"Steve Chang, the Chairman of Trend Micro, has kicked up a controversy by claiming that open source software is inherently less secure. When talking about the security of smartphones, Chang claimed that the iPhone is more secure than Android because being an open-source platform, attackers know more about the underlying architecture."
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Member since:2010-03-08
From this section, what I extract is...
-B handled strings like crap (indeed, for coding something like UNIX where just about everything is a string, this sounds like a big issue ^^)
-B didn't handle floating point data properly, due to its will to treat everything as a word
-B's pointer mechanism was slow
-B was much slower than Assembly as a whole
So it sounds like we have a mixture of language limitations (lack of control) and heavy performance issues, particularly in terms of pointer handling.
Wouldn't we have the same issues with "safe" languages like C# or Java nowadays ?
I mean, I have a hard time picturing myself a scheduler written in Java, as an example, with GC kicking in and freezing the computer in the middle of a task switch.
Edited 2011-01-16 20:32 UTC
Member since:2005-07-08
Then please take some time to read about Oberon operating system:
http://www-old.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/ProjectOberon.pdf
The Spin operating system
http://www-spin.cs.washington.edu/
The Inferno operating system, which is partially programmed in Limbo
http://code.google.com/p/inferno-os/
The Microsoft Singularity project
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/
The Java Sqwak VM is mainly written in Java and runs on bare metal
http://labs.oracle.com/projects/squawk/
Just to name a few well known projects in the area of operating system research.
Edited 2011-01-16 22:18 UTC
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Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
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This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Member since:
2005-07-13
Apparently, B - the successor to BCPL and predecessor of C - was an awkward fit for the PDP-11. Take a look at the section entitled "The problems of B" from Ritchie's historical treatise:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html