Slashdot Mirror

axis-techno-geek writes: "It seems that Intel now is trying to fight back against Transmeta with their new chips. Intel plans to have their new speed-step Pentium III's out in about a year (which in computer time means about 18 months :)."

curmudgeon42 writes: "The folks at Webmonkey have developed a new test of the Web-safe color pallette. The results of their experiment suggest that there are only 22 colors that work across all browsers, platforms, and color depths. The article also includes a good explanation of how the different color depths operate, and some interesting strategies for dealing with the greatly diminished amount of Web-safe colors." The authors are both senior designers at Razorfish. You might not guess it from visiting some of the worst sites on the Web, but some designers are both interested in making their pages look good to all (read "most") users, and in avoiding the problems of relying on proprietary plug-ins. If your words, artwork or photographs end up on the Web, you should read it.

Utah-Saint writes: "The Xbox is reportedly going to be ramped up to 128 meg unified ram (up from 64) and will incorporate a chip allowing it to be used as a digital vcr (similar to tivo and replay tv) whilst using a 40gig hard-drive supplied by maxtor. http://www.xbox365.com are running the story as an exclusive 'leaked' report ..." "Reportedly" is right -- but trust me, this is either a) happening already, b) not happening at all, or c) going to happen because some bright exec at Microsoft realizes that stumbling in front of the hype machine means being crushed beneath its wheels. Grains of salt are available in the front lobby.

Rumorous or not, this certainly doesn't sound that implausible -- if the X-Box ever arrives, most of the hardware (memory, hard drive, fast processor) would already be in place. And the equally unavailable-but-promised-rsn Indrema machines are alleged to be built with digital VCR capabilities in mind as well, at least in its second generation. (Mind you, with no first compare to just yet.) 12 months from now, digital VCR capabilities could be in every self-respecting video game system.

We've got a double-headed review of Simson Garfinkel's new book Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Century. It's a thought-provoking vision of the future which frankly scares the heck out of me. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Ce author Simson Garfinkel pages 312 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 7/10; 9/ reviewer Matthias Wenger, Kurt Gray ISBN 1-56592-653-6 summary Thoughtful look at threats to privacy, and appropriate responses

Review 1: Matthias Wenger

Personally, privacy has been a big issue lately -- hearing about DoubleClick and Real Networks customer tracking made the issue a bit of a sore point for me. Then a friend of mine bought a shredder after her credit card fell victim to a Dumpster diver, and I started getting paranoid. Reading Database Nation hasn't helped, but it brings up some possible solutions and provides a good deal to think about as we march blindly on towards Big Brother, Inc.

Database Nation starts out strong, with a hypothetical day in the life of someone with no privacy -- cold-call telemarketing at 6:30 in the morning, surveillence cameras all around, veiled blackmail for a hospital in desperate need of cash and plenty of medical histories, still more cameras at work, etc. This story ends up being a rough outline for the book, which also covers electronic footprints (ATM and credit card records and the like), private databasing a la DoubleClick, identity vs. body, and surprisingly enough, AI and intelligence agents. Each of the major topics covered has at least a full chapter devoted to it -- explaining the specific issues at hand, what sort of data is at risk, who would be interested in such data, and how data can be protected.

The biggest flaw in the book is that it is too ambitious -- how can you cover the sanctity of medical records in 30 pages? It would be difficult to do a better job with such space limitations, certainly, but it does make for a more general view of privacy rather than dealing with specifics. The result is "Privacy in a Nutshell," to steal a turn of phrase from O'Reilly. Given the subject matter, the Nutshell approach might even be preferable, since the theory can be applied in any situation once the awareness is there. Still, each topic felt like it could be expanded much further.

The over-eager breadth of the subject matter is also wonderful. Enough particular concerns are illustrated in each topic that there is an outline of the larger picture of information management even though a good deal remains to be filled in. Covering so many topics makes it easier to see just how much information can be collected about an individual while they remain unawares, and just how much that information can be abused or misused. To illustrate this very point, Garfinkel relates the story of an Internet-based scavenger hunt where the end result was to find out as much as possible about a particular "target," working only with a name. The information collected in 1993 included his place of employment, parents' names, home address, degrees earned, doctoral dissertation, the operating system he used, what his fiance's name was, and more. I found out five minutes ago, with the help of google, that he's now married and that he and his wife hyphenated their last names together. That was just the first hit. And that was a very casual search -- if someone was really interested in finding information, what are the limits?

Database Nation is, in a way, the ultimate discussion of information security. Garfinkel covers an amazing range of topics in exploring privacy and personal information today and into the 21st century. This is both a blessing and a curse -- there are so many things to be aware of, so many topics and points of view to consider, yet each one is worthy of more attention. At the opening of the book, Garfinkel expresses hope that Database Nation will do for privacy what Silent Spring did for environmentalism -- if something doesn't do it soon, there wont be any privacy left to save.

