Talking with one of my professors, the subject of trust in computing came up. The professor related a story about a paper discussing a theoretical vulnerability in the entire computing infrastructure. (Unfortunately, I can’t find the paper. I think it was somebody’s PhD dissertation, but I’m not positive.) The issue, in essence is that compilers are themselves compiled.
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Archive for the ‘school’ Category
Mar
31
2007
Trust in Compilers
Mar
30
2007
The Hunt for an SCM System
Balancing software engineering best practices with the realities of being a student (and thus often working alone or in very small groups) is a bit tricky, particularly when it comes to source code management. I know that it’s a very good idea to use some sort of version system, I’ve been told this by my professors time and again, and I’ve learned it the hard way myself.
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Mar
21
2007
Nifty little python program
Create a python script with the following contents, and call it, say, quine.py:
1 2 3 | a = """a = %c%c%c%s%c%c%c print a %% (34, 34, 34, a, 34, 34, 34)""" print a % (34, 34, 34, a, 34, 34, 34) |
Now run it. The output is the program itself!
For double the fun, try this at a command prompt:
python quine.py | python - | python - | python -
(ad nauseum)
Super Cool!
Aug
29
2006
Legos! Robots!
I’m taking a course on robotics this semester, using Lego Mindstorms NXT. As a part of the course we need to keep a journal of our progress. Mine is here.
