NET Domain Software Sensing Δ 8th of September 2014 Ω 11:37 AM

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~ Open64 Compiler ~ SourceForge ~ LWN	~ Using Developmental Neural Nets to Achieve Robust Behavior ~ Objective-C Language ~ sense for Ξ	~ sense for Ξ ~ sense for Ξ ~ sense for Ξ
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«Software Sensing	Θ	Θ
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~ Open64 Compiler

»Rebuilding the whole Debian archive using the Open64 compiler

»Open64
ξ is an open source, state-of-art, optimizing compiler for the Intel IA-64 (Itanium), AMD Opteron and Intel IA-32e architecture
ξ derives from the SGI compilers for the MIPS R10000 processor
ξ was released under the GPL in 2000
ξ mostly serves as a research platform for compiler and computer architecture research groups
ξ is licensed under the GPL
ξ supports Fortran 77/95 and C/C++, as well as the shared memory programming model OpenMP
ξ can conduct high-quality interprocedural analysis, data flow analysis, data dependence analysis and array region analysis

Open64 installation
$ wget http://ovh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/open64/open64-4.0-src.tar.bz2
$ tar xfvj open64-4.0-src.tar.bz2
$ cd open64-4.0
$ export TOOLROOT=/opt/open64
$ make
$ make install (as root)

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~ SourceForge

»SourceForge

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~ LWN

»LWN

»Linus Torvalds, Geek of the Week

History
ξ Linus Torvalds (LT) is an acknowledged godfather of the open-source movement
ξ was just 21 when he changed the world by writing Linux
ξ today, 17 years later, Linux powers everything from supercomputers to mobile phones
ξ if Linux didn't exist, would Google, Facebook, PHP, Apache, or MySQL?

ξ Linus is the son of the journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds
ξ was attracted to computers from an early age
ξ attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to study Computer Science
ξ In 1991, he purchased a PC
ξ as the computers at the university were Unix-based, he bought a copy of Andrew Tanenbaum’s MINIX operating system
ξ he was dissatisfied with it, and set about writing his own Unix clone from scratch, unaware of the enormity of the task
ξ after four months work, in his bedroom in his mother’s apartment, he announced, in the MINIX newsgroup comp.os.minix
ξ “I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones
ξ this has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready.”
ξ Torvalds called it Linux (short for Linus' MINIX)
ξ he took a break from his studies to work full-time on the project
ξ by the end of October he was able to announce,
ξ ‘It has finally reached the stage where it's even usable’, and released Linux under the GPL (GNU General Public License).
ξ It soon became the focus of the largest collaborative ‘open source’ project ever undertaken,
ξ including geek superstars Fred van Kempen and Alan Cox.
ξ Linus led the development work, not just by his technical brilliance, but by his engaging and genial personality.

ξ Linus went on to spend a total of ten years at Helsinki University, as student, researcher and instructor
ξ his M.Sc. thesis was titled 'Linux: A Portable Operating System'
ξ From 1997 to 1999 he was involved in 86open, helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix.
ξ after a visit to the Transmeta Corporation in late 1996, he accepted a position at the company in California,
ξ where he worked from February 1997 through to June 2003
ξ he then moved to the Open Source Development Labs,
ξ which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation, where he works today

ξ He continues to work on Linux’s kernel, creating code under the GNU GPL (General Public Licence) and
ξ leaving other people to package and distribute it
ξ Unlike many open source legends, he likes to maintain a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products

RM:
ξ 'In your famous debate with Tanenbaum on micro versus monolithic
ξ LT: kernels you say that "From a theoretical (and aesthetical) standpoint [micro kernels are better]".
ξ Could you foresee a day where the practical matches the theoretical and aesthetical and the Linux Kernel does become obsolete?'

