Well then it MUST be true! I mean, shit, if you've got a quote about it, then, I mean, what the hell can I do but accept it as fact.
"Conceptual terms" are a way of making vague generalizations by referring to something by a less specific term. Oh, Pluto, it's just a "planet." Or: Pluto, man it's not even a "planet!" Neither of these sentences change the reality of Pluto.
This is what the Zen quote was about. Names are meaningless, as there are no distinct objects in the world. Nothing has a well defined beginning and end. Name's just provide us with a way to refer to things in a vague, inaccurate kind of way. The problem comes when you become so entrenched in "names" that you honestly believe Pluto to be a "planet."
I mean, it's not like "space" is actually empty. There are millions of particles per square meter. Sure, it's "almost" empty, compared to Earth. But, it's not. And, worse yet, there's no well defined line where Earth ends and Space begins. Atleast no line that actually makes any sense. It's not like particle density is at some high level on earth and then immediately falls off and becomes the exact same density as "space" within the span of a single planck length. It's a gradient. So is space.
You can say that Earth becomes less dense the further away you get from it's center, barring the gravitation effects of other objects. Or, you can say that Space becomes more dense the closer you are to a heavy body such as Earth. Makes no difference. Either way there are only ill-defined terms for where "Earth" ends and "space" begins, as it's an ill-defined question to begin with.
This superficial naming convention makes absolutely no difference at all. It has no effect on anything.
It would be like if you changed the biological classification system so that bears were no longer Mammals. What difference does this make to the bears? None. What difference does this make in how we relate to bears? None.
It is simply an arbitrary naming convention. As are all naming conventions.
It reminds me of an old Zen saying that I am likely paraphrasing miserably:
"Before Zen, a mountain is a mountain. While one is practicing Zen, a mountain is no longer a mountain. After Zen, a mountain is once again a mountain."
It probably wouldn't be hard to throw something into/proc so you could do stuff like:
echo 55 >/proc/interactive/384
Where 55 is the interactive level and 384 is the pid of the process you are trying to affect.
However, I saw no mention of this.
I wouldn't worry about it. If the system works as well as the folks on the list were saying it works, then you should have no problems.
I have a feeling that what with the low-latency patches and now this "interactivity" patch-set, the new linux kernels will be able to handle your xmms + make workload pretty easily.
IANAKH (Kernel Hacker), but here's my understanding of it.
The kernel development team are experimenting with heuristics to determine what processes are "interactive" and to determine "how interactive" those processes are.
An interactive process is a process which spends a portion of it's time sleeping, waiting for some kind of event, and then needs cpu time quickly after the event happens.
In this case the events are user input and screen redraw requests.
So, the trick is that interactive processes don't need any more CPU time than other processes, they just need it very quickly in response to requests. Low latency.
The question is, how do you determine what processare are interactive, and how interactive they are.
They have developed a system whereby there are effectively "interactivity points" that can be given to and taken away from a process.
The act of being woken up from sleeping by an event awards you interactivity points. The act of completely using up lots of timeslices (acting like a CPU-bound process) takes away interactivity points.
With Linus's new patch, once you've reached a certain threshold of interactivity points, some of your points start going to the process that woke you up. So, if an "interactive" process is always waking up in response to an event from a certain other process, than that other process is also awarded interactivity points.
In the end, your interactivity points are taken into account when choosing which processes get the CPU.
So, with this new code, processes which are "interactive" like your X11 apps get more of the cycles they need when they need them, decreasing their latency, and making them appear to work "better."
Ever watch a 3d-movie. The kind you need special glasses to wear. Like a 3D IMAX or some such movie. Or even the red/blue lenses kind. That's what they are talking about.
Two different images are projected, one for each eye. This gives the illusion of parallax. You are tricked in to thinking the image is 3d because each eye receives a slightly different image.
And, just as with a 3d movie, changing your viewpoint doesn't let you see the side of anything. It will simply make the illusion start sucking as you need to be in the middle for it to work perfectly.
Every few weeks a random large software product, with thousands of deployments, announces a remote hole in their software. It is nearly always a buffer overflow.
What the fuck is wrong with you developers? Why do you refuse to learn from both the mistakes of others and from your own previous mistakes. You either use safe commands like strncpy and friends, or you use safe arrays that won't let you overflow them, or you use a safe language that won't let you overflow them.
