrounding Stillwater.
For deep rural areas, satellite services like StarBand and DirecPC will do very well (except where lag is a concern).
Like I said, it's good to keep the pressure on, but broadband is still expanding and will pretty much take care of itself.
As a sidenote, it would be interesting to see a comparison of actual miles of fiber and wired broadband connections implemented in the USA to those is some "wired" country like S. Korea.
Well, what you don't know is that ol' Bjorne Stroustrup secretly patented and copyrighted that whole C++ thing. Kinda like Unisys with that GIF/LZW stuff, he's just waiting for the critical moment to ascend to world dominance. Bill Gates knows this, hence the VB.NET push. Geek deathmatch... B. Gates vs B. Stroustrup
I grew up in a family that suffered quite a few *very* lean years. So lean that my mother sometimes resorted to 'shopping' in the trash dumpster behind the local grocery store. I was also raised with a good work ethic, a respect for self-sufficiency and self-responsibility. I've been poor as a kid, I've had good jobs, been poor as a student, had more good jobs, been poor again, had more good jobs. Even had a brief stint 'cracking' and wardialing in the early '80's; let me tell you in no uncertain terms, there was no profit motive or idea of paying the rent while I was eating my ramen noodles and logging into the Humpty Dumpty supermarket's weakly protected computer system.
I think I'm qualified to say there *is no excuse* for 'owning' several thousand zombies from which to direct DDoS attacks for any reason, especially not for a free shell account (you *did* read the fine article, no?).
I also feel qualified to reject your idea of an unofficial caste system. Yes, there are people who are disadvantaged and I feel it is partially my social responsibility to assist such people by supporting charities and organizations with an educational mandate. As per the legal system, how do you propose that poor defendants be better represented?
RTFA We should work to mod this sort of behavior to oblivion... It's not very professional.
And your apparently uninformed and emotionally based opinions were more professional? Did you really read the same article I did?
Doesn't sound like a lot of concern for their diet or housing was involved On the contrary. When you're unemployed and facing eviction for not paying rent there's little else to do but sit on IRC networks to occupy your time before the inevitable.
I take great exception to that. I have been unemployed and behind on my rent. The thing to do is find any old job, flipping burgers if necessary, that will pay the rent and discuss the situation with the landlord... it actually works in most cases as it did in mine. Besides, I still see not one speck of evidence from the article that these guys were in any way disadvantaged.
Where in the world did you come up with that? No need for insults. Try to keep it polite.
Was there an insult there? Seemed like a legitimate question to me. Perhaps I missed something in the article.
When you get old we'll all come visit you in the nursing home to show you how much we love you.:)
The 'packet monkeys' started out this venture by DDoSing for free web hosting and/or shell accounts. Doesn't sound like a lot of concern for their diet or housing was involved. Even if that were the case, they'll get comfortable housing and 3 squares a day courtesy of the taxpayers if/when they get the slam.
They became 'employees' after the guy who has skipped town bought the so-call hosting company.
Your's is the same kind of uninformed blathering that directed sympathy toward that 'hosting company' in the original article.
When faced with joblessness and possible homelessness a little DDoS doesn't look that bad.
Where in the world did you come up with that? To me they sound not much more than your average mal-adjusted script kiddies.
MS's first official release (via WU and AU) was Aug 16, but they delayed it to the 25th.
As classes started on the 23rd, we decided to switch off autoupdates until we could test our apps with SP2. We did that in record time and have now re-imaged our systems with SP2, AU on.
Yeah, it's kinda humorous... and sad, because skippy went missing a while back and is presumed dead. Cause of death unverified but may be due to 'lethal ingestion by feline.'
You can find the info by searching the term 'skippy' at www.fieldlines.com
I'd give you a direct link, but slashdot seems to have swamped Dan's servers.
the average person in the workforce is being required more and more to use computers (and similar technologies) in their work (students also). An earlier (down-modded as troll and rightly so) post said "don't buy software if you don't know how to use it." On the off chance that the poster was serious, please consider those who have little or no choice.
Back to me... I said I don't use tech support much, but my few experiences are mixed. On Aug 9, I wanted to know the exact date that I could expect XP SP2 to hit my lab PCs via AutoUpdates, so I called MS tech support. I talked to a lady who said (in a confident manner), "today!" Well, she was off by a couple of weeks. As usual with support issues, I found better information on the web.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact the most efficient ICE is some diesel engine that's the size of a house and is over 50% efficient, if I properly recall.
Interesting you should mention that. You don't happen to hang out here sometimes, do you?
Have you ever tried to maintain code for 5 or 10 years in any language?
Yes. Almost 17 years worth of code for industrial test machines written in Z80 asm, x86 asm and C.
400K of hand optimized assembly code is probably lightning fast. It will be difficult to maintain, and utterly unportable.
Funny, 4 months ago I quit my programming job that I had since 1986 so I could better attend family needs. One of my last assignments there was to upgrade the software of one of the first machines I helped program in '86. It consisted of around 80K of data and Z80 machine code (written in assembler). I did an end run around the 'portability' issue by writing a Z80 emulator in C that also emulated some obsolete graphics hardware on an new, embedded PC platform. Along the way, I fixed some bugs in the old Z80 code.
