POSIX Memory Management

As an application programmer using a unix-flavored operating system, one’s view of memory management is usually limited to malloc and its various alternative forms. However, malloc is part of the C standard library and while it is specified as part of POSIX.1, the specification defers to the ISO C standard. In fact, since malloc is part of the C standard library it is not a part of the kernel and can’t allocate memory directly. For...

Possession, Ownership, and Copyright

Possession is the natural state of actually physically having some item. An item can only either be in your possession or not. Maybe there’s some ambiguity if several people are holding the same item, but we can say that everyone holds the item possesses it. The idea of possession comes naturally from being able to carry and use things. From the state of possession comes the natural rights to take and leave. If an item...

Readability

If you’re reading this in a maximized browser on a wide-screen monitor, you may wonder why the margins are so big. The answer isn’t that this page is optimized for small displays. In fact, I asked the same question of LaTeX margins and I found an excellent answer on the LaTeX stackexchange that points out that the problem isn’t large margins, but large paper with respect to optimal line length. The Elements of Typographic Style...