Posts by Roland6

Re: If I'm Not Mistaken

Microsoft will simply hand a large brown envelope to that person and settle the matter efficiently with said plaintiff.

The laugh is this method of distributing brown envelopes is all above board and tax deductable...

Re: Umm

Goto line number was a feature of Basic.

However, on the i86 architecture you wouldn't actually know the final location until the code had been linked and located and thus whether pointers etc. had been resolved to 8, 16 or 32 bits and thus opcodes likewise selected to support 8, 16 or 32 bit operations...

Fortunately, the Intel ASM did implement labels so you could Goto <label> and the linker and locator would do the math and add the missing bits.

Re: Nothing new...

I think you misunderstood, the code could be expressed properly in the assembler, but not in PL/M, which was used for much of the system. However, even in assembler, the warning was don't take the function the opcode is performing on face value, read the manual and understand what it is doing with this flag. Obviously, the comments against the assembler re-inforced what behaviour was being triggered by this seemingly mismatched sequence of opcodes.

Interestingly, because this code was a key part of a safety-critical infrastructure (people would die if it failed), I used it to explore C.A.R.Hoare's ideas on formally proving the correctness of programmes and thus gained first hand experience of the assumptions and limitations of the method. So in addition to the code there were several dozen pages of formal working that explained in detail the multiple intertwined logic threads in the code.

Re: C is a systems programming language

"A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant."

Not sure what there is about assembler that is 'irrelevant', so it would seem Assembler, by this definition, isn't a low level language.

The paper doesn't make a case for C to be classed as a high-level language, just as someone has coined, it is a goldielocks language, just sufficiently removed from any specific machines assembler to be portable, but not so far removed that it can't be used to to achieve some assembler style optimisations.

What the paper does do is to illustrate that modern high-level programming languages don't easily map to the pipeline and cache models implemented in modern CPU's. Interestingly, I don't remember seeing an assembler that also nicely maps to these CPU attributes, basically a programmer has to know about the these attributes and design their application and write the code accordingly to extract the best performance from these attributes.

What is clear taking full advantage of these CPU attributes requires greater complexity in the code generator.

Re: Umm

>What's wrong with Goto ?

Whilst there many good texts on this, fundamentally this is about structured programming and good practice. If you are using a high level language you should be taking into consideration all possible parameters and paths through your code and use the Gotos implicit in the While, For/Do, If, Case and '}' languages constructs. By doing this you are using the compiler to avoid the resulting code exhibiting behaviours associated with missing control flow instructions.

Re: Other languages....

>It is saying that C is now an IDL

And that is because of the success of Unix and its API's.

To displace C, you need to develop and bundle with Unix/Linux native API's for other languages, specifically application orientated languages such as COBOL, FORTRAN etc.. Naturally, in developing native API's for other languages, there will be ramifications back into the Unix/Linux kernel and the assumptions arising out of the assumption that applications would be written in C; this may fundamentally change Unix/Linux and break backward compatibility.

Re: Oh, boy ...

> DEC kit is hands-down the best platform for teaching computers and networking ever invented.

wrt networking. I suggest it needs to be DECnet Phase IV or earlier, whilst I approved of the Phase V shift to OSI, Phase IV was probably simpler from a teaching perspective.

> My texts were mostly Tannenbaum.

Funnily enough, I think Tanenbaum's first edition of Computer Networks gives a better introduction to networking than the later editions that became focused, firstly on OSI and the on TCP/IP to the exclusion of practically everything else.

Re: Genuinely thanks

Cultural assumption that everything has to be A-Z left-to-right and top-to-bottom.

I suspect given the number of 'interesting' authors with surnames in the later part of the alphabet, organising your books Z-A in a left-to-right and top-to-bottom structure, means that people scanning your bookshelf would see all these authors before they see the obvious ones: Asimov, Banks, Clarke etc.

Re: Nothing new...

>Consider all the memory pitfalls that can catch you out in C

Remember C limits the extent to which you can 'abuse' the instruction set, for real tightrope code yes need assembler.

I remember having to squeeze some functionality into 19 bytes - that was all that was spare in the EPROM, I had got it down to 23 bytes and then discovered a flag that was barely documented in the Intel ASM documentation and wasn't used by PL/M, using this my code dropped to 17 bytes... Whilst I left clear comments in the source about the feature I was using, I didn't envy the person who would have the task of maintaining that piece of code.

Re: Annnnd...you completely missed the point of the article

Goto was considered harmful well before the rise of Pascal - a language primarily for teaching computing fundamentals that avoided the mess of Basic and the complexity of Algol. In my second year the coursework for one module was to write a Pascal compiler in Algol-68.

Whilst Pascal has largely been superceded, Goto is still considered harmful.