Higher level languages have evolved to give us safety, abstraction, maintainability, and portability at the cost of speed.
I have to agree. I was able to 'maintain' that Z80 code 'cause I'd been steeped in it for at least 8 years. I was able to complete the emulator (and various feature upgrades) in about 2 months by the grace of C.
alter.net is the upstream. If I recall correctly, they have a bit of a reputation
traceroute
3 164.58.10.65
4 164.58.10.213
5 164.58.10.222
6 [64.200.104.89]
7 64.200.105.58
8 [64.200.110.82]
9 GigabitEthernet4-0.GW2.DFW13.ALTER.NET [157.130.
30.249]
10 0.so-1-0-0.cl2.dfw13.alter.net [152.63.103.230]
11 0.so-0-0-0.tl2.dfw9.alter.net [152.63.2.181]
12 0.so-5-0-0.tl2.lax9.alter.net [152.63.0.58]
13 0.so-4-0-0.cl2.lax15.alter.net [152.63.116.106]
14 pos5-0.gw1.lax15.alter.net [152.63.115.213]
15 hinet-gw.customer.alter.net [208.222.12.234]
16 kh-c12r31.router.hinet.net [211.22.225.174]
17 kh-c12r1.router.hinet.net [211.22.225.129]
18 tp-s2-c12r1.router.hinet.net [210.65.2.34]
19 tp-e4-c12r1.router.hinet.net [210.65.2.129]
20 tp-e4-c6r5.router.hinet.net [211.22.36.41]
21 h201.s100.ts.hinet.net [168.95.100.201]
23 61-218-79-53.hinet-ip.hinet.net [61.218.79.53]
Trace complete.
To bad the filter itself is so lame. I had to add a whole bunch of meaningless verbal meanderings to get this post through it.
Why would these guys assume that the majority of the world would be under water?
The funny thing about this (their statement and your followup question) is the that the majority (around 70%)of the world is already covered by water!
Seems like a safe assumption to me.
I tried editting it a little for readability. Still didn't make any sense to me.
Then I clicked the first link and, viola!
"Create a foundation for a perfect world in the next century (2250 A.D.) that would sustain life and habitat in the future but would not interfere in the surrounding eco-system. The structure should have basic functional areas catering to 5000 families."
Perhaps if that description of the challenge had been in the article summary...
I've been working on a file system (inspired by an old Signetics memory device) that's likely to *really* be the last word. It's still in alpha because I'm having trouble verifying its functionality, but it seems to work very well so far.
I call it WOFS.
I don't suppose the referrer field that says "slashdot.org" that all the browsers will passing out like bus tokens will cause any notice at google, eh?
Nah, they'd have to be pretty web-savvy to notice that.
Not sure about the 'original' radio broadcast, but every Halloween there's usually at least a few radio stations that play Jeff Wayne's Musical War of the Worlds
Richard Burton narrates (great voice) and at least one member of the Moody Blues) Justin Hayward wrote and performed [some/all?] of the music.
The music is great, the story is excellent... a timeless classic, in my book. Well worth the listen.
(Score: +5, Correct)
Are these objectors not earning sick leave or, at least, vacation hours? Work a day, get paid a day. Don't, then use accrued leave or don't get paid. Sure, you'd be being penalized for things beyond your control... and so too the company.
There's an option in (I believe in the [Components] section of) the winnt.sif/syspref.inf files to remove all "visible entry points" to Internet Explorer. Not quite the same as removing it, but goes a long way to steering end users to another browser if that's what an admin wishes.
Ask the North American Operator's Group They are just starting to comment on this item but, other than participating in blacklists like SPEWS, they don't seem to have as much clout as one would expect (or at least hope). Hmmm, maybe is story is evidence that it may be changing?
Interesting, looks like maybe Paul Vixie reads slashdot too (or maybe he surfs the BBC all day?).
Hear, hear.
There's as much cosmic electronics in a new tractor as there is in a new car.
At my previous job, I wrote software to test this tractor transmission at the end of the assembly line. The TCM communicates with the ECM and other sensors to modify the profile of ramping the pressures of up to 6 clutches at a time during a shift. This ain't yer Grandads Deere. With 18 forward speeds, a feller can dial in just the perfect speed to balance efficiency with soil conditions and emplement type. It adjusts its shifting to compensate for clutch material wear. In fact, one of the design engineers described to me one early "flaw". The transmission would keep shifting perfectly smoothly right up to the point that there was no material left on the clutch plates. Now the tractor lets the farmer know when the transmission needs servicing before it's too late.
You know, it's kinda funny. I had no idea we produced even a bit of gensing in the US until I saw some for sale in China and S. Korea. I asked someone about it in Beijing and they said something to the effect of "Oh, yeah. American gensing is the best!"
I think the net may also be able to help an enterprising few farmers by allowing them to garner international contacts and perhaps to broker there own deals and cut out at least one middleman.
What manner of DRM has been built in?
Disregard. I had a dot 'twixt the keywords and that gummed the works somehow.