LT:
ξ 'I can certainly imagine the Linux kernel becoming obsolete
ξ anything else would just be sad, really, in the big picture
ξ that said having now worked in the OS area for the past, what, 17 years or so,
ξ I don't think it's micro kernels per se that would make it happen
ξ IOW, having done "traditional" kernels for that long,
ξ I've become convinced that they are done the way they are done traditionally for the same reason wheels are round
ξ - it's just the right way to do it: The same way that wheels are round
ξ because it's practical and they just roll better that way,
ξ you don't want to split a monolithic kernel up into many smaller things
ξ In a kernel, you basically need to know what all the pieces are doing to make certain global decisions,
ξ and that's hard if you split things up too much
ξ But what can make a big deal to what is the best way of doing things is simply hardware changes
ξ or changes in what users do and how they interact with their computers
ξ and while I don't see any big fundamental shift in how things are done,
ξ I think that is ultimately what may make Linux obsolete - not in the near future, though
ξ Software and hardware have an amazing inertia, and ways of doing things tend to stay around for decades. So I'm not exactly worried. '

RM:
ξ Many significant projects such as Apache, PHP etc do not use the GPL license.
ξ Do you think this damages the free software source community or
ξ do you think the heterogeneity of open source licenses has allowed more people to contribute to the overall effort? '

LT:
ξ 'I think heterogeneity is good.
ξ People don't agree on their goals and their motivations, and they shouldn't.
ξ There's no real reason why everybody should agree on a single license
ξ - it's not only unreasonable to expect people to all agree to begin with,
ξ but different areas of endeavor may simply have fundamental reasons why they want to do things in different ways.
ξ For example, I obviously believe that the GPL (and v2 in particular) is a great model for working together
ξ - letting everybody share the code, but also making sure that nobody can then try to take advantage of other peoples work
ξ - you "pay" for the source code by giving source code back
ξ I call it the "tit-for-tat" model, and it works well not only in the software world,
ξ but is fairly well known in economics and game theory too
ξ But the fact that I like it for the kind of endeavor I'm involved with doesn't mean that others can't have other goals.
ξ For example, if you're a standards body, and you want to use open source as a way to distribute a reference model,
ξ you may not be interested in the "tit-for-tat" part,
ξ but you want to just spread the reference code as widely as possible so that people start out with a certain basic proficiency,
ξ but you also want to make that reference the base for proprietary code-bases
ξ So in that second situation, you might want to do an Apache or BSD license.
ξ So even from a purely rational standpoint it makes sense to have different licenses.
ξ And no, I'm not claiming that programmers are always purely rational.
ξ There's a lot of ego involved, and a lot of personal quirks,
ξ which may explain exactly why there are so many subtly different licenses to try out.
ξ But hey, choice is good!
ξ And there really isn't a lot of confusion, since there really are just a handful of very popular and common licenses. '

RM
ξ 'Recently we interviewed Dr Richard Hipp of SQLite fame, what do you think about his decision
ξ to remove all restrictions on the use of his code and place it in the public domain?
ξ Why didn't you do the same with Linux - surely then the code would really be free? '

LT:
ξ 'That word ‘free’ is actually a word I try to avoid using, because it means so many different things.
ξ And no, I don't mean just the trivial difference between ‘free of cost’ (as in ‘gratis’) and ‘freedom’.
ξ Even in just the ’freedom’ meaning, different people have so many different ideas of exactly what and who should have the ‘freedom’.
ξ It's one reason I use the term ‘Open Source’, and one reason I'm actually known to butt heads with the FSF.
ξ They make a big deal about the "freedom" term, and they define it in just very particular way.
ξ So what is ‘freedom’ to you?
ξ Is it ‘anarchy’ - the freedom to do anything you damn well want to do?
ξ If so, the BSD license is certainly much more free than the GPL is.
ξ Or is it any number of other ways to describe what "freedom" might mean?
ξ Often in very emotional terms, to boot?
ξ I'm not really interested in that kind of discussion.
ξ It's what I call "mental masturbation", when you engage is some pointless intellectual exercise that has no possible meaning.
ξ So when I try to explain my choice of license, I use the term ‘Open Source’,
ξ and try to explain my choice of the GPLv2 not in terms of freedom,
ξ but in terms of how I want people to be able to improve on the source code
ξ - by discouraging hiding and controlling of the source code with a legal copyright license,
ξ everybody can build on the work of each other, and it basically encourages a model where people end up working together.
ξ And don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that in a ‘sing cwm-by-ya around the camp-fire’ kind of way.
ξ It's very much an 'everybody for themselves' model,
ξ where people are encouraged to work on the things that they think matter for their needs.

