[plug] LaTeX -> Word converter?

[Christian]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 02:12:40PM +0800, Nick Bannon wrote:
 
> Arguably's right. <grin> Yes, some OS'es can and do zero things out when
> allocating memory and extending files on disk. That slows down the
> allocation, though, so many systems make the perfectly reasonable
> assumption that if you're requesting space, it's because you're about to
> put something in it, not leave it untouched. ::-)

It may be a perfectly reasonable assumption but it's still not an
acceptable one on any multiuser system [1].  There's no point having
file permissions, memory protection and the like if you're just going to
hand anothe user's stale memory to any one who happens to ask for it.

Regards,

Christian.

[1] Today the definition of a multi-user system is somewhat blurred.  If
I send you an email from my single-user system to your single-user
system, suddenly my data is on your system...  This is why all these
Win95 shortcuts are coming back to bite people.