vaxdigitalnh

I agree with you. Maybe the better question is why does anyone think it shouldn't compile? And then we can ask how much programming history they know.

I think it's useful to know how C compilers, the C specification and C coding styles have evolved over the years. For one, it helps put some of the arguments for/against certain styles and syntax in perspective.

In short, make an effort to learn from history before you make the minimal effort required to learn from a contemporary forum like stackexchange.

That's my main problem with OpenSSL: it tries to be so much more than SSL (despite it's name), and with all that extra functionality comes more responsibility, e.g. a much higher auditing burden.

OpenSSL is an impressive amount of work that has a long history, but for some purposes, it seems needlessly large and complex.

Reminds me of when OpenBSD wrote openntpd. The ntpd folks felt the need to criticise the project because it tried to simplify things a little, and left out much of the functionality (and complexity) added to ntpd over the years.

Overall, unless I am the one who has written something and thus understands how it is constructed from the ground up, I find smaller amounts of code (e.g. as standalone modules) easier to work with than larger ones.

Massive, integrated projects with huge amounts of code seem very popular, and I often wonder if I am alone in my appreciaton and preference for smaller standalone chunks of code.

How about MatrixSSL?

I've given up on the SSL libraries in favor of simpler, non-IETF offerings from a seemingly maverik yet brillliant crytographer who is very focused on performance, but I'd be curious what you think of MatrixSSL.

Reading this I could not help but think of humans as fish, other mammals or some other organism being "tagged" and "tracked", without their consent (but with some purported benefit to the organism, agreed upon by the researchers). Often researchers tag organisms in an effort to help them survive in a world where humans threaten their continued health or existence. But not always.

It is the idea of "without their consent" that is most intriguing.

It's arguable that sometimes organisms can survive on their own, with the adaptions evolution has provided them with, and without tagging, tracking and human intervention.

What is the computer? The cell?

Python code is not DNA.

Even to say binary is DNA seems a stretch, and of course it's quaternary.

With cells, there is no single "front-side bus". There is Brownian motion, geometry (e.g. at the level of DNA, A,T,C and G each have their own geometry), collisions and a poorly understood process of geometrical "recognition". We know how to build circuits and registers and construct computers from them, but we don't understand how RNA builds up a cell from scratch. We can only speculate that RNA can do this... the origin of life.

Perhaps Python would be a protein, but certainly not one that is required for the cell to function. Some interesting exogenous protein perhaps. If you want to control the essential "cellular proteins", the basic machinery of the cell, e.g. the enzymes you allude to, then you need to learn assembly. Python, like an exogenous protein, only acts to influence the machinery of the cell, including the proteins within the cell: in the case of the computer, circuits, registers and an assembly language.

Processes could be analagous cellular processes, i.e. what the proteins may take part in, their various roles in the biochemical reactions that drive the cell. Proteins are not the running processes, they are running the processes.

I think, with respect to coding, more important than the accuracy of the metaphor is simply the skill of being able to think abstractly and derive metaphors. So just the exercise of trying to come up with a comparison is something a programmer would instinctually do.

All of our attempted comparisons are likely flawed in numerous ways. But it's the exercise of making them that makes them worthwhile.

Good luck.

... but fails to generate as much quality journalism as even one US newspaper.

Define quality journalism however you wish, but please consult a definition of journalism, e.g. how to write, edit and report news.

The point is, as with so many things they offer, not just news, Google is nothing but a middleman. They are not going to be the ones to keep e.g. decent long form journalism alive.

How that situation - a monoplistic middleman for news - bodes for our long term future is some interesting food for thought.

Nice. ;)

I love the idea behind this company. I wish her every success. We need more entrepreneurs with this type of vision.

"Public policy should not be dictated by emotions."

But the media knows that a large share of their "news business" is driven by emotion. And so here we are all thinking about mass shootings.

And we know the media has an enormous influence on politics. So add this all up and what do we have?

A terrible tragedy that affects a small community but also a lot of tangential effects, remote onlookers, politicians and an enterprising "media business".

I have a cousin who as a child was a student in a narrowly averted early grade school classroom mass shooting. Honestly, when I first heard about this incident in Connecticut I thought of him. I can only wonder what he thought about when he read about this incident. When it hits close to home, there might be hesistation to even talk about these things, they are so horrible. We might block them out. We might tell the children to close their eyes. We might try to pretend it never happened.

But for the media and the "news business", it's a different ballgame.

I'd like to be able to use pipelining without having to de-chunk. That is, thanks to the the HTTP/1.1 protocol I have never found a server that accepts pipelined requests and delivers unchunked output. Is there a reason they must be linked together? Maybe you could compare this to how SPDY requires header compression; you can't get the other features without accepting the compression feature... the single feature which was the source of the security problems.

In sum, why can't we uncouple features that each may have merit on their own?

Is there any limit to what type of info you could place in the 32 byte SSID field? It could be an email address. It could be some other plain text. It could be encrypted text. It could be a public key. It could be a 32 byte "blog". Or a 32 byte "tweet". Use your imagination.

On your mark, get set, file your bogus software patents!

I still love the VAX. Even after all these years it still seems like a robust computer, much for the reason bdfh42 cited: it's built to last. Alas, how many computers are built with that intention today? I don't use Windows anymore, but the the SIMH VAX simulator used to work great on XP; it was very fast. Does it still work on Windows 8?