Hard, compiler-enforced, bounds-checking on arrays is easy and fast. In fact, IIRC gcc, implements it optionally, or there is a patch for it or something. With processor speeds almost up to 3Ghz, I think we can afford to give up a few cycles here and there for the purpose of stopping these overflows.
Why won't programmers understand that speed is not king. Speed is good. Good algorithms are better. Safety and robustness are better. If to get safety and robustness you need to take a 10% speed hit then, you know what, do it! Hardware speeds will make up the difference in a few months.
Why do we want 3Ghz machines? It's not so our assembler code will run 100x faster. It's so we don't have to use assembler any more. The speed exists to give us the flexibility we need to make good abstractions. Good abstractions speed up development, increase flexibility and robustness, and remove security problems like these.
Safe arrays exist for C++ as well. Hell, I can write one for you in 5 minutes. Make it templated and overload the [] operator and do bound checking.
Languages that won't let you have buffer overflows exist too. As much as I hate to say it, Java is great at this. Also, Python, Perl, Caml, Dylan, Erlang, Lisp... the list goes on and on.
It just seems like using C for large-scale development is silly. It's like using assembler was 10 years ago. Yeah, it gives you a speed boost. But, development takes about 10x as long as using a HLL, and you have to fill your mind with concerns about stupid shit like buffer overflows instead of focusing on the problem you are trying to solve.
You should read The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. Not only is it a fabulous book, but it kinda has what you are talking about, on an even smaller scale.
Also, Prey, the new Michael Crichton book, which is about nano-technology run amock.
That's what transparency is. Transparency is normally implemented using alpha blending. An alpha value of 1.0 is a fully opaque surface. An alpha value of 0.0 is a fully transparent surface. This can easily be done on a per-pixel level either by using a separate alpha map or by using a alpha channel on the main image.
Normally a 32-bit, RGBA image is used. This gives you normal 24-bit color, with 8-bits per channel for Red, Green and Blue. The extra space is an 8-bit alpha channel giving you 256 different levels of translucency.
I guess I'm just confused as to how you can have alpha blending, but not "transparency," as they are the same.
Really? You have that much trouble getting the round peg in the round hole?
Sweet Jesus, son! Have you ever left your (dorm room/mother's basement)! At the very least, I see you've never worked in a Tech Support field.
They offer classes in how to use a mouse. People fail these classes. People struggle for a year to get an A+ certification. People call because their CD won't work, and the'll have it in upside down. I even had a guy who just sat the damned CD on top of the computer (right-side up though, good for him) and couldn't understand why he couldn't get to it on his computer.
Lord god! You expect them to assemble a computer?!?! You seriously, seriously overestimate the ability of the masses.
It doesn't matter whether you like it or not. It's one of the social rules you'll just have to deal with, or face the concequences.
I'll have to disagree with you there. Blindly following social conventions is, in my eyes, rather boring and conformist.
I'd rather disregard convention, do thing my way, and let others judge me as they see fit. The majority of people are idiots, so I don't feel horribly compelled to follow their lead.
It was Mark Twain who said that "when you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and rethink."
Actually Bob Dylan said that. Hendrix just happened to cover it.
In fact, Dylan was saying that it was the others who felt that life was "but a joke." He had already "been though that," and it was "not [his] fate."
Here's the verse (from memory):
"No reason to get excited The thief, he kindly spoke There are many here among us Who think that life is but a joke But you and I, we've been through that And that is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now Because the hour is getting late"
The opposite will be true. The portion of the system closer to earth than the center-of-gravity will be pulled towards earth by gravity. The portion further away from the center-of-gravity will be pulled away from earth by inertia. As both sides have the same weight, it will not move at all, but merely provide tension on the cable, making it near-straight.
So, it's a delicate balance. Anchor trying to fly away from earth, being held in by the cable. Cable trying to fall to earth being pulled out by the space anchor. Any they are designed to cancel out and leave everything stationary.
I hope I'm explaining this well. Hell, I hope I know what I'm talking about.:-)
Well, actually it would be the center of mass. That's my bad for simplifying too much. I'm assuming that the size of anchor needed in space would so greatly out-weight the cable itself as to make it moot.