Review 2: Kurt Gray

If Simson Garfinkel's name doesn't ring a bell, check the computer section of your local bookstore or library: Garfinkel co-authored the O'Reilly Practical UNIX Security book, the O'Reilly Stopping Spam book, and some six other books. Before I was a Slashdot addict I enjoyed reading Garfinkel's columns in Packet and the Boston Globe , where his talents for technology journalism and futurist projections make informative reading for geeks and lay persons alike.

Just as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to sweeping reforms in the meat-packing industry (and probably turned a lot of people to vegetarianism) Garfinkel's latest book, Database Nation, should draw some much-needed attention to the manner in which everyone's personal information is being captured, cataloged and sold as commodity, and how each aspect of this process detracts from our civil liberties. If you're an American, you certainly know what the IRS is, but have you ever heard of TRW? Equifax? Experian? Or the DMA? Or the MIB, the Medical Insurance Bureau? Each of these corporate entities keeps records on you that determine your eligibility for bank loans, lines of credit, and medical insurance. Are you allowed to see your own record? Well, it's their data, so it doesn't belong to you -- but maybe if you ask them nicely and have due cause, they'll make an exception. Suppose you discover an error in the records they keep on you; are you allowed to demand corrections? Now you're asking subversive questions so we're putting an CM31 flag on your file ... George Orwell warned that the march of technology could allow a monolithic, tyrannical Big Brother to emerge. Database Nation points out that it's the thousands of unsupervised "kid brothers" that have a far greater potential to disrupt your life, and in ways you never expected.

I find the best way to summarize this book is chapter-by-chapter, so here are my own brief reviews of each chapter:

Chapter 1: Privacy Under Attack: Garfinkel opens with his own futurist vision: a day in the life of a typical working American. This hapless near-future dweller is continuously surrounded by targeted advertising, monitored at home and even in his car, and works in an office where constant politeness is enforced by the company surveillance cameras that are programmed to recognize facial expressions and sound an alarm whenever an employee appears disgruntled. Garfinkel explains that this book is not about Big Brother, but rather how the widespread capture and exchange of our personal information has been eroding our civil liberties already and goes largely unnoticed. Garfinkel makes the positive point that no threat to our privacy that exists today is beyond our control, and that we can develop robust, built-in systems of privacy protection rather than allow them to be only loosely guaranteed by the legal equivalent of patchwork.

Chapter 2: Database Nation: Chapter 2 starts with a historical perspective, answering the question "How did we get here?" In short, via the national census, the Social Security Board (leading to the creation of the National Data Center) and the widespread adoption of the Social Security Number and its inherent flaws (limited data capacity and lack of a checksum digit to avoid clerical errors). Page 26 launches into the disturbing episode of Steve and Nancy Ross, whose lives were shattered when the IRS botched their tax returns in 1983 and put a lien on the Ross' house for $10,000. That lien was noted in their credit records at TRW and Equifax, which in turn sold this data to 187 other independent credit bureaus. Here Garfinkel makes an interesting observation: the Ross' bad credit data spread "like a computer virus that kept reinfecting TRW's computer with incorrect information," and it took over seven years for the bulk of their credit problems to subside. Chapter 2 then explains how simple identity theft can be, whether Dumpster diving for credit statements (hint: buy yourself a cross-cutting shredder), or using Equifax's quickie credit report service to find chumps with good lines of credit, then applying for new credit cards in the victims' names. Equifax provides such thieves with everything they need: mother's maiden name, previous addresses, SSN -- it's all there. The victim's credit rating is ruined for years while bill collectors harass them day and night, and the credit card company writes off the charges and flags the victim's file. Frequently, the credit thief gets a slap on the wrist if anything at all. Page 33 lists at least 30 government agencies that are hardwired to track you only by your SSN. Chapter 2 definitely had me sitting up and paying attention.

Chapter 3: Absolute Identification: Chapter 3 is about biometrics and unambiguous identification of every member in a society, a seductive idea that has tantalized policymakers for centuries. Garfinkel argues, however, that this idea is fundamentally flawed. Garfinkel again provides historical perspective, pointing out that using biometrics is an old idea that only appears new as the technology matures. Garfinkel reminds us that even DNA testing is flawled. When a person's name is linked to a given DNA profile, for example, how hard would it be to modify that database record and change the name attached to that profile? (And did you know that 99% of DNA from any two people is identical, so DNA tests actually compare only regions of the genome that are nonessential to cell life? Hmmm ...) Garfinkel then lists various other biometric technologies such as face, voice and iris recognition; even your signature can be used as a biometric identifier. Some of these systems are already in use: Have you signed for a UPS delivery lately, or signed for credit-card purchases on an electronic touch pad? Biometrics. So here's a near-future scenerio: suppose all children need to have a DNA test shortly after being born "for the baby's health." Then the FBI warehouses the DNA fingerprints of every citizen in the U.S., and sells the data to the insurance industry, which can then compare it to the human genome map to weed out the "at risk" people, then target healthy prospects for profitable health plan solicitations... big ol' cluestick being waved around here.