GPLv2:
ξ But the GPLv2 is there to keep it from anarchy:
ξ it doesn't block competition and people working at opposite ends,
ξ but it does block people from trying to be anti-social and hurt each other.
ξ People need social rules.
ξ The same is true of projects.
ξ And you need some rules that can be enforced, so that people know up-front what they are getting themselves into.
ξ And note how I'm not saying that the BSD license is bad,
ξ or that putting something into the public domain (which is even more of a free-for-all) is bad.
ξ If it was what Hipp wanted for his code, then it was the right choice.
ξ So I think that anarchy is certainly ‘more free’ than having rules,
ξ but it is also pretty certainly also less productive,
ξ and I think that at least a certain class of programmers are going to be less interested in the project
ξ exactly because they don't see the rules in place to protect their work.
ξ So not everybody likes the GPL, but a lot of people like it exactly because it puts certain safeguards in place.
ξ Are they the safeguards you would want?
ξ That will have to be your personal choice before you join a project that uses that license,
ξ but we can certainly look back and say that they seem to be conducive to productivity and success of the project. '

RM
ξ 'Do you think software patents are a good idea?'

LT:
ξ 'Heh - definitely not.
ξ They're a disaster.
ξ The whole point (and the original idea) behind patents in the US legal sense was to encourage innovation.
ξ If you actually look at the state of patents in the US today, they do no such thing.
ξ Certainly not in software, and very arguably not in many other areas either.
ξ Quite the reverse -
ξ patents are very much used to stop competition, which is undeniably the most powerful way to encourage innovation.
ξ Anybody who argues for patents is basically arguing against open markets and competition, but they never put it in those terms.
ξ So the very original basis for the patents is certainly not being fulfilled today, which should already tell you something.
ξ And that's probably true in pretty much any area.
ξ But the reason patents are especially bad for software is that software isn't some single invention
ξ where you can point to a single new idea. Not at all.
ξ All relevant software is a hugely complex set of very detailed rules, and
ξ there are millions of small and mostly trivial ideas rather than some single clever idea that can be patented.
ξ The worth of the software is not in any of those single small decisions, but in the whole.
ξ It's also distressing to see that people patent ‘ideas’.
ξ It's not even a working "thing";
ξ it's just a small way of doing things that you try to patent, just to have a weapon in an economic fight.
ξ Sad. Patents have lost all redeeming value, if they ever had any. '

RM
ξ 'What do you think of Microsoft's efforts to take part in the open source community?
ξ Do you think they are sincere in their efforts or do you see it as some sort of embrace-extend-extinguish approach? '

LT:
ξ 'I have no real way to judge that.
ξ I personally think that parts of Microsoft certainly are sincere, and other parts are almost certainly not.
ξ It's a pretty big and bloated company, and when one hand says it wants to participate in open source,
ξ I doubt the other hand knows or cares about it.'

RM
ξ 'What part of an Operating system do you think is the most difficult to write?'

