Fun with C

Consider the following little program:

int main()
{
  int x[10];
  int i;

  for (i=0; i <= 10; i++){
    x[i] = 0;
  }
  return 0;
}

What happens if you compile without optimization?

gcc -o t t.c

Think about it before you actually run it! What is the difference if you compile with optimization in gcc?

gcc -o t t.c -O1

Swim in the dark

Some companies are so successful that their product or company name become a verb or name for a whole class of products. To google something, to xerox a paper, and (at least in Australia) get a stubby from the esky (get a beer from the cooling box. Esky is a particular brand of cooling box).

The same thing can happen to authors who invent new words that sometimes make it to the real world from the fictional world. This is the classic example:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding

(William Gibson in Neuromancer from 1984)

What I wonder, though, is how often words and expressions that represent someting in the real world inspires an author to create a new fictional world. I started thinking about this when I read an article about Dark Pools. Dark pools are essentially markets where people trade that don't want their orders to be seen. I think dark pools sounds extremely cyberpunk, both the word itself and the meaning, and I'm now waiting to see it mentioned in fiction.

Jump