Chapter 4: What Did You Do Today?: Maybe you went shopping, got some cash from the ATM, racked up some more frequent flier miles? Even the most mundane events in your daily life are recorded and archived somewhere -- from how often you withdraw cash from an ATM, to your entire purchasing history at the neighborhood grocery store, even the movies you rent at the video store. Dramatic developments in data-storage technology make it easier for businesses to keep what Garfinkel calls "hot files" on every customer transaction from day one, and then describes how we are creating the Earth's "datasphere." Nearly every durable product you buy has a serial number. Often that serial number becomes attached to your name and personal information (ever filled out a warranty card?) which can then be sold on the open data market, Garfinkel argues that even seemingly mundane information needs to be treated with respect for privacy.

Chapter 5: The View From Above: Chapter 5 is about surveillence technology and the growing private market for satellite photos and Webcams. Does it bother me that right now someone can buy a grainy aerial photo of my neighborhood taken sometime in 1987? No, sorry, that doesn't bother me. City police departments are installing surveillance cameras in public places. I still don't care. Garfinkel then explains how he set up a QuickCam to time-lapse record his Realtor while allowing prospective buyers to browse through his home without supervision. At this point I can't tell if the chapter is supposed to a condemnation or an endorsement. I suppose Garfinkel is pointing out that it's technically possible that are being watched and recorded in places when you assume you're alone. At the very least, it should change your ideas about expectations of privacy.

Chapter 6: cite> To Know Your Future: So who is the MIB? Men in Black right? No, the MIB referred to here is the Medical Information Bureau, which happens to be the secretive data warehouse of the American medical insurance industry's "customer profiles." Think you have a God-given right to medical coverage? Well, if you like Kafka novels then you'll definitely enjoy the hijinks that erupt around page 139, where Garfinkel tells us of more than a few people who've been refused medical insurance because of clerical errors in their MIB records -- records which they never knew exisited. But wait, isn't it illegal in many cases to deny medical coverage to someone with preexisting conditions? Yeah, sure it is, so what's your point? Garfinkel points out that only 23 of the 50 states actually have laws that require citizens be allowed to view their own medical histories. My only complaint with this chapter is that it pursues flaws in existing policies rather than staying with the theme of technology marching faster than prudent policy.

Chapter 7: Buy Now!: The DMA is the Direct Marketing Association. They lobby lawmakers at the state and federal level to further what they consider a God-given right to own and sell any piece of information they can attach to you. One of the nation's largest direct marketing list resellers is Metromail, now owned by the credit bureau giant Experian. Ever apply for a shopping card or magazine subscription, or fill in a product bingo card? Ever fill out a change of address form at the post office? Direct marketers get an automatic notification of your new address from the U.S. Postal Service, which causes your name/address to be copied into a hot prospect list called "New Movers," one of many direct-mailing lists sold by Metromail at the rate of $60 per thousand names. Garfinkel lists some 50 products Experian sells to businesses, like AutoCredit for quickie loan approvals, Bankruptcy candidates, Business Owner Profiles, and Property Link which provides a details of a subject's property holdings. He then argues against the opt-out clause the DMA offers to whiners (arguing instead for a more consumer-oriented opt-in approach), and lists preventative steps you can take to keep your name on as few lists as possible. This chapter left me with a question: if you complain to a direct marketing firm about what they've been doing with your personal information and then they flag you as hostile, and that direct marketer happens to be owned by a major credit bureau, what would that to your credit rating? Food for thought.

Chapter 8: Who Owns Your Information?: Take the case of Ram Avarahmi, who tried to sue a magazine publisher for selling his name, which was in their list of subscribers, to other magazine publishers. Mr. Avarahmi argued that Virginia law states that his name and his image are his property which can not be used in advertising or trade without his consent, and guess what the courts told him? "Sorry Charlie, or Ram, whatever your name is." Information is basically owned by those who gather the information and personal information is a commodity. Medical information is also a commodity owned by medical insurance providers. But can all this medical information be abused? Or let me ask it like this: are we evolved enough to not attach genetic defects to say, a person's ethnicity? Garfinkel excerpts an ad he found in the New York Times: "Ashkenazi Jewish Families Are Needed to Help Scientists Understand the Biological Basis for Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder" -- a 1998 John Hopkins University study, right here in America in 1998. Certainly, some medical disorders are confined to certain populations; the question is, what if someone wants to abuse such links? So do you own the books you read or the software you use? No, thanks to copyright laws. Garfinkel makes the point that you can't use the concept of ownership to protect your privacy, because you don't own data about you, however I'm not convinced. Maybe I can't force you to take my name out of your address book, because you own your address book, but I think I do have the right to demand that you not send me mail or sell my address to other businesses without my consent.