LT:
ξ That's actually an interesting question, just because my answer is that it's never any particular part.
ξ Yes, all the details tend to be complicated too, but the real job is to make it all work together.
ξ Compared to that, any particular detail you might want to point at may be a technical challenge,
ξ but ultimately not anything that really puts people off.
ξ For example, one area that we had a really hard time with (and that still causes problems, even if it's gotten much better)
ξ is power management and
ξ the whole suspend/resume that people do on laptops.
ξ And it was hard not so much because any particular detail was really intractable,
ξ but because it touches every single subsystem in the whole kernel (and many out in user land too!), and
ξ that was really what ended up making it so challenging

RM
ξ 'Which Linux distro do you use? '

LT:
ξ 'I've used different distributions over the years.
ξ Right now I happen to use Fedora 9 on most of the computers I have,
ξ which really boils down to the fact that Fedora had fairly good support for PowerPC back when I used that, so I grew used to it.
ξ But I actually don't care too much about the distribution, as long as it makes it easy to install and keep reasonably up-to-date.
ξ I care about the kernel and a few programs, and the set of programs I really care about is actually fairly small.
ξ And when it comes to distributions, ease of installation has actually been one of my main issues
ξ - I'm a technical person, but I have a very specific area of interest, and I don't want to fight the rest.
ξ So the only distributions I have actively avoided are the ones that are known to be "overly technical"
ξ - like the ones that encourage you to compile your own programs etc.
ξ Yeah, I can do it, but it kind of defeats the whole point of a distribution for me.
ξ So I like the ones that have a name of being easy to use.
ξ I've never used plain Debian, for example, but I like Ubuntu.
ξ And before Debian people attack me - yeah, I know, I know,
ξ it's supposedly much simpler and easier to install these days.
ξ But it certainly didn't use to be, so I never had any reason to go for it. '

RM
ξ 'John 'Maddog' Hall used to say that 5.2 billion people had yet to choose their operating system and as such there was all to play for.
ξ It was just a matter of getting to them before Bill and Steve did.
ξ How has that been playing out?
ξ Have India and China and Indonesia now chosen their OS?
ξ Or have the universities of the BRICs begun to appreciate the benefits of .NET over Mono ?'

LT:
ξ 'I do think that open source has a huge role to play in many places,
ξ not even so much because of cost
ξ the incremental costs of any software copy is basically zero, so
ξ Windows can certainly make cheap copies for the developing world available
ξ as it is for building up their own infrastructure and software knowledge
ξ That's one of the advantages of open source, after all
ξ - you're not just buying into a "black box", you're actually buying into a whole infrastructure
ξ that you can study and really make your own
ξ And I do think it seems to be playing out that way in some places.
ξ Especially parts of South America, for whatever reason (probably largely cultural).
ξ But I certainly don't think this is an all-or-nothing thing, so as those countries grow their computer usage,
ξ I don't think it's going to be radically different from any other area.'

RM
ξ 'Is the proliferation of Linux distributions, a good or a bad thing on balance?
ξ Would he rather there was more focused effort on fewer distributions. '

LT:
ξ 'Me personally, I'm a believer in choice.
ξ Yes, it can be confusing, and yes, it can cause the market to look more fragmented,
ξ but on the other hand, it also begets competition
ξ And competition is good - and it's good even within a project.
ξ It's what makes people try different things, and it ends up being very motivational.
ξ So I don't personally think we'd have gotten anywhere without all those wild-and-wacky distributions.
ξ I'd rather have a bit of spirited discussion and even infighting than
ξ a staid landscape with a single vendor (or a couple of vendors who carve out the market).'

RM
ξ 'It's almost as if the 'distro economy' of Linux is like the Taiwan model;
ξ i.e. the Taiwanese economy is unlike Japan, Korea and Mainland China insofar
ξ as there is a constant organic churn and limit to the growth of individual companies and
ξ yet it is still highly innovative technologically
ξ Red Hat and SuSE once promised to be the Ford and GM of Linux
ξ but where are they now? Ubuntu came from nowhere and beat them easily. Will the same happen to Ubuntu?'

LT:
ξ 'I think that's very healthy.
ξ And I do know that the whole model means that you have to run just to keep up
ξ in evolution, it's called the ‘Red Queen's Race’ when you have to run just to stay in place - from Alice in Wonderland
ξ And that's good. It keeps us all honest.
ξ And I very much say ‘us’, because I think similar effects happen inside each project too:
ξ maintainers cannot just rest on their laurels and coast along on their projects,
ξ because if you don't do the job well, somebody else can come in and do it for you
ξ - and it happens occasionally to open source projects and people talk about forking. '

RM
ξ 'Has the boom in Linux certification in the last few years had a positive effect on enterprise trust in the platform?
ξ Or did greater enterprise adoption cause the demand for certification?
ξ It seems arguable that trust in the platform has increased inversely
ξ as the support-engineer's status has been lowered from mystic guru to humble technician?'