So, as far as I can tell, you imagine a line leaving Perth and traveling at an angle. At the end of the line is the space anchor (atleast in this method). The point on the rope directly above the equator would correspond to the center of mass of the line-anchor-elevator system. This must be so if the mass is to orbit the earth in geo-synchronously.
To "orbit" something, effectively means to free-fall towards it while having enough tangential velocity that you never actually hit it, but keep perpetually missing. Because the force causing you to fall towards the body is the body's gravity, which is centered around the center-of-mass, the orbital path you take will also be centered around that center-of-mass.
So, now we know that we must be orbiting the earth along the circumference of a cross-section that passes through the center-of-gravity. But, the earth is also spinning. Really fast. So, to keep in geo-synchronous orbit, you have to be moving in the same direction that it is spinning.
The line on the earth's surface that is above the center-of-gravity and travely parallel to the earth's direction of rotation is the equator. So, our center-of-mass must be above the equator if we wish to be in geosynchronous orbit.
It's called IEEE 802.11b, or 802.11g in the case of the newest Apple laptops.
The laptops connect, without any difficulty, to any WAP that supports those standards.
My PowerBook G4 is currently connected to a "WAP", that is actually a D-Link wireless card in an old PC running OpenBSD 3.1. Before that we were using a LinkSys WAP with 128-bit WEP.
Now, it could be true that apple won't give you phone support for connecting to non-Apple WAP's. I don't know; I've never tried. I find it unlikely though. Apple's tech-support has been fabulous to me during the years I've used them.
The rock is in orbit above the equator. The elevator starts at Perth. So, the cable/shaft runs at an angle not normal to the earth's surface. It leaves the ground at an angle.
The cable would trace out a cone if it were straight, if that helps you visualize it.
Being able to change keyboard layouts and see the results would be great. Plus, imagine how much easier it could make the life of APL programmers;-).
But, you jump all over him because you assume every program will have a whole new keyboard map that would frutrate you? Yes, lets ban all good ideas if they have potentially bad uses.
I just don't understand your shit about the learning curve. Every program already has their own menu arrangements. Tools->Options? Edit->Options? File->Preferences? File->Options? View->Options? Shit, I've seen Window->Options. The learning curve would be no worse than it is now. And it could be equally easily solved by standardization.
Shit, make is so it requires your authorization to change the layout. I don't know.
Plus, I don't think he said that this couldn't be used in conjuction with keyboard shortcuts like Copy and Paste. Hell, imagine that as soon as you start holding down your Control key all the key change to represent what they do vis-a-vis that shortcut. I mean, make it a checkbox in your prefs somewhere, but still, it could be useful/neat.
For examples of this magic "standardization" process, move away from your Linux boxes as they seem to eschew it. Look at OS X apps or, to a lesser extent, Windows apps.
I think it'd be great. I've had the same idea myself.
I use Lisp as my primary development language. I am very aware of it's typing capabilities.
The Common Lisp standard does not require that compilers do any manner of complicated type inferencing, if I recall correctly.
Also, all Lisp type-checking that I've seen happens at run-time. Atleast with OpenMCL and CLisp, which are the two compilers that I've used.
Are you saying I should be able to:
> (defun foo ((x integer)) (+ x 1)) FOO > (defun bar (x) (foo x)) *warning, foo requires an integer but bar doesn't guarantee an integer* > (defun bar ((x string)) (foo x)) *error, foo requires an integer, but bar uses a string*
Because that's what I'm talking about. If so, then wonderful. I'll check it out. Unfortunately, CMUCL doesn't run on PowerPC. Thanks for the reply though.
No language does this that I know of, but here's how I think type systems should work.
It's pretty much a stronger form of SML-style type-inference.
Variables don't have types, values do, as in dynamic typing. But, variables can have type constraints.
You can optionally specify type constraints for variables and parameters.
From there the compiler/interpreter can go wild with type-inference trying to determine as much as it can about the structure of your program. As the type constraints are optional you can end up with inferred types for variables that are complex unions and disjunctions of types.
Code that looks like: (defun foo (x) 'hello) could be assigned the type foo : unknown -> symbol.
