Regardless of the vanishingly small probability of a collision between two randomly chosen data blocks, I'd be concerned about using this system for two reasons:

* Unlike an encryption system, the same data is being stored on every disk. This means that once a single attack is found against a commonly occurring block, all systems are vulnerable. (This can be solved by salting each disk appropriately; they may already do this.)

* If a collision is found, nothing can be done about it (short of disabling the dedupe algorithm completely.) Reruns of a flawed program will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes, even after the operator is aware of the issue. This is far worse than any silent data corruption; it's effectively silent algorithm corruption.

This article is specifically about games, but the answer to your question is really "no". You need to use Objective C to access Apple's UI framework, and you'd be pretty silly to write a custom UI system for most non-game apps.

Your core application logic can still be C++ of course, but all of the actual application UI must be Objective C.

That said, I like C++ and dislike being forced to program in either Objective C or Java - but I'm honestly enjoying working in Objective C (and being able to fall back on my C++ ways from time to time where appropriate) rather than being stuck in Java. My only complaint is the difficulty in memory management in Objective C - it's alien enough that a C++ programmer will not automatically get it right, and really needs the garbage collection functionality that Apple added on the MacOS.

It's always interesting to guess at the future, but at my day job (definitely a Windows shop) everyone is buying Apple hardware and nobody even mentions Android. You may be right, but Google has a long march ahead of them.

More importantly perhaps, the iPhone does not actually force you to program in Obj-C. A very thin wrapper can be used to interface native C++ with the hardware. While Java may be friendly to mobile developers, C++ is definitely the language of choice for games developers.

I believe that Android has taken steps in this direction as well, but last I heard there were severe compatibility concerns. Anybody know whether this has gone anywhere useful?

IRC pushes. The only reason you would use a 'pull' for something like this is if the client can't maintain a persistent connection to a server.

I agree with your choice of keyboard, but.. if you're having to move your whole arm to use a mouse, you're doing it wrong. Turn up the acceleration.

Admittedly there are some rubbish mice out there, especially some of the cordless junk, but I'd take a Logitech G5 over anything else. My only complaint is that Logitech seems to have some kind of stupid "straight-line" detection in their hardware which favors pure horizontal or vertical movement rather than a smooth arbitrary movement.

Except that you can't. You can do this for very specific types of program, built in very specific ways or very specific languages. There are a much greater number of programs and languages for which this is not possible.

Don't get me wrong - I realize that you can describe a theoretical algorithm to achieve this, and it would not even be difficult to write a program to do this in any arbitrary language. It's just that the program would require near-infinite storage and time to run.

So as per my post, while it may be technically correct that programming is applied math, in practice this is like saying that my heart beating is applied particle physics. The reality is too far from the theory to be of any use in the general case.

Yes and no. That's my point. Theoretically speaking, yes. Practically speaking, no.

While each algorithm and piece and indeed the whole could theoretically be proven, it is not feasible to do so except in very trivial cases.

Once we reach the point where practice does not match theory, one questions the point of naming the practice after the theory. I'm not questioning the mathematical background or principles, but rather questioning the useful application of math to programming as a domain at the current time.

While you're technically correct, of course, I think that this attitude leads to some rather poor conclusions.

From the little I know of pure math (so correct me if I'm off-base here) I would suggest that 'proofs' are fundamental to the field. This is very definitely not the case in the majority of programming. If it was, we wouldn't need much testing, and there wouldn't really be bugs.

Your argument is that all programming is math when you get down to the single-instruction level, and that you can scale this up to cover the whole program. However once you reach the point where a program is complex to the point that it is impossible for our technology to prove, the result is certainly not what I'd consider math.

Your same logic could be applied to almost anything really. Break it down small enough, demonstrate it's math, therefore the whole must be math.

Nope. The tools allow you to select which set of headers and libraries you'd like to link against. The only technical reason for requiring a newer OS is to access new/fixed features.

I agree with your opinion of Theo. He rarely speaks up without cause. I do however think that many people have placed themselves on his bad side over the years, and they might disagree with your comments.

I'm not saying that Theo is a big angry bear, just that he doesn't tolerate crap. It's a sentiment that I agree with. I don't have any direct personal experience with either guy, but that sounds an awful lot like the glorious leader from TFA.

And Theo de Raadt is a bad leader? I agree that, all else being equal, a sociable leader is beneficial. But I'd gladly take an unsociable leader over one who is poor at management or technically.

WoW runs multiple instances quite fine even with a single install directory. You may need to launch the game directly rather than start through the launcher (haven't confirmed that) but we certainly have no trouble multiboxing from a single install.

What you say is true, but is also a very pessimistic viewpoint. I prefer to believe that the majority of people (politicians, developers, everyone) are actually trying to make things better. I'm sure that there are certainly notable exceptions.

Certainly, in games development, there is little incentive in developing overly buggy systems. Doing so repeatedly is more likely to get you fired as incompetent rather than have management ask you to spend additional time on the same tasks.

Regardless, that wasn't really my point - I'm just saying that such systems do not reach perfection. The whys and wherefores don't change that.

A fair analogy would be our legal system. While it serves us reasonably well for the most part, nobody would claim that is completely fair or that there are no loop-holes. Additionally, we have to keep adjusting in on a regular basis.

What makes you think that a handful of game devs will "get it right" where thousands of lawyers and politicians over the years have tried and are still trying?

There is no such thing as absolute balance. There are always loopholes. I have no experience with CoH so I can't say whether their implementation stinks or whether it's amazing, but I think it's fair to say that expecting anything approaching perfection is unreasonable.