Category: Kim Blog (English)
Personal blog. Thoughts, conspiracies with a danish twist etc.
Some time ago this comic strip was published
It actually took me some time to figure it out.
The robots are programmed in the programming language C, and the robots went berserk because the engineers simply missed an equal sign in a conditional statement, turning it into an assignment instead of a comparison.
This kind of an error is called a software bug.
Software bugs are very real, and can have have dire consequences, here’s a list of some of the most significant ones. The list includes rocket, airplane and helicopter crashes, patients dying from radiation overdoses and payments ending up in the wrong accounts, so why not crazy murdering robots?
Somewhat alarming, it is possible to make the same mistake in the more modern programming languages, C#, Java and JavaScript that are derived from C, and it makes me wonder why these languages even permit this, and old languages like BASIC and ALGOL never did?
My guess is that it is mostly to maintain compatibility with it’s predecessor C, and that it can be useful in some cases, but I consider it strange and potentially dangerous, and it makes me wonder if current mainstream programming languages, especially those derived directly from C, should be our choice for programming anything.
Exterminators
A redeeming factor, is that for instance the C# development tools warns us about the error, and that the compiler even suggests the correct solution, but it’s still possible to run the program, and make the robot a crazy murdering one.
External links and references
- C (programming language). Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- Conditional (computer programming). Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- List of software bugs. Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- BASIC. Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- ALGOL. Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- C#. Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- Java. Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- JavaScript. Retrieved on 1 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
- Compiler. Retrieved on 2 October 2017 – via Wikipedia.
Facebook discussion
“So you’re from Damascus”?
Yeah
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2017
Kilde: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/891713104786083841
Do you think Facebook cares about it’s users?
“There should be more options, this is why I qualify my vote of “strongly disagree”.
You run a business, and are EXTREMELY good at it, keep up the good work and keep on working with open source software and contribute back.
But do you care about me? I don’t feel it, and I’m not addicted to your service, it would just make my life much more boring and cumbersome it I didn’t use it.
To conclude: your tools are invaluable and impressive, not because you care about me, but because you run a business and would like to grow it, it’s a win-win, but we’re not friends”
“Venner”
Please be my friends on facebook – I know I unfriended you, but it was an art experiment 😉 www.facebook.com/kim.bach
For the last couple of days I have been investigating why I couldn’t make conditional feature installation work in a Microsoft Installer (MSI) package.
Google to the rescue, but it sent me in a lot of different directions, none to the point, but then I finally managed to formulate the correct search terms:
Google search: installshield conditionally install feature
And on page two this article showed up:
MSI Application Packaging: Conditionally Installing a Feature
Here I found the solution I was looking for: have each feature, conditionally, set the INSTALLLEVEL property “correctly”, the last bit was not as simple as I thought.
Oldie but goodie
But…WAIT…That article is from 2005, and the newest entry on the blog is from 2005! The author seems to have lost interest after a few months of activity.
It’s quite amazing that a blog, that has been “dead” for 12 yrs, could give me the solution.
This is why you might want to go for a “hosted” blog solution, like Blogspot, instead of hosting your blog yourself.
If you do, there’s a better chance that your content won’t get vandalised due to unpatched software, go to eternal bit fields because you stop paying, in short avoid the dreaded error 404s.
This page must get significant traffic, and a lot of people might have benefitted from this, still I was the first to leave a comment.
So you wanna live forever?
OTOH, does it really matter? “I”‘m on archive.org and so is MSI Application Packaging
And you might not be aware of this, but the Danish Royal Library is harvesting content from the entire Danish web: Netarkivet (The Net Archive) — Det Kgl. Bibliotek too.
The content is only available to researchers through Kulturarvsclusteret (The Cultural Heritage Cluster) – Big data møder dansk kulturarv — Det Kgl. Bibliotek.
So just make your site available for indexing, ie. crawling, and you’re gonna live “forever”.
Press release from the office of POTUS
Washington January 21st 2017As outlined in the inaugural speech January 20th 2017 by POTUS, the POTUS would, as one of the first actions, work to bring U.S. Citizen, cyber terrorist, Edward Joseph Snowden to justice.
This early morning Russian police arrested Mr. Snowden and deported him to his last country of origin, Hong Kong, where a US. airplane waited for him. In the airport Mr. Snowden brandished something that looked like a knife, and he was fatally injured in the head by Hong Kong police, Mr. Snowden died 30 minutes later from his injuries.
The funeral took place at sea from USS Enterprise.
In the investigation ordered by Congress, it was revealed that Mr. Snowden wasn’t brandishing a knife but a plastic toy called a Rubik’s cube, that he was holding behind his back.
“The Prime Time Of Your Life”
The prime time of your life
The prime time of your life
The prime time of your life
Now, live it, the prime time of your life
Now, live it, the prime time of your life
Now, live it, the prime time of your life
(do it)
Now, (and) live it (today), the prime time of your life
(do it)
Now, (and) live it (today), the prime time of your life
(come on and do it)
Now, (don’t wait and) live it (today), the prime time of your life
(come on and do it)
Now, (don’t wait and) live it (today), the prime time of your life
(come on and do it)
Now, (don’t wait and) live it (today), the prime time of your life
(come on and do it)
Now, (don’t wait and) live it (today), the prime time of your life
The prime time of your life
The prime time of your life
I’m gonna take my time
She gon’ get hers before I
I’m gonna take it slow
I’m not gonna rush the stroll
If you don’t know by now
@kim_bach is a freak, freak, freak
I keep the faith with me
Seven days of the week, week, week
And all that we ever do
Is play in the sheets, sheets, sheets
And hack up a site
And go back to sleep, sleep, sleep
All these accidents,
That happen,
Follow the dot,
Coincidence,
Makes sense,
Only with you,
You don’t have to speak,
I feel.
Emotional landscapes,
They puzzle me,
Then the riddle gets solved,
And you push me up to this
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be,
State of emergency,
Is where I want to be.
All that no-one sees,
You see,
What’s inside of me,
Every nerve that hurts,
You heal,
Deep inside of me, oo-oohh,
You don’t have to speak,
I feel.
Emotional landscapes,
They puzzle me – confuse,
Then the riddle gets solved,
And you push me up to this
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be,
State of emergency,
Is where I want to be.
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be,
Emotional landscapes,
They puzzle me,
Then the riddle gets solved,
And you push me up to this
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be,
State of emergency,
Is where I want to be.
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be,
State of emergency,
State of, state of,
How beautiful,
Emergency,
Is where I want to be.
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be,
State of emergency,
Is where I want to be.
State of emergency,
How beautiful to be.
