Posts by bystander 4 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2015
"use after free" error happens not only with reference to beginning of the allocated memory. Access with any derived references will cause the issue. So replacing free-function with macros assigning NULL to pointer would not help preventing this issue.
It is incorrect to consider new technology from microeconomics point of view only. After all any new technology takes money to develop and deploy. And that money has to be returned with profit from sales of product of that technology. And matter what this technology/product is profit will appear only as result of final consumption (usage without profit). Then end game is obvious less workers brings less consumers, less final consumers bring less sold product and therefore less profit from technology products.
In illustration I can remind famous anecdote:
In November 1956 Walter Reuther delivered a speech to a Council group of the National Education Association. The transcript of his talk was published as part of his “Selected Papers”, and it contained an extended description of this intriguing episode [WRNE]:
I went through this Ford engine plant about three years ago, when they first opened it. There are acres and acres of machines, and here and there you will find a worker standing at a master switchboard, just watching, green and yellow lights blinking off and on, which tell the worker what is happening in the machine. One of the management people, with a slightly gleeful tone in his voice said to me, “How are you going to collect union dues from all these machines?” And I replied, “You know, that is not what’s bothering me. I’m troubled by the problem of how to sell automobiles to these machines.
That is a shame. I am really disappointed in this decision.
Firefox (web applications) promised OS agnostic future for application development based on open APIs without control from behemoths like Google, MS or Facebook. Applications which could be started from Web when you need them and be gone from your device when you don't (similar to web pages you surfing). There are companies in the Web which tired of Google monopoly and would be glad to have their services Web services used. And there are app. developers which are tired of maintaining several version of their application for each of major mobile platform (application for some platforms are not provided for this reason). One unified OS agnostic platform would allow to resolve this issue.
Firefox OS is to provide light-weight way of supporting this future with devices (small storage, system in ROM, application running from RAM) which do not cost as fully functional computer, something very chip which could be bought from convenience store for the price of mobile service SIM (or subsidised by service provider).
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