Re: Nothing new...

You raise an interesting point.

>The reason that you're stuck with a C interface is because that's what the OS is written in.

Whilst that is true, it is also not the whole truth.

Prior to Unix, other OS's did provide compilers, API's and libraries for other high-level languages such as COBOL and FORTRAN. ie. the OS authors didn't expect application programmers to use the same language as them. This is probably in part due to where Unix came from, compared to where OS/390, VMS etc. came from.

The current state of Linux and Unix owes much to people sticking with Unix as originally defined and not upgrading it into something that supported the usage of application programming languages different to the systems programming language it was written in. So in some respects it isn't 'C' that has aged or been out-grown, but the worldview behind Linux/Unix as they currently stand.

>If Linux was written in some trendy new language, would it exist damn near everywhere?

Well remember the beauty of Unix was that you only needed to right a small amount of assembler to be able to port the C compiler on to your platform and then compile Unix for your platform. So I suggest if your trend language and OS is as portable as C/Unix then the potential is there

Re: Oh, boy ...

Interesting, a computing book that seems to have aged well: first edition 1977, second edition 2006.

I suspect many joining the profession today would not give an IT book written in the late 1970's~early 1980's a second glance, thinking the information it contained to be outdated, but they would be wrong.

Whilst I'm sure the new edition does contain much useful new material, I suspect for an undergraduate course in compiler techniques the first edition is probably still more than sufficient and much easier on the pocket.

Re: Oh, boy ...

> since pdp-11 is an example of a beautiful and clean system architecture, contrary to for instance Intel which is a total mess of garbled and mostly failed ideas

The i86 segmentation model did my head in when developing the code generator for a C compiler...

Re: Nothing new, kinda pathetic really

>I could even mention how useful it is to learn a language like C that forces you to learn to think more like a computer, rather than a compiler who goes out of its way to pretend you can just write plain english instead of code

Depends on what it is you are wanting to achieve. Having learnt 'C' or other similar procedural languages, non-procedural languages like Prolog can be a bit of a challenge.

Personally, I enjoyed the purity of Algol-68 as it allowed you to forget about the machine and focus on algorithms and data structures. Prolog and LISP were likewise interesting, if only to challenge the brain. Now, writing programs for highly parallel or distributed environments, that was a challenge...

Re: Annnnd...you completely missed the point of the article

> C programmers doggedly hang on to their beliefs of superiority.

I don't and I helped write one of the first C development environments for the PC back in the 1980's.

From the article it would seem Classic K&R White book C has suffered from poor standards development over the decades so the issue of intmax_t speaks volumes about the poor quality of input into the C99 specification rather than whether or not 'C' is a programming language.

There is a lesson here for the supporters of other languages such as Rust and Swift here: your language might be good and well specified today, but poorly thought out enhancement to the language specification and standard over the decades can lead to massive maintenance problems.

The 'superiority' of 'C' always was both a marketing claim to sell it against FORTRAN, COBOL etc. and something "hobby" programmers used to claim that by knowing 'C' they were somehow more professional than those that only knew VB and/or Pascal.

Also, just like Windows and Linux, if you build a new platform most these days will tend to build for Windows and/or Linux rather than develop their own new OS, likewise having built your platform it makes sense to include tools that many are familiar with - hence the 'C' compiler. Note all this is determined by marketing not C developers.

As the article makes clear, some languages better support certain types of IT problems than others, and so the best advice is to use the right tools. That's why in the 80's in addition to using 'C' I also learnt Occam and ADA. Hence my advice today is whilst you might prefer to write in Rust say, you should also learn Swift and other languages including COBOL and FORTRAN, so that you are able to intelligently select tools...

Re: Seems fair

This was one of the dumb aspects of the W10 concept. Whilst the OS name remained as "Windows 10", users had to learn about build numbers to determine if certain things were or were not supported.

This made things more beneficial to system builders, particularly at the cheap end, as they could sell stuff as "Windows 10" yet it was only capable of running an early 32-bit build that was soon to go EoL. Obviously, I don't remember any reports of users being conned into buying a 486 to run XP.

Re: What about?

Kaspersky (*) is still getting updates.

(*) Is that a permitted security suite these days? I have 100 days to decide what to replace it with.

Re: The Windows 11 ISO has 'hard blocks' in place, even with a clean install.

Its a "Release Preview" not a fully developed feature, remember this is Microsoft where the new normal is to release stuff still in development.

Althogh in saying that, I don't see why MS would provide any (supported) method to override the display of this watermark, unless the user upgrades their hardware and performs a repair reinstall... Remember it is primarily a reminder/nag that says "To get the full W11 experience you need to upgrade your hardware".

