"garbage collection" has always been synonymous with "automatic memory management"; your ref-counting scheme is thus GC, albeit not a tracing collector.
Your original point was, "BTW, IMHO, all functions that use retain/release semantics should always return retained objects. The alternative is madness." I agree, because you are basically stating exactly what I stated earlier, which is that automatic memory management/GC dramatically simplifies the semantics of abstractions and thus should be pervasive.
You significantly understate the complexities of manual memory management. Any two programs with compatible interfaces written in a GC'd language will compose without leaks, where any two programs with compatible interfaces written with manual memory management will not necessarily compose. This requires diverting valuable resources from development to analyzing the safety of any composition of non-composable programs.
By doubling the memory management overhead in the general case, you now get to work with pervasive immutable data, generally not worry about memory leaks, and dramatically simplify the semantics of interface boundaries.
Memory management overhead in GC'd languages is typically around 30%, so not much worse than malloc/free which averages around 15-20%. You gain a lot of productivity for that 10-15% overhead tradeoff though.
Straw man. Just because this particular wounded person was not a threat does not imply that no wounded person is ever a threat. I'm sure this is evident to you, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Blatantly untrue. Just because they're wounded, does not imply they are not a threat. You never fire on people that are not a threat, and as you pointed out, there is no evidence in the video indicating the van and its people were a threat. That part's outrageous. They did not even attempt to ascertain a threat-level before requesting permission to engage.
Oh ye of little imagination. The algebraic expression you provided is a parameterized program with unknown variables x, a, b, c. You have provided exactly a simple program which can be evaluated, once the variables are provided, by the rules of algebra, which form the instructions of the machine that can execute this program.
See the Curry-Howard correspondence for a formal proof of this. Types are logical propositions, and programs are proofs. It is a mathematical fact that programs are math, that the instructions of a machine correspond to the axioms of a formal/mathematical system, and that "sets/sequences of instructions" correspond exactly to mathematical proofs.
No, the physical machine that executes the program accomplishes the task, and the machine itself is patentable. The software is merely a description, like a story about Harry Potter, or a physics paper, and thus subject only to copyright.
Software is a set of instructions for doing something.
And math is not a set of instructions for doing something? That one sentence describes exactly what constitutes math. It also describes exactly what is not patentable, ie. abstract ideas. What is patentable is a physical invention that implements a particular set of instructions.
and I firmly believe that a sufficiently clever algorithm is as much an invention as a sufficiently clever physical invention.
Harry Potter was just as much an invention as a clever physical device. That's not an argument to allow patenting of Harry Potter now is it? See my post above for why math and software should not get patent protection, or if the only way to end this silly debate is to allow it, why those patents should have significantly reduced durations.
That argument can equally be applied to legitimate patents, and so is not an argument at all. The reason math and software cannot and should not be patented is because software is a description of abstract ideas, where patents protect physical inventions. If you cannot patent Harry Potter, then you cannot patent software.
We already have protection of abstract ideas called "copyright". Abstract ideas and physical devices have very different properties which is why the rules governing their use are so different; physical devices require tools and raw materials to copy, where abstract ideas do not. This is why software and math both belong under copyright and have no place gaining patent protection.
I've debated this issue a thousand times on reddit, so I'll just point you to the good posts here, here, here, and this epic thread.
So then the question becomes, how can you justify encoding social notions of vulgarity in the law which is supposed to be culturally impartial and exists to protect the rights of its citizens, not their sense of decency?
Free speech is an inalienable *human* right
on
Suspension of Disbelief
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· Score: 2, Insightful
To my knowledge, free speech is an inalienable human right not an inalienable adult right. The age of the individual should not matter in the slightest, but be subject only to the conditions on free speech itself, ie. libel and slander.
Bugs are an error in the process, not the code. If you find a bug, you need to find the process error that allowed that bug to occur.
Assuming this were true, then switching to safer programming languages would not affect the security of the output. Of course, switching to safer languages has been shown to improve security, thus your premise that bugs are not a property of code is false.
Probability of absorbing more than 1 photon on that one molecule is vanishingly small. Yes microwaves cause heating, but it's very, very unlikely to cause anything else. Terahertz waves are much more cause for concern.
but sometimes I encounter a youth who says, "My boyfriend just broke up with me and now I sit in my room and listen to depressing music." And they (or their over protective parents) think they need medication for that. They don't. Sounds to me like they need to be picking rock and bailing hay to help take their mind off that.
Awesome. I hope this becomes a standard treatment. Karl Marx said it well, "The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain." Heavy physical exertion quickly takes the mind off of its own self-serving merry-go-round.
The Thorium Fluoride reactor was abandoned in the 60s because it did NOT have a high proliferation potential when compared to pure Uranium reactors. The US wanted weapons-grade Plutonium and Uranium to stockpile weapons during the Cold War and Thorium Fluoride couldn't cut it.
Slashdot Mirror
Contact, Gattaca, Moon to name a few. Hard-SF isn't pervasive, but there are some good ones.
Well if you tried to make a cam release by walking into a 3d movie, you'd be very unsuccessful.
Not really. Just put a polarized filter on your cam.