Chapter 9: Kooks and Terrorists: This chapter argues that individual terrorists deploying low-tech explosive and biological contaminants have spooked us into accepting ever more surveillance of our everyday activities. True to his style, Garfinkel dismisses some well-known urban terrorist acts as amateur-night material, then describes two fairly effective methods of introducing anthrax into an unsuspecting office building. Further pages show how terrorists might gain access to nuclear and biochemical devices. Garfinkel's point here is that constant surveillance cannot save us from a determined kook. The chapter then moves into the Big Brother question: what constitutes thoughtcrime? Didn't our benevolent goverment inter over 100,000 Japanese-Americans at the start of World War II? Didn't J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spend much of 1950's investigating "Communists" and "homosexuals"? So could our government be trusted with "brain wiretapping" technology? Sounds far-fetched? We're already using polygraphs and experiments involving fast sucessive MRI scans. Garfinkel makes the point that if we are truly concerned about public safety, we should track dangerous materials rather than try to identify potentially dangerous people.

Chapter 10: Excuse Me, But Are You Human? Imagine you're on an electronic mailing list, and you strike up an e-mail dialog with another member of the list. He tells you some things bout himself and you share something about yourself in return. Turns out "he" was actually an AI conversationalist programmed by a marketing agency to gather personal information to be sold in the form of marketing lists. Garfinkel then describes various intelligent agents that can parse natural language. But how is this useful for marketing? It is technically feasible for a marketer to scan the entire datasphere for everything that can be found about you in order to create a predictive model of your behavior: When will you buying a new car? When you will be on vacation? Valuable stuff for direct marketers to know. Might it be possible in 50 years to create a complete AI behavorial copy of you, and test various marketing schemes against it? Garfinkel actually argues that avatars should be afforded the same privacy rights as humans.

Chapter 11: Privacy Now!: Is technology neutral in the war on privacy? Garfinkel's answer is no, technology permits the greater cataloging and measuring of the world around us, and therefore technology is inherently intrusive. He argues that for the cost of around $5 million added to the annual budget, a Federal oversight agency could be created to monitor and regulate the flow of personal information throughgovernment and business data channels. Further, he proposes a list of reasonable amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, such as giving consumers the ability to sue for damages resulting from the addition of erroneous information to their credit reports. Garfinkel argues that better laws and policies will be more effective than cryptography in protecting one's privacy, and warns that when some have their privacy violated, you can expect retaliation such as deliberate pollution -- and disruption to -- the datasphere. Overall, Garfinkel concludes that we need laws and policies that repect our personal information, not just a technological picket fence.

Before reading Database Nation, I had the typical "nothing-to-hide" attitude regarding my own privacy. I didn't care if some government agency or large corporation was able to read my academic records, my medical records, my magazine subscriptions, my credit-card purchases, my phone bill. "Let them read it all for all I care," I thought, "I'm sure it would bore them to tears." After reading this book, I realize it's not so much about Big Brother, it's about how the spread of your personal information can bite you in the ass someday.

My assessment: Garfinkel jam-packed this book with information every American ought to be aware of -- enough to think about to make your head spin. Thankfully his tone is not hopeless gloom-and-doom; he does remind you that 30 years ago the Cuyahoga River was an environmental disaster, but today it's safe to eat fish caught there. Overall, it's a great book. Yet another reason for me to give a favorable review to anything Simson Garfinkel writes.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

cybermalandro sent us an interesting interview with Rasmus Lerdorf of PHP fame. The interview talks with him about the origins of the project. Also heard are Stig Bakken, Andi Gutmans, and Zeev Suraski about working on PHP and where it's going. You can grab the MP3 from the site, as well as a QuickTime version.

BigTed writes "Webmonkey has got an interesting article up about the VA Linux takeover of Andover and its effect on *gasp* Slashdot and the Open Source Community." Personal note: I almost quit when I heard about the merger, because I had exactly the same worries Jay Greenspan expresses in this editorial. Since then I have been personally reassured by Larry Augustin that VA Linux has no desire to mess with the content on any Andover site, including Slashdot. I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it. And yes, we will continue to post news of Red Hat, Penguin Computing, and others in the Linux corporate community, same as before. Everyone who works on Slashdot, and everyone in Andover.net management, has sworn to defend Slashdot's editorial independence. Period. - Robin 'roblimo' Miller, Editor-in-Chief, Andover.net. Update: 02/09 05:16 by CT : here is a Salon Story by Andrew Leondard expressing the same concerns as the webmonkey bit.

NoNsense wrote to us about the team-up of Millionaire.com and auctions.lycos.com are auctioning a complete T. Rex skeleton. Yes, the opening price of $5.8 million includes shipping of the 25-foot-tall, 40-foot-long skeleton. Cool. I was going to buy a new house soon anyway. *grin*

N. D. Culver sent in an interesting Village Voice story. Here's a quote: "...Randell Mills, a Harvard-trained medical doctor who also studied biotechnology and electric engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he's found the Holy Grail of physics: a unified theory of everything." And, the story says, Mills' company, BlackLight Power, has rounded up over $25 million in investment capital to exploit practical applications of Mills' work, which traditional physicists claim is nothing more than cold fusion rehashed. Is Mills a charlatan, or is this cutting-edge science? Read the story and decide for yourself.

