C++Talk.NET C++ language newsgroups   Archives   FAQ   Search   Memberlist   Usergroups   Register   Profile   Log in to check your private messages   Log in  Can a C++ program affect time and space ???          C++Talk.NET Forum Index -> C++ language (comp.lang.c++) View previous topic :: View next topic   Author Message Eliot Coweye Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:14 am    Post subject: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? According to Einstein, objects of great mass affect timespace. Can a great mass of bits in a badly written C++ program affect timespace, making the harddisk were it is written on incredibly slow and cause a system crash or even worse - a paradox and the destruction of the universe ? Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? If yes, then programming is a more dangerous job than working with high explosives or radioactive elements... Back to top Eric Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:42 am    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? if you make some code like this, say me i want to see the source:) Back to top Josh Mcfarlane Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 6:45 am    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? Eliot Coweye wrote: Quote: According to Einstein, objects of great mass affect timespace. Can a great mass of bits in a badly written C++ program affect Bits generally require an external medium to store their state in. Quote: timespace, making the harddisk were it is written on incredibly slow and cause a system crash or even worse - a paradox and the destruction of the universe ? No, as the bits on a hard disk are limited by the physical size of the disk pallet (sp?) Quote: Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? Perhaps, if everything was running on one platform. Quote: If yes, then programming is a more dangerous job than working with high explosives or radioactive elements... Perhaps... perhaps. What controls the systems dealing with radioactive elemens or high explosive detonation devices? =P Back to top P.J. Plauger Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:21 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? "Eliot Coweye" <cia_deviator (AT) lycos (DOT) com> wrote Quote: According to Einstein, objects of great mass affect timespace. Can a great mass of bits in a badly written C++ program affect timespace, making the harddisk were it is written on incredibly slow and cause a system crash or even worse - a paradox and the destruction of the universe ? Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? If yes, then programming is a more dangerous job than working with high explosives or radioactive elements... R.W. Hamming once confided in me his growing concern with the number of academic journals he was receiving. He computed that, at the then current rate of growth (circa 1970), his shelving was facing a crisis. As each journal came in, he'd slap it on the left end of his "things to read" shelf, pushing the older stuff to the right. He figured that by 1985 the journals on the right end would be moving away from him faster than the speed of light. Then he realized that the problem was nonexistent. Einstein's laws only prohibit the propagation of *information* faster than the speed of light. I'm sure you can work up a similar argument about the information density (hence energy density, hence effective mass, hence effective ability to warp space and time) of a badly written C++ program. P.J. Plauger Dinkumware, Ltd. http://www.dinkumware.com Back to top Jacek Dziedzic Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:53 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? Eliot Coweye wrote: Quote: Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? Yes, if only the code produces undefined behaviour. - J. Back to top Robert J. Hansen Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 7:15 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? Excellent question! In order to get answers to this, let's look at the thermodynamical limits of computing. You know, the stuff that even the space aliens from Zarbnulax have to obey. Particularly, the Landauer Bound. The Landauer Bound says that it costs energy to erase information. Off the top of my head, I want to say that every time you erase a bit of information (like, say, by replacing the value of a variable with a new value), you have to pay kT ln 2 joules of energy, where k is the Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature in Kelvins at which your computer is running, and ln 2 is just the natural logarithm of two. This comes out to a very small but nonzero number, about 3.15 * 10**-23 joules. Thus, if you're writing some hideously inefficient algorithm which requires upwards of 10**38 bit erasures to complete, you're going to require an amount of energy comparable to a strategic nuclear weapon (one megaton is around 10**15 joules). Since E = mc**2, we can use high school algebra to show E/c**2 = m. Plugging in c = 300,000,000 meters per second gives us roughly 10**18 as a value for c**2, meaning our computer program has a mass-energy equivalent to about 10**-3 kilos, or about a gram. Congratulations! Your C++ code is now warping space-time with predictable, measurable effects. Given gravity is so weak on less than celestial scales I'm not quite sure how you'd measure it, but I'm absolutely certain that at this point the joke has gone on too long. :) Back to top Jonathan Mcdougall Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 7:55 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? Eliot Coweye wrote: Quote: According to Einstein, objects of great mass affect timespace. Can a great mass of bits in a badly written C++ program affect timespace, making the harddisk were it is written on incredibly slow and cause a system crash or even worse - a paradox and the destruction of the universe ? Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? If yes, then programming is a more dangerous job than working with high explosives or radioactive elements... Well actually I wrote a program last year which opened a wormhole in the bathroom. I was quite excited, but I found out it was just undefined behavior. Sheesh. Jonathan Back to top red floyd Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 8:02 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? P.J. Plauger wrote: Quote: R.W. Hamming once confided in me his growing concern with the number of academic journals he was receiving. He computed that, at the then current rate of growth (circa 1970), his shelving was facing a crisis. As each journal came in, he'd slap it on the left end of his "things to read" shelf, pushing the older stuff to the right. He figured that by 1985 the journals on the right end would be moving away from him faster than the speed of light. Then he realized that the problem was nonexistent. Einstein's laws only prohibit the propagation of *information* faster than the speed of light. That story's great! Thanks, P.J.!!!! Back to top Greg Comeau Guest Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 11:43 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? In article <1132366477.819132.144560 (AT) g14g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>, Eliot Coweye <cia_deviator (AT) lycos (DOT) com> wrote: Quote: According to Einstein, objects of great mass affect timespace. Can a great mass of bits in a badly written C++ program affect timespace, making the harddisk were it is written on incredibly slow and cause a system crash or even worse - a paradox and the destruction of the universe ? Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? If yes, then programming is a more dangerous job than working with high explosives or radioactive elements... In addition to the Big Bang, this has been well known as Big-O. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation . It is said that this always occurs but w/o our knowledge (older people experience this, however, instead they are call senile). Furthermore, it has been known to occur along side of the notion that "One line of text no longer necessarily corresponds to one line of code" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code ) with the special wrench thrown in that "Every program can be reduced by one instruction, and every program has at least one bug. Therefore, any program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." But, even that line of code just pop away but gets replaced by gotohere: goto gotohere; which for sure is a time/space whammy. However, it's _very important_ to remember that GNU is not UNIX, otherwise, 'tis very dangerous indeed. -- Greg Comeau / Celebrating 20 years of Comeauity! Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==> http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout World Class Compilers: Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90. Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it? Back to top Jim Langston Guest Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 4:09 am    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? Quote: R.W. Hamming once confided in me his growing concern with the number of academic journals he was receiving. He computed that, at the then current rate of growth (circa 1970), his shelving was facing a crisis. As each journal came in, he'd slap it on the left end of his "things to read" shelf, pushing the older stuff to the right. He figured that by 1985 the journals on the right end would be moving away from him faster than the speed of light. Then he realized that the problem was nonexistent. Einstein's laws only prohibit the propagation of *information* faster than the speed of light. Consider a 10' pole on the ground. You push it forward 1". The end 10' away moved forward INSTANTLY as you pushed. Did this break the law of movement faster than the speed of light? No, the pole moved slower than the speed of light. But didn't the information that you pushed on one end travel 10' faster than the speed of light? Incidently, this is how some scientists made light travel faster than the speed of light. They actually didn't. They just sent it to a medium which acted like a pole, when the light beam hit one side DIFFERENT light was emitted from the far side faster than the light would have taken to travel there. Back to top Chris Hills Guest Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 8:55 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? In article <1132366477.819132.144560 (AT) g14g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>, Eliot Coweye <cia_deviator (AT) lycos (DOT) com> writes Quote: According to Einstein, objects of great mass affect timespace. Can a great mass of bits in a badly written C++ program affect timespace, making the harddisk were it is written on incredibly slow and cause a system crash or even worse - a paradox and the destruction of the universe ? Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? If yes, then programming is a more dangerous job than working with high explosives or radioactive elements... Many of us work on safety critical systems like nuclear reactor control systems, aircraft, missiles, weapons systems, vehicle control systems etc In fact a vast amount of SW Engineering is safety critical. -- //////////////////////// //// Chris Hills Staffs England ///// /// [email]chris (AT) phaedsys (DOT) org[/email] www.phaedsys.org // ////////////////////////// Back to top Tom the Canuck Guest Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 3:39 pm    Post subject: Re: Can a C++ program affect time and space ??? "Eliot Coweye" <cia_deviator (AT) lycos (DOT) com> wrote Quote: According to Einstein, objects of great mass affect timespace. Can a great mass of bits in a badly written C++ program affect timespace, making the harddisk were it is written on incredibly slow and cause a system crash or even worse - a paradox and the destruction of the universe ? Can a small bug cause a fractal overload and destroy a whole internet, you know, something like the butterfly effect ? If yes, then programming is a more dangerous job than working with high explosives or radioactive elements... This was very funny, but OT. It made a lot of people laugh. By the way, Einstien's equation is now E=MC^3 due to inflation. Tom the Canuck. 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