LT:
ξ 'Hmm. I actually don't see it in those terms,
ξ because I don't think they are at all opposing viewpoints, but quite the reverse -
ξ just the natural progression of enterprise economics.
ξ Yes, enterprise trust and adoption spurs interest in areas that enterprises pay for,
ξ so enterprise trust obviously results in more demand for certification
ξ But yes, it's also a positive feedback cycle, where the availability of certification then feeds enterprise trust.
ξ And "trust" is really just another form of "familiarity"
ξ - the market will adopt forms that enterprises are familiar with in order to increase that familiarity.
ξ So I don't see any dichotomy there.
ξ It's not an either-or, quite the reverse.
ξ As to support engineers and "lowered status", I think that's actually part of the same thing.
ξ The least that enterprise market wants is surprises:
ξ it wants steady, plodding, more-pf-the-same, long-term plans.
ξ In other words, it wants familiarity and trust, and it wants the _same_ familiarity and trust down the line. Not surprises.
ξ So the last thing that market wants is "mystic guru".
ξ Linux has been around for long enough that the market trusts the model, and
ξ even likes being associated with that wild-and-crazy uncontrollable open source crowd
ξ because everybody wants to think they are hip, even the least hip of us!,
ξ but they definitely also want the plodding boring engineer.
ξ So it's not that things have gone from "mystic guru to humble technician",
ξ it's that the enterprise market has added the humble technician, because at the end of the day, that market really wants ploddingness.
ξ And I realize that "ploddingness" isn't likely to be a real word, but it should be, and it's what the enterprise market wants.
ξ They also want to know that they have the mystic guru on their side (they know that long term, you do need some imagination),
ξ but for the everyday grind, they'll take the humble technician, thank you very much.
ξ So that part isn't a one-against-the-other thing either, it's again more of a ‘I'll have both of them, please’ thing. '

RM
ξ 'I can’t end without asking you about the Steve Ballmer quote.
ξ You know the one where he said 'Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.'
ξ What do you think he meant by this?'

LT:
ξ 'I have a hard time really seeing what the heck Ballmer is doing.
ξ First the monkey dance, then the chair throwing.
ξ At some point he called Linux 'un-American', apparently because he doesn't like the competition.
ξ Then the cancer thing. And now this fixation with Yahoo! When will it end?
ξ So what can I say?
ξ I think he tried to say that open source grows very aggressively and takes over
ξ which is good - if you're into that whole expanding markets thing,
ξ but he wanted to put it in terms of something that grows out of control and is bad for what it is growing in. Thus: cancer.
ξ So I can certainly see the logic of choosing that word. '

RM
ξ 'Do you think it makes any sense?'

LT:
ξ 'Do I think it makes sense? No.
ξ Of course open source grows aggressively: what's not to like?
ξ Low cost, great quality, and a lack of being shackled to some commercial company
ξ that you can't really trust further than the fact that they'll happily continue to take your money. Sure, it grows.
ξ And yes, it does grow at the cost of Microsoft,
ξ but that's called ’competition’. It doesn't make it 'cancer' any more than it ever made it 'un-American'.