The code can then be weakly checked for inconsistancies between inferred types.
You can write a fully dynamic program like this by specifying no types. You can write a fully static program by specifying all types. Or, you can use a loose mix of the two that lets you do weak compile-time type checking where you want it, and avoid the hassle where you don't.
Anyway, I'm just rambling here. I'll likely try to start playing with these ideas in Lisp sometime soon, as I've been meaning to for several years now.
The source of randomness isn't the stumbling block.
Getting good-enough randomness is easy enough now-adays. I mean, heck, check out random.org.
But, you still have to distribute the pad. You can always just use another one-time-pad to encrypt the pad before you send it though.;-)
If you are distributing electronically, than you can send the pad out to your partner via some form of public-key encryption. But, now your security is not determined by the strength of the one-time pad (possibly infinite), but by the strength of the public-key crypto-system (certainly not infinite).
So, now, the "enemy" has a new set of numbers, obtained by the subtraction of the two cyphertexts, and this result is also the subtraction of the two plaintexts as the one-time-pads cancelled out.
A message that is simply the difference between two plaintext messages is trivially crackable via statistical analysis.
Anyone who enjoys encryption theory and a good yarn should go pick up a copy of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. It is one of the best book I have ever read.
Slashdot Mirror
I aplogize.
I didn't mean for that to come off so harsh. It had been a bad day. I liked the quote, I just happened to disagree with it.
Anyway, thanks for the original response. The quote gave me something to think about.
Justin Dubs
Or worse: Bob.
Well then it MUST be true! I mean, shit, if you've got a quote about it, then, I mean, what the hell can I do but accept it as fact.
"Conceptual terms" are a way of making vague generalizations by referring to something by a less specific term. Oh, Pluto, it's just a "planet." Or: Pluto, man it's not even a "planet!" Neither of these sentences change the reality of Pluto.
This is what the Zen quote was about. Names are meaningless, as there are no distinct objects in the world. Nothing has a well defined beginning and end. Name's just provide us with a way to refer to things in a vague, inaccurate kind of way. The problem comes when you become so entrenched in "names" that you honestly believe Pluto to be a "planet."
I mean, it's not like "space" is actually empty. There are millions of particles per square meter. Sure, it's "almost" empty, compared to Earth. But, it's not. And, worse yet, there's no well defined line where Earth ends and Space begins. Atleast no line that actually makes any sense. It's not like particle density is at some high level on earth and then immediately falls off and becomes the exact same density as "space" within the span of a single planck length. It's a gradient. So is space.
You can say that Earth becomes less dense the further away you get from it's center, barring the gravitation effects of other objects. Or, you can say that Space becomes more dense the closer you are to a heavy body such as Earth. Makes no difference. Either way there are only ill-defined terms for where "Earth" ends and "space" begins, as it's an ill-defined question to begin with.
Justin Dubs
This superficial naming convention makes absolutely no difference at all. It has no effect on anything.
It would be like if you changed the biological classification system so that bears were no longer Mammals. What difference does this make to the bears? None. What difference does this make in how we relate to bears? None.
It is simply an arbitrary naming convention. As are all naming conventions.
It reminds me of an old Zen saying that I am likely paraphrasing miserably:
"Before Zen, a mountain is a mountain. While one is practicing Zen, a mountain is no longer a mountain. After Zen, a mountain is once again a mountain."
Justin Dubs
I'm using OS X... :-)
Justin Dubs
It probably wouldn't be hard to throw something into /proc so you could do stuff like:
/proc/interactive/384
echo 55 >
Where 55 is the interactive level and 384 is the pid of the process you are trying to affect.
However, I saw no mention of this.
I wouldn't worry about it. If the system works as well as the folks on the list were saying it works, then you should have no problems.
I have a feeling that what with the low-latency patches and now this "interactivity" patch-set, the new linux kernels will be able to handle your xmms + make workload pretty easily.
Justin Dubs
IANAKH (Kernel Hacker), but here's my understanding of it.
The kernel development team are experimenting with heuristics to determine what processes are "interactive" and to determine "how interactive" those processes are.
An interactive process is a process which spends a portion of it's time sleeping, waiting for some kind of event, and then needs cpu time quickly after the event happens.