Yeah, but I never heard about this "Amazing Mahir" Even google comes up with nothing.
The reviewer sure seemed to thing he/it was sumpm special.
I agree with you. I also think that, while it's good to be contrast our broadband coverage with other nations in order to keep the pressure on our own progress, I think broadband coverage is a problem that will take care of itself. The very last people to have highly usable broadband available will be those in deep rural areas.
Here's my situation, I live in Stillwater, OK, which is an unusually connected city for its size with redundant fiber loops through the town nerve centers. Alas, my house is just barely outside the usable range of DSL from the CO. I can get broadband via cable (TV) but if I lived about 1/2 mile further out, that wouldn't be an option either. Fortunately, there's another option that turns out to be a little cheaper too. This wireless option also serves the smaller, rural communities surrounding Stillwater.
For deep rural areas, satellite services like StarBand and DirecPC will do very well (except where lag is a concern).
Like I said, it's good to keep the pressure on, but broadband is still expanding and will pretty much take care of itself.
As a sidenote, it would be interesting to see a comparison of actual miles of fiber and wired broadband connections implemented in the USA to those is some "wired" country like S. Korea.
Funny about the misspelling bit. Just after his paragraph about the studies on proofreading, the next paragraph had this typo
Alternating case has been shown to be more difficult that either lowercase or uppercase text...
(that instead of than) which is *not* the type of misspelling that preserved word shape.
Wonder if anyone proofread his article for him.
Well, what you don't know is that ol' Bjorne Stroustrup secretly patented and copyrighted that whole C++ thing. Kinda like Unisys with that GIF/LZW stuff, he's just waiting for the critical moment to ascend to world dominance. Bill Gates knows this, hence the VB.NET push. Geek deathmatch... B. Gates vs B. Stroustrup
Or not.
You, dear sir, have a bizarre worldview.
I grew up in a family that suffered quite a few *very* lean years. So lean that my mother sometimes resorted to 'shopping' in the trash dumpster behind the local grocery store. I was also raised with a good work ethic, a respect for self-sufficiency and self-responsibility. I've been poor as a kid, I've had good jobs, been poor as a student, had more good jobs, been poor again, had more good jobs. Even had a brief stint 'cracking' and wardialing in the early '80's; let me tell you in no uncertain terms, there was no profit motive or idea of paying the rent while I was eating my ramen noodles and logging into the Humpty Dumpty supermarket's weakly protected computer system.
I think I'm qualified to say there *is no excuse* for 'owning' several thousand zombies from which to direct DDoS attacks for any reason, especially not for a free shell account (you *did* read the fine article, no?).
I also feel qualified to reject your idea of an unofficial caste system. Yes, there are people who are disadvantaged and I feel it is partially my social responsibility to assist such people by supporting charities and organizations with an educational mandate. As per the legal system, how do you propose that poor defendants be better represented?
And your apparently uninformed and emotionally based opinions were more professional? Did you really read the same article I did?
I take great exception to that. I have been unemployed and behind on my rent. The thing to do is find any old job, flipping burgers if necessary, that will pay the rent and discuss the situation with the landlord... it actually works in most cases as it did in mine. Besides, I still see not one speck of evidence from the article that these guys were in any way disadvantaged.
Was there an insult there? Seemed like a legitimate question to me. Perhaps I missed something in the article.
I don't know you and I don't need your love.
RTFA
The 'packet monkeys' started out this venture by DDoSing for free web hosting and/or shell accounts. Doesn't sound like a lot of concern for their diet or housing was involved. Even if that were the case, they'll get comfortable housing and 3 squares a day courtesy of the taxpayers if/when they get the slam.
They became 'employees' after the guy who has skipped town bought the so-call hosting company.
Your's is the same kind of uninformed blathering that directed sympathy toward that 'hosting company' in the original article.
When faced with joblessness and possible homelessness a little DDoS doesn't look that bad.
Where in the world did you come up with that? To me they sound not much more than your average mal-adjusted script kiddies.
I feel sorry for the five-packet monkeys
I don't.
MS's first official release (via WU and AU) was Aug 16, but they delayed it to the 25th.
As classes started on the 23rd, we decided to switch off autoupdates until we could test our apps with SP2. We did that in record time and have now re-imaged our systems with SP2, AU on.
Yeah, it's kinda humorous... and sad, because skippy went missing a while back and is presumed dead. Cause of death unverified but may be due to 'lethal ingestion by feline.'
You can find the info by searching the term 'skippy' at www.fieldlines.com
I'd give you a direct link, but slashdot seems to have swamped Dan's servers.
the average person in the workforce is being required more and more to use computers (and similar technologies) in their work (students also). An earlier (down-modded as troll and rightly so) post said "don't buy software if you don't know how to use it." On the off chance that the poster was serious, please consider those who have little or no choice.
Back to me... I said I don't use tech support much, but my few experiences are mixed. On Aug 9, I wanted to know the exact date that I could expect XP SP2 to hit my lab PCs via AutoUpdates, so I called MS tech support. I talked to a lady who said (in a confident manner), "today!" Well, she was off by a couple of weeks. As usual with support issues, I found better information on the web.