Lawrence Lessig - the name may be familiar from the Microsoft trial - has written an excellent book, which I've taken my time reviewing because I felt I had to read it twice to grasp the full import. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace covers the real future of your liberties on the internet, and it is not a happy book. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace author Lawrence Lessig pages 297 publisher Basic Books rating 10/10 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 0-465-03912-X summary A gloomy look at the forces which shape the internet.

Slashdot isn't the first to review this book. Declan McCullagh (Wired), Andy Oram, and Carl Kaplan (NY Times) have all taken a look at it, he's been interviewed, there's an audio debate (mp3 format) between Lessig and McCullagh, and at least a couple of other places have all mentioned it and it is, at this writing, 134 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. I was privileged enough to receive a review copy of the book some time ago, but my review has been delayed because the book is too deep to easily sum up. It's a book about law, and about policy, and about the internet, which doesn't require any grounding in any of the above, but it seems like it would be appropriate for people at almost any level of knowledge - if you know more, you'll get deeper insights, and if you know less, you'll get the basics. A fractal book, in other words. An almost philosophical work, disguised as a law book.

To start with, Lessig's book is a counter to John Perry Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Barlow had a good idea, a good goal, but he was totally and completely wrong about how to achieve it, and his declaration and the mindset it embodies has and will do great harm to the future of civil liberties on the internet.

Cyberspace is not and has never been independent of real life, or of government. What it has been is a place where the rules of real life were hard to enforce. That doesn't mean that the rules don't exist - just that it has been hard to make people obey them. The problem for people, like me, who like this state of affairs, this lack of enforcement, is that there's no reason cyberspace has to remain in its current state.

Cyberspace wasn't designed to enforce real-world rules. Such enforcement wasn't built in to the code that runs the internet, was consciously avoided in the early internet designs, and therefore regulators have been working in an environment unfriendly to them. Copying of digital works is easy. Transmitting and receiving content, even forbidden content, is easy. Etc.

But just because it was designed that way once, does not mean that it need be that way in the future. There are tremendous forces (business and government) that would prefer an internet which is friendly and cooperative to regulators. The people building the internet of tomorrow are not professors and geeks, they're CEO's and to a lesser extent, bureaucrats. If the architecture of the internet is "adjusted" to favor regulation instead of disfavor it - and the current internet builders all have reasons to favor regulability - regulating behavior on the internet is not impossible, it's trivial. Lessig has a short chapter on "is-ism", the belief that just because something is, so must it always be. Applied to the internet, this is "We are free, and will always be so." Wrong, wrong! The internet is totally man-made, and what man has made, man can change.

It is hard for me (or Lessig) to emphasize this point too much: the people who claim that we should keep our hands off the internet are completely playing into the hands of government and business. While the net-libertarians have buried their heads in the sand, the net is being changed, constantly, to favor regulation by business and by government.

Lessig takes a look at the infrastructure of the internet and how it is changing for the worse. There's another terrible flaw in thinking about the internet, which runs roughly: "whatever restrictions are placed, someone of technical competence can get around them". This is not true, not if the architecture is designed to support those restrictions rather than oppose them.

The internet, says Lessig, is about to "flip" from "unregulable" to "totally regulable". When that occurs (neither Lessig nor I think there's an "If" involved), who will be regulating the place? Currently corporations, with guidance from government - guidance coming in the form of regulations like CALEA, which make demands not on individuals, but on the code. Once the code is altered to be conducive to regulation, regulation follows naturally.

Lessig makes a great point about open source software. Closed source code which incorporates regulation (censorware is the easiest example, but there are many others) means that the people who are regulated can't even tell exactly what regulation is occuring. When the source code is available, you can at least tell exactly what you can and cannot do, or exactly how your privacy is being infringed. Open source code is inherently less suited to enforcing regulation on users.

I can't do justice to the book without rewriting it. Lessig is deeply skeptical about the ability of the U.S. government to initiate policies which promote, rather than denigrate, the civil liberties we have come to take for granted in cyberspace. Government is busy selling off our freedom to corporations through mechanisms such as ICANN. But no one else is going to do it - and with a government actively hostile to liberties or even one that adopts a hands-off approach, freedom in cyberspace is headed downhill at a tremendous pace.

I recommend this book to almost anyone who cares about the future of the internet. It's well-written - he's a good teacher. It's got some awesome examples - like how Communist Vietnam is more effectively libertarian than the U.S., because it doesn't have the infrastructure of control that we do. It is a scholarly work, but the footnotes are pushed off to the end - they alone are worth the price of the book to a serious student, but someone looking to just read can skip them without problems. It's a deep and thus far unmatched view of what will shape the net of tomorrow, the most inspiring book I've read this year.

Some of Lessig's other papers and articles are available on his home page. The book has a promotional website as well, available at code-is-law.org or what-declan-doesnt-get.com.