LT:
ξ I don't personally think we'd have gotten anywhere without all those wild-and-wacky distributions
ξ I'd rather have a bit of spirited discussion and even infighting than a staid landscape with a single vendor

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~ Using Developmental Neural Nets to Achieve Robust Behavior

»Using Developmental Neural Nets to Achieve Robust Behavior

What:
ξ robots with hand-designed controllers are already engaged in a wide variety of behaviors,
ξ from sweeping floors to wandering the surface of Mars
ξ none of these robots will ever be confused with a living creature
ξ when a typical robot becomes confused or trapped, it has a limited repertoire of actions it can take to solve its problems
ξ for example, when Spirit, the Mars rover, encountered a memory problem, it rebooted itself over and over,
ξ never noticing the continued futility of its behavior
ξ but where robots like this are pensive and brittle, animals are impulsive and robust
ξ animals do not exhibit this kind of mindless, repetitive behavior when faced with adversity
ξ animal adapt very quickly to changes in their environment, employing a wide range of behaviors in pursuit of their goals
ξ if robots are going to become a significant part of every-day life, they must behave more like animals
ξ synthetic brains, a new kind of developmental biological neural network for controlling robots,
ξ is a first step in generating this kind of behavior

Why:
ξ in order to design a robot controller that will generate animal-like behavior,
ξ it is instructive to examine nature's earliest brain designs
ξ one of the first phylogenic examples of encephalization the formation of one central brain
ξ is found in the notoplana acticola flatworm
ξ using roughly 2000 neurons, this creature is able to perform a variety of behaviors aimed at survival:
ξ keeping itself upright, walking, avoiding predators, and eating
ξ this flatworm's brain (right) can be excised, flipped over, and reinserted without any serious loss of function

ξ a series of brain experiments performed on these worms shows that this creature's robustness is internal as well as external
ξ the flatworm's brain communicates with the rest of its body through six longitudinal nerves
ξ if the brain is removed, flipped 180 degrees in any direction, and reinserted,
ξ the flatworm is not only able to regenerate connections to the brain,
ξ but the brain is able to adapt and restore almost full functionality to the flatworm
ξ this remarkable adaptability stands in stark contrast to, say, a modern microchip
ξ not only would the chip not function if plugged in backwards, but it also would most likely be destroyed
ξ understanding and recreating this remarkable robustness is the primary goal of the Synthetic Brains project

How:
ξ when McCulloch and Pitts formulated a model of a squid neuron, they did so with an eye toward reductionism:
ξ they wanted to understand how the basic piece of the brain worked in an effort to understand the whole thing
ξ while that model served as a crucial building block in the understanding of animal brains,
ξ it also removed many of the features that make animal brains unique as controllers
ξ this project is dedicated to investigating those features with the hope of finding a combination of them that,
ξ when included in a new model, will create the desired robust behavior
ξ some specific features currently under investigation are as follows:

Cell development
ξ real brains are not created all at once, but instead grow and develop from a small group of cells
ξ synthetic Brains start with a single cell that divides and differentiates

Genetic regulatory networks
ξ real brains develop according to a genetic code
ξ synthetic brain development proceeds according to the proteins that are produced by a 5kbp genome

Axon guidance
ξ real brains are not organized into three fully connected layers
ξ instead they connect the cells according to a growth and connection process
ξ synthetic brains simulate this process,
ξ including a growth and connection period that overlaps the creature's interaction with its environment

Progress
ξ built and tested Synthetic Brains in a simulated environment
ξ a brief evolutionary period is enough to go from completely random brains
ξ to a brain that controls a simulated arm reaching for a target
ξ while the behavior generated by this controller is still inferior to behaviors generated by hand-designed algorithms,
ξ the resulting networks are sufficiently complex to warrant further investigation

Future:
ξ the technical goal of this project is to create useful robotic behaviors through evolution and development
ξ if successful, the controllers that are evolved in simulation will be able to be transferred directly to a real robot and,
ξ with an additional development period, still be able to generate similarly functional behavior
ξ Synthetic Brains can provide a solution to the problem of how evolutionary algorithms can be applied to physical robots
ξ the ultimate goal is to develop robot controllers with a level of robustness similar to that of the flatworm
ξ the litmus test for this research will be to simulate the flatworm experiment on a robot:
ξ develop a brain and demonstrate its behavior, unplug the robot and plug it in backwards, re-develop the brain, and recreate the behavior

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~ Objective-C Language

»Objective-C Language

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