betterunix

10 ms·

31.
by betterunix 12y ago
If that were true it would have been awfully difficult to write operating systems in Lisp, yet OSes were written in Lisp (and the companies that famously did so played a part in the founding of the Free Software Foundation).
32.
by betterunix 12y ago
Could be the Internet, could be the phase-out of TEL... (For the uninitiated, yes, this is trolling.)
33.
by betterunix 12y ago
"If value, then right" basically: http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-3.html
34.
by betterunix 12y ago
My best guess about why people are still using C and C++ is this: there is a massive, valuable ecosystem of software written in these languages. It is hard to write software in one language that links with software written in other langua
35.
by betterunix 12y ago
Now you are aware of another, Common Lisp (as implemented by SBCL): http://www.sbcl.org/sbcl-internals/index.html
36.
by betterunix 12y ago
1. O3 is way better. 2. GCC is not even the best optimizing compiler out there. Intel's C compiler puts GCC to shame for some tasks.
37.
by betterunix 12y ago
Ah, you might have been thinking of techniques basic on SAT and ATPG solving. What makes software different is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry-Howard_Correspondence Basically, checking a proof of correctness
38.
by betterunix 12y ago
On the topic of trusting compilers: http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/
39.
by betterunix 12y ago
You can do formal verification with tools like Coq using a laptop. The real issue is that writing a formal specification is hard even for small problems; writing a formal spec for something like TLS would be harder than actually implementi
40.
by betterunix 12y ago
The problem with proofs is that you need to know what to prove, and that is hard. Even formalizing something as seemingly simple as sorting is tough for most programmers. If your formalization of whatever you wanted to implement is wr
41.
by betterunix 12y ago
I doubt that a military submarine is more comfortable than the facilities described in the article.
42.
by betterunix 12y ago
Optimistic: lawyer advice Pessimistic: Hollywood thugs
43.
by betterunix 12y ago
SBCL or CMUCL -- Lisp compilers written in Lisp.
44.
by betterunix 12y ago
That's nice, the rest of the world will get on with innovating and AT&T can go the way of the dodo.
45.
by betterunix 12y ago
"I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever that the government is capable of making software to either provide a service similar to TurboTax or to correctly pre-calculate your taxes." Yes and no. When the government
46.
by betterunix 12y ago
That depends on how good you are at filing your tax returns. Intuit is lobbying for a complex tax code because that reduces the likelihood that you can actually do your taxes on your own without losing lots of money or getting in trouble w
47.
by betterunix 13y ago
There is some public work on this: http://bap.ece.cmu.edu/ Unfortunately, most people do not find this to be terribly exciting. Worse still, there is almost no demand for it; most programmers want to quickly hack out somet
48.
by betterunix 13y ago
The reason we tell people not to implement their own crypto is that no matter how skilled someone is, no matter what language they program in, it is nearly certain that self-rolled crypto code will have security flaws. Cryptographic securi
49.
by betterunix 13y ago
With the downside being that things like Heartbleed become possible. Dealing with timing attacks in high-level code is not necessarily hard -- Haskell, for example, has strict evaluation.
50.
by betterunix 13y ago
Heartbleed is not exactly a "subtle weakness," it is a gaping hole -- and it is a gaping hole that is only possible in languages with simple pointers and simple pointer arithmetic. In other words, using better languages for the n
51.
by betterunix 13y ago
I have some experience with NSS, and for simple things it is not terrible despite being a bit low level. With about an afternoon of work I was able to write a very simple TLS server using NSS -- in Lisp, using SBCL's FFI.
52.
by betterunix 13y ago
Today there are alternatives. Once upon a time those alternatives were either not written, not stable, or not free. Now it is just a matter of convincing an enormous number of developers to carefully rewrite large parts of their systems
53.
by betterunix 13y ago
1. Other libraries do exist -- NSS, GnuTLS, etc. 2. Do you have time for a rewrite? What makes you think anyone else would? 3. The (generally correct) mindset is don't implement your own crypto . This is particularly true of somethi
54.
by betterunix 13y ago
OpenSSL is a mess on its own. Other libraries are better organized and better documented, so I doubt that it is the fault of TLS or x509.
55.
by betterunix 13y ago
Perhaps, but then I am left wondering about newly written books -- why are the authors continuing to endorse DRM? Why are the authors continuing to do business with the publishers who demand it?
56.
by betterunix 13y ago
Yeah but then you are forced to make a choice: avoid authors who fail to provide non-restricted books, or download books illegally.
57.
by betterunix 13y ago
I have to wonder if the authors who demanded DRM from Amazon have figured out that this is the kind of behavior that drives people to download books illegally, or if they still fail to see the connection.
58.
by betterunix 13y ago
Funny how the donation becomes the issue only after someone mentions thoughtcrime. Until then, the issue is what Eich believes. "If we were talking about a CEO that was racist and had donated to the KKK would you still rush to call fo
59.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Free speech has nothing to do with this, this is someone whose actions many people found incompatible with what they saw as Mozilla's values, both inside and outside of the organization, and who can blame them?" I can blame
60.
by betterunix 13y ago
"he cleverly dances around the fact that he feels that homosexuals do not deserve the same rights as heterosexuals." Yes, and obviously that is completely orthogonal to the kind of treatment he has received over his beliefs abou

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