Pick this book up at fatbrain.com.

mochaone writes "wired has a story about flaws in the GSM scrambling algorithm can allow snoopers to pry in on "private" calls in less than one second. " The article talks about other problems with GSM phones too. Some interesting comments on the practicality, but they say a Pentium with 128 megs of RAM can pull off the decrypt.

Wired is running a story with further information about the Australian Government authorising legalised hacking of private computer systems by its internal security organisation, ASIO.

x00 writes "The BBC News site is currently reporting that Altavista is going to float and that it could be worth 5 Billion Dollars. It also states that it could possibly merge with Lycos. "

rockville writes "I found this from Robot Wisdom, then I tried it myself: when you search Lycos for Excite, Yahoo, or Infoseek, you get a pretty strange result " I guess I can understand the reasons behind doing that, but it still feels kinda wrong. What do you think?

rockville writes "I found this from Robot Wisdom, then I tried it myself: when you search Lycos for Excite, Yahoo, or Infoseek, you get a pretty strange result " I guess I can understand the reasons behind doing that, but it still feels kinda wrong. What do you think?

Darksky wrote to us with information about the proposed 'Antares' telescope. The proposal would be to put a telescope 2.4 kilometers underwater, in an attempt to study neutroino/cosmic rays. The telescope would use the the Earth as shield from cosmic rays, and hopefully study the muons liberated by the neutrinos.

Stace writes "Apparently, Steve Jobs wasn't too upset with his portrayal in "Pirates of the Silicon Valley", as he got Noah Wyle to play him onstage during his keynote address at Mac World. Full story here. "

Matt Lee sent us a story about Lycos hopping on the mp3 bandwagon and creating a search engine to find the controversial music format. The funniest part is that 'mp3' is the second most search-for word on Lycos. After 'sex'. Anyway I'm glad to see it.

Joseph Pranevich has written up an excellent piece on Linux 2.2 where he practically sums up the major features of the new kernel. This will be quite useful to any of you who are curious, but haven't been reading LinuxHQ every patch for the last year. Related, 2.2.0ac1 is now out. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Joseph Pranevich The Wonderful World of Linux 2.2 Well, the long wait is over and 2.2.0 has finally appeared for the masses. For the sake of history, Linux 2.2 was officially released on 1/25/99. As of this writing, the mainstream press has not caught on to the release so it is hoped that this will not get out too late to be useful to those folks. At this time, no distributions have announed dates as to when they will begin shipping 2.2.x kernels but it is reasonable to expect that there will be mainstream 2.2.x options by March.

Submitted for your approval, my final i386 change summary. (I've now had three separate "final" versions, but I really mean it this time.) This document is intended as an expanded laundry list of new features and additions to the 2.2.x kernel, a major milestone in the history of Linux.

Please note that this document does not cover all the new hardware that Linux supports. Many devices, such as scanners and printers, are handled exclusively in user space. Other devices, such as video cards and mice, are handled by a combination of user and kernel drivers. If you don't see a device class that you are interested in listed in this document, it is quite likely that Linux 2.2 supports it -- just not necessarily using the kernel to do so.

Also, I do not claim that everything in this document is PC. I believe that I am being fair and I have pulled some puches with respect to how I phrased certain portions. If you think that I should reword a certain portion so as not to offend someone, let me know but I will not make any promises.

Chips Galore The world of Intel chips is a fast and interesting thing to follow, if you have nothing better to do. Merced, Celeron, MMX... the names of Intel technologies float past to be replaced by new cutting-edge technology. (Whether or not these technologies are worthwhile is a matter that I'm not even going to begin to try and debate.) In addition, AMD, Cyrix, and other companies have become solid competitors in the market and each have their own little optimizations, quirks, and bugs. It's a mess, to say the least.

Linux 2.2 will be the first stable Linux to support options for the various non-Intel processors in the kernel configuration tool. Perhaps even more importantly, Linux 2.2 (and later revisions of 2.0 for obvious reasons) supports bugfixes and workarounds for widespread processor bugs including the infamous F00F Pentium bug. Other bugs that can't be worked around, such as an AMD K6 sig11 bug, are reported during startup.

Merced hasn't arrived yet and probably isn't immediately forthcoming, but Linux 2.2 has already been ported to Sparc64, Alpha, and other 64-bit platforms so the infrastructure for a 64-bit native kernel is already happily in place. (There are, of course, other obstacles that would have to be overcome before Linux/Merced could be released but having a 64-bit ready kernel is an important step.)

Multiple-Processor machines now will operate much more efficiently than they did in Linux 2.0 with issues such as the global spinlock removed. Up to 16 processors are supported (the same as with 2.0) but the performance difference should be amazing. Also, there is now greater support for the IO-APIC on Intel boards that will make SMP generally better supported. And finally, it is now possible to specify a multi-processor configuration without ever leaving the kernel configuration tool.

In terms of other ports, Linux 2.2 will feature improved support for a large number of 'workstation' machines such as Sparc, Sparc64, and Alpha machines. As for 'desktop' machines, Linux 2.2 has been ported to Motorola's m68k and PPC processors and now can be expected to run on many of these platforms, including the Macintosh. (with varying degrees of hardware support, of course. Support for m68k Macs in particular is not ready for prime-time.) Linux is also moving to processors, such as ARM that are increasingly popular for embedded systems.