I can see this being enhanced to cover cpu's, network adapters etc. that MS deem are out-of-support.

Remember the early days of W10, I had a W7-x64 machine with 4GB of RAM, MS decided this system was only fit for W10-x32, I suspect if MS had more about the downgrade more people would have gone out and upgraded to W10-x64.

By the way Chubb and Yale are old-school locksmiths, don't expect the new boys aka Alexa, Hive etc. who demand a subscription to be as considerate.

Re: The Windows 11 ISO has 'hard blocks' in place, even with a clean install.

Perhaps the reason for this new feature is to permit the installation of W11 on "legacy" hardware, but to visibly flag W11 is running in this mode, assisting support calls.

The reason for doing this would be to force users off W10, because uptake of W11 isn't fast enough.

Re: What about?

But then you get a huge warning in the Settings -> Windows Update saying the system isn't W11 compatible etc. Fortunately this isn't a problem, W10 will continue to update. Although like GWX, expect the nagging to get more desperate as we get closer to W10 EoL.

However, if MS determines your machine is W11 compatible, you do have problems as it seems it only permits the installation of critical updates, blocking feature updates from say 2004/20H2/21H1 to 21H2, they would much prefer users to click on the upgrade now to W11. Whilst there are ways around this, it should be unnecessary

I also prefer this over the typical arrangement where the most functional USB-C port is the charging port. It's almost as if the expectation is that you will carry a USB-C hub around in addition to the laptop.

Although, there is one benefit of the USB-C charging port, you can readily get magsafe USB connectors and so you don't wreck the port when someone trips over the power lead.

Re: What's the fallback mechanism?

>it's very *easy* for commentards to laze around on comment threads poking holes.

The trouble is (and I'm willing to bet on it) that the ElReg commenters have more real-world security experience than FIDO et al...

Take one example, the banks move to 2FA, up to late last year, my partner could call me from a meeting breakout, train etc. and ask me to use online banking to perform some task on 'her' account(*). Now her account is tied exclusively to her phone, so try and do anything sensible like login and pay a bill or transfer money, now requires multiple auth codes from her phone...

(*) For some reason, as I've been the one managing the joint account, the bank has discontinued her bank card and tied it to my phone and hence it is now 'my' account. What is even better, their telephone banking also uses the phone for auth, so she is now unable to even use telephone banking...

Re: What's the fallback mechanism?

I suspect the tokens will also have an EoL attribute, I know the tokens many applications install have an expiry even if I've ticked the "I trust this system" box, because I've not used that token within some unspecified timeframe.

Additionally, with SSL certificates increasingly having only a 1 year life, those old devices can rapidly become junk.

Re: What's the fallback mechanism?

>Smartphone luddites aside... in the real world people drop and break their phones.

Well in theory they still have the SIM...

Last summer there were several smartphones visible on the bottom of the boating lake where my daughter worked, unfortunately, the water is several metres deep and so they were unable to fish them out...

Re: Microsoft already nailed this

So in the name of "security" you gave a third-party that doesn't actually need it, your phone number?

Bet you also gave then your address, bank account details and date of birth, plus if you signed up for a family account ... next they'll be asking for your social security number - in in the interests of 'security' ...(Don't tell me you also access MS via a VPN, because you are worried about revealing the IP address your ISP has temporarily allocated to you)

Given the biggest risk seems to be the leakage of credentials from compromised websites/organisations, you've just made your MS credentials of interest to all the Indian "Microsoft Tech Support" companies...

So explain again why ElReg needs to know my phone number, just so that I can comment on here?

Remember the lesson from FB is that your data will be abused and used against you to generate revenue by the website owners.

Re: Count Me Out

Don't forget there are others such as Oki, Kyocera, Konica Minolta, Ricoh to name a few that are readily available in the UK.

Re: Is this about patenting a un-inventive physical interface - or something else

It has just occurred to me that this might be something to do with a Chinese patent Canon obtained.

China doesn't respect US patents, so perhaps Canon has gained a Chinese patent for something that already had a US patent (current or expired). It is now using that Chinese patent against Chinese manufacturers, specifically abusing using the US ITC to bar the import of products from these manufacturers...

Looks like an opportunity for ElReg to do a little more digging...

Re: Interesting Article - Not Fact Checked

>what new features are there that printers have given us since the first Canon LBP?

Good question, but the focus here is: what new features are there in toner cartridges that are covered by active patents.

Personally, given the first laserjet printer was invented by Xerox in 1969 and the first desktop/mass market laserjet was introduced by HP in 1984, I would have thought there were few real toner cartridge invention patents that Canon could be holding.

Re: The problem is easily solved

>Anyone know of a decent DRM-free photo printer?

Yes, however, you probably won't find it in Currys or elsewhere on the high street...