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Comment iPhone Users are Heavy Data Users (Score 3, Insightful) 353

I have wondered if ATT is a victim of their own success with 3G congestion. They largely sold the iPhone on the merits of all the cool data features and these users consume a lot of wireless data. 3G networks aren't designed to handle many concurrent heavy users. So I wonder, if Verizon gets the iPhone and folks make the switch, will the situation just naturally improve for ATT? Will Verizon suddenly feel the pain of all those heavy users?

Comment Re:Please ban them (Score 2, Interesting) 486

Thank you for a sensible post. I agree that the only real solution has to be some abstraction or alternate mode for memory access that prevents the problem outright. C and C++ not only make it possible, but extremely easy to trash memory.

The people claiming that the problem is programmers who are incompetent or stupid and believing that they are superhuman genius programmers who are somehow immune from errors are living under a delusion. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. We are all human and imperfect. I have seen many intelligent and competent programmers write incorrect code. I have personally written code with errors. We need to move beyond unproductive blame assigning mentalities to achieve real solutions or we will never be able to advance the state of software. Realistically, the prima donnas will continue on and other people will actually do something.

memcpy_s is not a step forward for numerous reasons already mentioned. strncpy provides functionality that strcpy does not, namely a bound on its region of effect. memcpy was already bounded and neither memcpy_s or strncpy can prevent bad parameters from causing memory corruption. Hardware support like the NX/ED bits to mark pages as not executable are a good advancement on the security front, but still do not prevent data corruption. Complete removal of memory access like many languages do solves the problem with a high performance cost. Emerging techniques like STM may be able to incorporate data safety while maintaining hardware efficiency.

XBox (Games)

Submission + - Microsoft publishes free XBox development tools

prostoalex writes: "Microsoft announced the release of free XNA Game Studio Express tool for developing C# games that run on both Windows and XBox. They're also selling XNA Creators Club subscriptions, which, similar to MSDN subscriptions, offer access to sample code and additional documentation. Also, Microsoft is explicitly aiming towards uniting the Windows and XBox development platforms: "You will have to compile the game once for each platform. In this release simply create a separate project for each platform and then compile them both. Our goal is to allow as much code as possible to be shared between those two projects, allowing you to use the same source files in both projects, but platform-specific code will need to be conditionally-compiled.""
Software

BitTorrent, Inc. Acquires uTorrent 189

ColinPL writes "BitTorrent, Inc. has taken the next step — the acquisition of uTorrent. In a joint announcement made today, the two firms have publicly solidified the merger. 'Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and uTorrent AB have decided to join forces ... BitTorrent has acquired uTorrent as it recognized the merits of uTorrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together uTorrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.'"
Math

Professor Comes Up With a Way to Divide by Zero 1090

54mc writes "The BBC reports that Dr. James Anderson, of the University of Reading, has finally conquered the problem of dividing by zero. His new number, which he calls "nullity" solves the 1200 year old problem that niether Newton nor Pythagoras could solve, the problem of zero to the zero power. Story features video (Real Player only) of Dr. Anderson explaining the "simple" concept."

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