In this case the events are user input and screen redraw requests.
So, the trick is that interactive processes don't need any more CPU time than other processes, they just need it very quickly in response to requests. Low latency.
The question is, how do you determine what processare are interactive, and how interactive they are.
They have developed a system whereby there are effectively "interactivity points" that can be given to and taken away from a process.
The act of being woken up from sleeping by an event awards you interactivity points. The act of completely using up lots of timeslices (acting like a CPU-bound process) takes away interactivity points.
With Linus's new patch, once you've reached a certain threshold of interactivity points, some of your points start going to the process that woke you up. So, if an "interactive" process is always waking up in response to an event from a certain other process, than that other process is also awarded interactivity points.
In the end, your interactivity points are taken into account when choosing which processes get the CPU.
So, with this new code, processes which are "interactive" like your X11 apps get more of the cycles they need when they need them, decreasing their latency, and making them appear to work "better."
Justin Dubs
No, no, I'm afraid it doesn't.
Ever watch a 3d-movie. The kind you need special glasses to wear. Like a 3D IMAX or some such movie. Or even the red/blue lenses kind. That's what they are talking about.
Two different images are projected, one for each eye. This gives the illusion of parallax. You are tricked in to thinking the image is 3d because each eye receives a slightly different image.
And, just as with a 3d movie, changing your viewpoint doesn't let you see the side of anything. It will simply make the illusion start sucking as you need to be in the middle for it to work perfectly.
Justin Dubs
I am so tired of this game.
Every few weeks a random large software product, with thousands of deployments, announces a remote hole in their software. It is nearly always a buffer overflow.
What the fuck is wrong with you developers? Why do you refuse to learn from both the mistakes of others and from your own previous mistakes. You either use safe commands like strncpy and friends, or you use safe arrays that won't let you overflow them, or you use a safe language that won't let you overflow them.
Hard, compiler-enforced, bounds-checking on arrays is easy and fast. In fact, IIRC gcc, implements it optionally, or there is a patch for it or something. With processor speeds almost up to 3Ghz, I think we can afford to give up a few cycles here and there for the purpose of stopping these overflows.
Why won't programmers understand that speed is not king. Speed is good. Good algorithms are better. Safety and robustness are better. If to get safety and robustness you need to take a 10% speed hit then, you know what, do it! Hardware speeds will make up the difference in a few months.
Why do we want 3Ghz machines? It's not so our assembler code will run 100x faster. It's so we don't have to use assembler any more. The speed exists to give us the flexibility we need to make good abstractions. Good abstractions speed up development, increase flexibility and robustness, and remove security problems like these.
Safe arrays exist for C++ as well. Hell, I can write one for you in 5 minutes. Make it templated and overload the [] operator and do bound checking.
Languages that won't let you have buffer overflows exist too. As much as I hate to say it, Java is great at this. Also, Python, Perl, Caml, Dylan, Erlang, Lisp... the list goes on and on.
It just seems like using C for large-scale development is silly. It's like using assembler was 10 years ago. Yeah, it gives you a speed boost. But, development takes about 10x as long as using a HLL, and you have to fill your mind with concerns about stupid shit like buffer overflows instead of focusing on the problem you are trying to solve.
Justin Dubs
You should read The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. Not only is it a fabulous book, but it kinda has what you are talking about, on an even smaller scale.
Also, Prey, the new Michael Crichton book, which is about nano-technology run amock.
Justin Dubs
Alpha blended cursors, but not true transparency?
That's what transparency is. Transparency is normally implemented using alpha blending. An alpha value of 1.0 is a fully opaque surface. An alpha value of 0.0 is a fully transparent surface. This can easily be done on a per-pixel level either by using a separate alpha map or by using a alpha channel on the main image.
Normally a 32-bit, RGBA image is used. This gives you normal 24-bit color, with 8-bits per channel for Red, Green and Blue. The extra space is an 8-bit alpha channel giving you 256 different levels of translucency.
I guess I'm just confused as to how you can have alpha blending, but not "transparency," as they are the same.
Justin Dubs
Sweet Jesus, son! Have you ever left your (dorm room/mother's basement)! At the very least, I see you've never worked in a Tech Support field.