On somewhat of a tangent, there is continuing work to support a subset of the Linux kernel on 8086, 8088, 80186, and 80286 machines. This project will never integrate itself with Linux-proper but will provide an alternative Linux-subset operating system for these machines.

In terms of memory consumption, the average Linux 2.2 setup will require more memory than Linux 2.0. (Although a larger number of components can now be modularized or compiled-out to allow a system administrator more flexibility if memory is tight.) There is some debate as to what is the lower limit in terms of functionality with a text-only system but it should still be possible to have only 4 megs of RAM in many situations. (8 megs are still recommended.) On the bright side, Linux 2.2 includes a number of new optimizations that should actually improve the performance of machines with at least 16 megs of RAM. The more, the merrier.

System Busses and Assorted Ilk Although somewhat less crucial and cutting edge, Linux 2.2 will support a larger proportion of the existing x86 computers with the addition of complete support for the Microchannel bus found on some PS/2s and older machines.

In addition to hundreds of minor patches to the bus system (including many new PCI device names), larger improvements have taken place. The PCI subsystem, in particular, has undergone several major changes. Firstly, the PCI device reporting interface has been changed and moved to allow for easier addition of new information fields. This particular change doesn't spell much of a difference for an end user but it makes the lives of developers much easier. Additionally, it is now possible to choose whether you want to scan your PCI bus using your compatible PCI BIOS or through direct access. This allows Linux 2.2 to work on a larger set of machines as several PCI BIOSes were incompatible with the standards and caused booting problems.

Sadly, there is still little kernel support for Plug-and-Play ISA devices. While that would be a great addition, there are some problems with the currently proposed systems that will need to be resolved sometime in 2.3 before inclusion. Fortunately enough, there happens to be a great user-level utility, isapnp, for setting up PnP devices that requires just a tad more work than we'd like but gets the job done in true Linux fashion.

Laptops and many workstations can also benifit from improved support for power management, including worksrounds for a number of incompatible BIOS implementations. Also new in 2.2 is the ability to use some functions of an APM BIOS on multi-processor systems.

IDE, and SCSI, and USB... Oh my! As far as Linux IDE is concerned, not much obvious has changed for Linux 2.2. The most obvious change is that it is now possible to load and unload the IDE subsystem as a module, just like SCSI. (This also has the added bonus of allowing one to use a PnP-based IDE controller.) For less bleeding-edge machines, the updated IDE driver now supports older MFM and RLL disks and controllers without having to load an older version of the driver. Linux 2.2 now also has the ability to detect and configure all PCI-based IDE cards automatically, including the activation of DMA bus-mastering to reduce CPU overhead and improve performance. And finally, more drivers have been developed for controllers that are buggy or simply different. It's amazing how even excellent things can continue to get better.

Elsewhere in the IDE world, parallel port IDE devices have become more common and are now supported by Linux 2.2, for the most part. It is a good assumption that many devices that are not supported currently will be added as 2.2 progresses.

The SCSI subsystem's main improvements have been the addition of many new drivers for many new cards and chipsets. Too many, in fact, to even begin to name here.

PCMCIA adapters (or PC-card slots, as they are called now) are not supported in the standard Linux 2.2 but are supported by an external module provider. Thus, while not in the kernel, PCMCIA support will be included in most distributions.

IRDA support has also been added to the kernel although many controllers are not yet supported. As this feature was added only in the closing days of Linux 2.1 development, it may not be as generally usable as other, more mature, portions of the kernel.

Alas, there is some bad news here. Despite ongoing efforts by several parties to finish USB support, no support was included in time for a Linux 2.2 release. Several prominent developers have looked at USB support and it is likely that there will be some support before we get too far into Linux 2.2.x. (Alternatively, USB support could be provided through an external source in the same way that PCMCIA support is now.)

Ports: Parallel and Serial Nothing much new on this front, Linux has always had incredible support for these basic building blocks. The parallel port driver has been rewritten with cross-platform issues in mind and thus what was once just a 'Parallel Port' is now a 'PC-Style Parallel Port' Functionality-wise, the only obvious change is that you can now effortlessly share a single parallel port device with multiple device drivers. (Note however that the naming convention used to label parallel ports has changed so you may find that your lp1 has become your lp0. Distributions should allow for this change automatically however.)

Serial support is chugging along as well as it always has but with one notable difference. Previously, a serial device such as a modem involved two devices, one for call-in and one for call-out. (ttyS and cua respectively) As of Linux 2.2, the two are combined in one device (ttyS) and accessing the cua devices now prints a warning message to the kernel log. On the bright side, Linux 2.2 includes support for having more than 4 serial ports, it allows serial devices to share interrupts, and it includes a number of drivers for non-standard ports and multi-port cards. My only complaint with serial support is its lack of support for the standard methods for modules to pass device parameters at module-load time via the modules.conf file and kmod. (Instead, these parameters are set using the 'setserial' command. Somewhat yuck.)

