So but if the entire universe is a giant VR simulation inside a giant computer system, we could conceivably exploit bugs
in the underlying simulation program.
Maybe if we carry out a weird physics experiment (creating Higgs bosons in the LHC for example) could cause the simulator to bomb out with a division by zero exception or a segmentation fault. That would not be interesting however since we all would cease to exist at the same moment and there would be nobody to observe this fact.
VMWare once had a bug that could possibly be exploited by a guest program to get access to the underlying host system.
So why couldn't we do the same from our simulated universe: exploit a bug that could cause a buffer overflow so we can insert machine instructions in the memory of the simulating machine that eventually get executed. Finding out the instruction set of the simulating machine is left as an exercise to the reader.
Did the proposed law really say 14 inches or did it say 35cm? China is also metric I hope. I find it bad enough that everybody in Europe is starting to specify monitor/TV screen size in inches.
The first processor that can add to its instruction
set while operating? I think there were a few microprogrammed processors in the 70s/80s with writable control store that could do exactly that. Anybody remember PERQ workstations?
Now this new gadget appears to be able to extend itself by means of an embedded FPGA, instead of plain old microcode, so it's a bit like the Xilinx Virtex II PRO series (PowerPC core with big FPGA on one chip). The really innovative thing is that you don't have to program the FPGA in VHDL or Verilog, but the C++ compiler takes care of that.
Slashdot Mirror
So but if the entire universe is a giant VR simulation inside a giant computer system, we could conceivably exploit bugs in the underlying simulation program. Maybe if we carry out a weird physics experiment (creating Higgs bosons in the LHC for example) could cause the simulator to bomb out with a division by zero exception or a segmentation fault. That would not be interesting however since we all would cease to exist at the same moment and there would be nobody to observe this fact. VMWare once had a bug that could possibly be exploited by a guest program to get access to the underlying host system. So why couldn't we do the same from our simulated universe: exploit a bug that could cause a buffer overflow so we can insert machine instructions in the memory of the simulating machine that eventually get executed. Finding out the instruction set of the simulating machine is left as an exercise to the reader.
Did the proposed law really say 14 inches or did it say 35cm? China is also metric I hope. I find it bad enough that everybody in Europe is starting to specify monitor/TV screen size in inches.
The first processor that can add to its instruction set while operating? I think there were a few microprogrammed processors in the 70s/80s with writable control store that could do exactly that. Anybody remember PERQ workstations? Now this new gadget appears to be able to extend itself by means of an embedded FPGA, instead of plain old microcode, so it's a bit like the Xilinx Virtex II PRO series (PowerPC core with big FPGA on one chip). The really innovative thing is that you don't have to program the FPGA in VHDL or Verilog, but the C++ compiler takes care of that.