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Comment Re:OK, before somebody else points it out... (Score 2) 470

There are actually 3 categories:

  • Implementation Defined: the implementation (compiler, standard library, execution environment) has to document what happens. Code relying on this is not portable.
  • Unspecified: the implementation can choose to do what makes sense, and not tell you. Even reverse-engineering and relying on what you found out, is unreliable. The actual address returned by malloc is unspecified; is it aligned? Does it always grow in value if nothing was free-ed? You shouldn't even care about this detail, so the standard leaves it unspecified.
  • Undefined Behaviour: you wrote something that doesn't make sense, if you get lucky the compiler/standard library/operating system will react in a sensible way, but the standard says it's not the implementation's fault you get something wrong as a result. Things like reading variables before initializing them.

Diagnosing UB can be too demanding from the implementation, so the standard doesn't even require it. How would you diagnose incorrect usage of realloc? Add run-time checks? Write a special rule in the compiler so it knows about realloc? Extend the language with metadata? What if realloc is hidden behind a user-defined function? At some point you have to stop, otherwise you could even solve the halting problem.

Comment Re:OpenCL (Score 1) 66

The gpuocelot project has been able to run CUDA in non-NVIDIA hardware for some time now, including x86 CPUs and AMD GPUs.

Too bad the CUDA compiler often segfaults on ordinary C++ libraries even when they are host-only (in which case nvcc is supposed to just forward it to GCC). Hopefully the LLVM-based compiler for OpenCL 2.0 won't be as buggy.

Comment Re:Easy (Score 2) 332

This. If it's your job to go and fix his mess, do it without complaining. And document all the effort you put into it, to avoid being labeled as someone that just rewrites code without adding anything.

If you are not responsible for cleaning after the senior, then don't do it, let it all rot until somebody (your boss, or even your colleague) makes the decision it's time to clean the mess.

Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."

Comment In world without copyrights (Score 1) 320

In a world without copyright laws that would be feasible. But we don't, and it isn't. Commit code with no license and legally nobody is allowed to distribute your software. No company will ever willingly use your code, even if it does something unique and useful.

Grow up you hippie and accept that you have to learn something about laws before you interact with society.

Microsoft

Same Platform Made Stuxnet, Duqu; Others Lurk 89

wiredmikey writes "New research from Kaspersky Labs has revealed that the platform dubbed 'tilded' (~d), which was used to develop Stuxnet and Duqu, has been around for years. The researchers say that same platform has been used to create similar Trojans which have yet to be discovered. Alexander Gostev and Igor Sumenkov have put together some interesting research, the key point being that the person(s) behind what the world knows as Stuxnet and Duqu have actually been using the same development platform for several years." An anonymous reader adds a link to this "surprisingly entertaining presentation" (video) by a Microsoft engineer, in which "he tells the story of how he and others analysed the exploits used by Stuxnet. Also surprising are the simplicity of the exploits which were still present in Win7." See also the report at Secureist from which the SecurityWeek story draws.

Comment Re:NOT Ubuntu -- try Mandriva. (Score 1) 622

Wrong. They use different kernel versions, with different kernel patches. And most importantly, the userland apps certainly differ here and there. The most important example is the Mandriva Control Center. It's task-oriented, making it far more friendly than searching for configuration tools by name - in particular, if you have a localized system, where translations are often arbitrary and non-intuitive.

For specific examples, check out Mandriva's wizards for video cards, disk partitioning, network setup, network sharing. Now try to setup those things under Ubuntu without hitting the Ubuntu forums first.

That said, network card compatibility is pretty much hit or miss, as they often depend on binary blobs (either proprietary or windows drivers) that break in different ways with different kernel versions. My dad's current laptop's wifi only works reliably with WEP, not WPA, while mine kernel-panics with WEP. I bet bugs would manifest themselves differently on Ubuntu.

Comment Re:Cmake? Maven? (Score 3, Interesting) 29

CMake is there in the summary. Maven is not that popular probably due to its design to do "everything".

What seems to be really missing is autotools. Even if you don't want to admit it is better than most alternatives, it's the only one that really solves a ton of problems that no other tool is able to handle. Simply reading through the autoconf, automake and libtool manuals will teach you a lot about the many issues most other tools just ignore, or solve poorly.

Comment Re:One amusing aspect. (Score 1) 254

It's funny how the so called "homebrew" community is quick to hand anyone's head in a plate, when these companies would very much like to hang them all together. It's not like the bits fail0verflow didn't break were any harder anyways. They brought the pirates 80% of the way in, Geohotz already had the last, say, 15%, only feasible because of the first 80%. And fail0verflow now claims they have no responsibility on the piracy matter.

I don't have anything against the fail0verflow dudes, but I'm sure I will have an ironic smile on my face once one of them gets canned in the same way.

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