I'm afraid you're mistaken for two reasons:
Your original point was, "BTW, IMHO, all functions that use retain/release semantics should always return retained objects. The alternative is madness." I agree, because you are basically stating exactly what I stated earlier, which is that automatic memory management/GC dramatically simplifies the semantics of abstractions and thus should be pervasive.
Reference counting is GC.
You significantly understate the complexities of manual memory management. Any two programs with compatible interfaces written in a GC'd language will compose without leaks, where any two programs with compatible interfaces written with manual memory management will not necessarily compose. This requires diverting valuable resources from development to analyzing the safety of any composition of non-composable programs.
By doubling the memory management overhead in the general case, you now get to work with pervasive immutable data, generally not worry about memory leaks, and dramatically simplify the semantics of interface boundaries.
Memory management overhead in GC'd languages is typically around 30%, so not much worse than malloc/free which averages around 15-20%. You gain a lot of productivity for that 10-15% overhead tradeoff though.
I'm saying that 20% overhead for dynamic memory management is typical of even well-designed programs. Very few programs can take good advantage of efficient bulk-deallocating arenas/regions, and research has shown custom memory pooling schemes are generally no better than malloc/free.
Not at all. 20% is a very typical overhead for dynamic memory management. Did you think malloc/free costs nothing?
Straw man. Just because this particular wounded person was not a threat does not imply that no wounded person is ever a threat. I'm sure this is evident to you, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Blatantly untrue. Just because they're wounded, does not imply they are not a threat. You never fire on people that are not a threat, and as you pointed out, there is no evidence in the video indicating the van and its people were a threat. That part's outrageous. They did not even attempt to ascertain a threat-level before requesting permission to engage.
Oh ye of little imagination. The algebraic expression you provided is a parameterized program with unknown variables x, a, b, c. You have provided exactly a simple program which can be evaluated, once the variables are provided, by the rules of algebra, which form the instructions of the machine that can execute this program.
See the Curry-Howard correspondence for a formal proof of this. Types are logical propositions, and programs are proofs. It is a mathematical fact that programs are math, that the instructions of a machine correspond to the axioms of a formal/mathematical system, and that "sets/sequences of instructions" correspond exactly to mathematical proofs.
No, the physical machine that executes the program accomplishes the task, and the machine itself is patentable. The software is merely a description, like a story about Harry Potter, or a physics paper, and thus subject only to copyright.
And math is not a set of instructions for doing something? That one sentence describes exactly what constitutes math. It also describes exactly what is not patentable, ie. abstract ideas. What is patentable is a physical invention that implements a particular set of instructions.
Harry Potter was just as much an invention as a clever physical device. That's not an argument to allow patenting of Harry Potter now is it? See my post above for why math and software should not get patent protection, or if the only way to end this silly debate is to allow it, why those patents should have significantly reduced durations.
That argument can equally be applied to legitimate patents, and so is not an argument at all. The reason math and software cannot and should not be patented is because software is a description of abstract ideas, where patents protect physical inventions. If you cannot patent Harry Potter, then you cannot patent software.
We already have protection of abstract ideas called "copyright". Abstract ideas and physical devices have very different properties which is why the rules governing their use are so different; physical devices require tools and raw materials to copy, where abstract ideas do not. This is why software and math both belong under copyright and have no place gaining patent protection.
I've debated this issue a thousand times on reddit, so I'll just point you to the good posts here, here, here, and this epic thread.
So then the question becomes, how can you justify encoding social notions of vulgarity in the law which is supposed to be culturally impartial and exists to protect the rights of its citizens, not their sense of decency?
To my knowledge, free speech is an inalienable human right not an inalienable adult right. The age of the individual should not matter in the slightest, but be subject only to the conditions on free speech itself, ie. libel and slander.
Bugs are an error in the process, not the code. If you find a bug, you need to find the process error that allowed that bug to occur.
Assuming this were true, then switching to safer programming languages would not affect the security of the output. Of course, switching to safer languages has been shown to improve security, thus your premise that bugs are not a property of code is false.
Probability of absorbing more than 1 photon on that one molecule is vanishingly small. Yes microwaves cause heating, but it's very, very unlikely to cause anything else. Terahertz waves are much more cause for concern.
Let me fix that:
Rampaging cult overthrows galactic government with the help of hallucinogenic drug everyone eats with breakfast .
There, much better.
But Tim Minchin already explained this.
but sometimes I encounter a youth who says, "My boyfriend just broke up with me and now I sit in my room and listen to depressing music." And they (or their over protective parents) think they need medication for that. They don't. Sounds to me like they need to be picking rock and bailing hay to help take their mind off that.
Awesome. I hope this becomes a standard treatment. Karl Marx said it well, "The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain." Heavy physical exertion quickly takes the mind off of its own self-serving merry-go-round.
What does this mean for singularities and black holes?
The Thorium Fluoride reactor was abandoned in the 60s because it did NOT have a high proliferation potential when compared to pure Uranium reactors. The US wanted weapons-grade Plutonium and Uranium to stockpile weapons during the Cold War and Thorium Fluoride couldn't cut it.