They offer classes in how to use a mouse. People fail these classes. People struggle for a year to get an A+ certification. People call because their CD won't work, and the'll have it in upside down. I even had a guy who just sat the damned CD on top of the computer (right-side up though, good for him) and couldn't understand why he couldn't get to it on his computer.
Lord god! You expect them to assemble a computer?!?! You seriously, seriously overestimate the ability of the masses.
Justin DubsIt doesn't matter whether you like it or not. It's one of the social rules you'll just have to deal with, or face the concequences.
I'll have to disagree with you there. Blindly following social conventions is, in my eyes, rather boring and conformist.
I'd rather disregard convention, do thing my way, and let others judge me as they see fit. The majority of people are idiots, so I don't feel horribly compelled to follow their lead.
It was Mark Twain who said that "when you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and rethink."
Justin DubsI hate the viewpoint that says pointing out things you are better at than others is akin to arrogance.
The view that all people are exactly as good as everyone else in every field is just a punch of PC bullshit.
There are people who COULD NOT EVER understand chess. We call them mentally handicapped.
Yes, his wording may have been poor. Don't mean to come down on you in specific. This is just a pet peeve of mind.
Justin Dubs
Actually Bob Dylan said that. Hendrix just happened to cover it.
In fact, Dylan was saying that it was the others who felt that life was "but a joke." He had already "been though that," and it was "not [his] fate."
Here's the verse (from memory):
"No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who think that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And that is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
Because the hour is getting late"
Justin Dubs
The opposite will be true. The portion of the system closer to earth than the center-of-gravity will be pulled towards earth by gravity. The portion further away from the center-of-gravity will be pulled away from earth by inertia. As both sides have the same weight, it will not move at all, but merely provide tension on the cable, making it near-straight.
:-)
So, it's a delicate balance. Anchor trying to fly away from earth, being held in by the cable. Cable trying to fall to earth being pulled out by the space anchor. Any they are designed to cancel out and leave everything stationary.
I hope I'm explaining this well. Hell, I hope I know what I'm talking about.
Justin Dubs
Well, actually it would be the center of mass. That's my bad for simplifying too much. I'm assuming that the size of anchor needed in space would so greatly out-weight the cable itself as to make it moot.
So, as far as I can tell, you imagine a line leaving Perth and traveling at an angle. At the end of the line is the space anchor (atleast in this method). The point on the rope directly above the equator would correspond to the center of mass of the line-anchor-elevator system. This must be so if the mass is to orbit the earth in geo-synchronously.
To "orbit" something, effectively means to free-fall towards it while having enough tangential velocity that you never actually hit it, but keep perpetually missing. Because the force causing you to fall towards the body is the body's gravity, which is centered around the center-of-mass, the orbital path you take will also be centered around that center-of-mass.
So, now we know that we must be orbiting the earth along the circumference of a cross-section that passes through the center-of-gravity. But, the earth is also spinning. Really fast. So, to keep in geo-synchronous orbit, you have to be moving in the same direction that it is spinning.
The line on the earth's surface that is above the center-of-gravity and travely parallel to the earth's direction of rotation is the equator. So, our center-of-mass must be above the equator if we wish to be in geosynchronous orbit.
Justin
What are you talking about?
It's called IEEE 802.11b, or 802.11g in the case of the newest Apple laptops.
The laptops connect, without any difficulty, to any WAP that supports those standards.
My PowerBook G4 is currently connected to a "WAP", that is actually a D-Link wireless card in an old PC running OpenBSD 3.1. Before that we were using a LinkSys WAP with 128-bit WEP.
Now, it could be true that apple won't give you phone support for connecting to non-Apple WAP's. I don't know; I've never tried. I find it unlikely though. Apple's tech-support has been fabulous to me during the years I've used them.
Justin Dubs
The rock is in orbit above the equator. The elevator starts at Perth. So, the cable/shaft runs at an angle not normal to the earth's surface. It leaves the ground at an angle.
The cable would trace out a cone if it were straight, if that helps you visualize it.
Justin Dubs
My god dude. WTF?
;-).
Being able to change keyboard layouts and see the results would be great. Plus, imagine how much easier it could make the life of APL programmers
But, you jump all over him because you assume every program will have a whole new keyboard map that would frutrate you? Yes, lets ban all good ideas if they have potentially bad uses.
I just don't understand your shit about the learning curve. Every program already has their own menu arrangements. Tools->Options? Edit->Options? File->Preferences? File->Options? View->Options? Shit, I've seen Window->Options. The learning curve would be no worse than it is now. And it could be equally easily solved by standardization.
Shit, make is so it requires your authorization to change the layout. I don't know.
Plus, I don't think he said that this couldn't be used in conjuction with keyboard shortcuts like Copy and Paste. Hell, imagine that as soon as you start holding down your Control key all the key change to represent what they do vis-a-vis that shortcut. I mean, make it a checkbox in your prefs somewhere, but still, it could be useful/neat.
For examples of this magic "standardization" process, move away from your Linux boxes as they seem to eschew it. Look at OS X apps or, to a lesser extent, Windows apps.
I think it'd be great. I've had the same idea myself.
Justin Dubs
Thanks a lot. I had no idea. I'll may have to resurrect my x86 box just to get CMUCL running on it.
Thanks again,
Justin Dubs
I use Lisp as my primary development language. I am very aware of it's typing capabilities.
The Common Lisp standard does not require that compilers do any manner of complicated type inferencing, if I recall correctly.
Also, all Lisp type-checking that I've seen happens at run-time. Atleast with OpenMCL and CLisp, which are the two compilers that I've used.
Are you saying I should be able to:
> (defun foo ((x integer)) (+ x 1))
FOO
> (defun bar (x) (foo x))
*warning, foo requires an integer but bar doesn't guarantee an integer*
> (defun bar ((x string)) (foo x))
*error, foo requires an integer, but bar uses a string*
Because that's what I'm talking about. If so, then wonderful. I'll check it out. Unfortunately, CMUCL doesn't run on PowerPC. Thanks for the reply though.
Justin Dubs
No language does this that I know of, but here's how I think type systems should work.
It's pretty much a stronger form of SML-style type-inference.
Variables don't have types, values do, as in dynamic typing. But, variables can have type constraints.
You can optionally specify type constraints for variables and parameters.
From there the compiler/interpreter can go wild with type-inference trying to determine as much as it can about the structure of your program. As the type constraints are optional you can end up with inferred types for variables that are complex unions and disjunctions of types.
Code that looks like:
(defun foo (x) 'hello)
could be assigned the type foo : unknown -> symbol.
The code can then be weakly checked for inconsistancies between inferred types.
You can write a fully dynamic program like this by specifying no types. You can write a fully static program by specifying all types. Or, you can use a loose mix of the two that lets you do weak compile-time type checking where you want it, and avoid the hassle where you don't.
Anyway, I'm just rambling here. I'll likely try to start playing with these ideas in Lisp sometime soon, as I've been meaning to for several years now.
Justin Dubs
The source of randomness isn't the stumbling block.
;-)
Getting good-enough randomness is easy enough now-adays. I mean, heck, check out random.org.
But, you still have to distribute the pad. You can always just use another one-time-pad to encrypt the pad before you send it though.
If you are distributing electronically, than you can send the pad out to your partner via some form of public-key encryption. But, now your security is not determined by the strength of the one-time pad (possibly infinite), but by the strength of the public-key crypto-system (certainly not infinite).
Justin Dubs
Also of note:
You CAN NOT use the same pad more than once. Hence the name "One-time" pads. Here's why:
Here are two messages, encrypted with the same pad:
cyphertext1 = plaintext1 + one-time-pad
cyphertext2 = plaintext2 + one-time-pad
For short:
c1 = p1 + otp
c2 = p2 + otp
Now, I get ahold of both cyphertexts, and I suspect, or guess, that they were encrypted with the same key.
(c2 - c1) = (p2 + otp) - (p1 + otp)
(c2 - c1) = (p2 - p1)
So, now, the "enemy" has a new set of numbers, obtained by the subtraction of the two cyphertexts, and this result is also the subtraction of the two plaintexts as the one-time-pads cancelled out.
A message that is simply the difference between two plaintext messages is trivially crackable via statistical analysis.
Anyone who enjoys encryption theory and a good yarn should go pick up a copy of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. It is one of the best book I have ever read.
Justin Dubs