It should also be mentioned that Linux 2.2 will support newer UART chips than 2.0 which may translate into higher transfer rates using newer modems.

CD-ROMs, Floppies, and removable media Thankfully, the hodge-podge of hundreds of CD-ROM standards has solidified behind the 'standard' of ATAPI CD-ROMs. This reprieve has given developers time to completely rewrite the CD-ROM driver system to be more standardized in terms of support. Small, quirky differences between the individual drivers have now all been fixed for better support.

Rewritable CD-ROMs aren't supported nearly as well as one would like, unfortunately. SCSI CD-ROMs are well done (and most IDE drives use SCSI-over-ATA, the SCSI-emulation driver). With other rewritable CD-ROMs, your mileage may vary.

Floppies are working as well as ever. There are new developments in terms of large volume floppies and it remains to be seen whether or not all of these will be supported. Those devices that communicate using ATAPI (a large number of them, actually) are already supported to some degree.

IOMEGA's zip drive, an increasingly popular storage solution, is fairly well supported under Linux 2.2. These beasts come in three versions: SCSI, ATAPI (IDE), and Parallel. Under SCSI and ATAPI, the Zip drives are supported just as any other disk would be. The parallel version of these drives actually use a sort of SCSI-over-parallel protocol that is also supported in Linux 2.2. (Other IOMEGA solutions such as DITTO drives may also be supported using the ftape drivers.)

DVD drives are already supported, to some degree, under Linux as they represent themselves largely as ATAPI drives. (SCSI DVD drives may not, but they will probably work using the excellent SCSI CD-ROM driver.) Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean that all will be rosy in the Linux/DVD world as Linux does not currently support any DVD-centric filesystems that have been proposed nor are any user-space tools developed to display DVD movies and etc. Once the standards stabilize a bit, it is highly likely that the requisite parts will be added to the Linux kernel sometime during the 2.2.x cycle, following the initial release.

Other removable media may or may not be supported under Linux 2.2. If the device connects through the parallel port, it is possible that it is supported using one of the Parallel Port IDE device protocol modules that are included in the kernel.

Glorious Sounds! At long last, the sound code has been partially rewritten to be completely modular from start to finish. Distributions will be able to more easily include generic sound support out-of-the-box for their users as well as making it easier for the rest of us to load and configure sound devices. (Especially pesky Plug-and-Play ones.) Lots of new sound devices are supported as well and it looks like this is one area where Linux will really improve in the next year.

One very notable defect here is the remaining lack of support for the PC internal speaker, if only for completeness. Then again, Windows 95/98 doesn't do it either so who am I to judge?

Video4Linux Linux 2.2 now has amazing support for a growing number of TV and radio tuner cards and digital cameras. This is a truly bleeding edge addition to 2.1's roster so there may still be some outstanding issues but it is reasonable to assume that they will be fixed in time. In my humble opinion, this is just an amazing area for Linux to be in at all. Back me up, Scotty! Linux 2.2's backup and tape device subsystem has not changed much since the 2.0 release. More drivers for devices have been written, of course and substantial improvement has been made for backup devices that work off of the floppy disk controller (including the IOMEGA DITTO).

Rewritable CD-ROMs have become a popular solution for backing up data and they are supported under Linux 2.2 There are still outstanding issues in this regard, see my note above on CD-ROMs for details.

Joysticks, Mouse, and Input Devices Joysticks are better supported in 2.2 including a large number of new joysticks and joysticks with an inordinate numbers of buttons. Likely, your joystick will work under Linux 2.2.

Mice in 2.2 aren't really different from mice in 2.0. (As in 2.0, there are some inconsistencies regarding mouse support that will be addressed in the future. For the most part, mouse control is provided through a daemon external to the kernel. Some mouse drivers however deliberately emulate a Microsoft standard mouse. The reasoning behind this is obvious but it would be nice if it was decided on in one way or the other.) It should be noted that, while not solely a kernel issue, mice with Microsoft's spinning wheel extension are supported in recent versions of the XFree86, Linux's most popular GUI. (However many Linux applications have not been designed to take advantage of this feature.)

Additionally, several other input devices are now supported under Linux 2.2 including some digitizer pads. If your devices emulates a mouse (as many do) then it is already supported by Linux 2.2 (and, in fact, Linux 2.0).

Video Perhaps the most surprising and cutting-edge addition to the Linux kernel version 2.2 is what is called the 'frame-buffer console' driver (or 'fbcon', for short.)

Previously, the Linux kernel (for Intel-based machines) only understood and manipulated the video devices in text mode. Graphical support was to be provided by two other systems: 'svgalib' for console-based graphics, and a specialized X Server for window-based graphics. This kludgey system often required configuration information to be repeated and each system supported only a limited slice of the myriad of video devices in common use.

Since this addition is rather new, it remains to be seen whether it will truly replace the previous and long-standing duality. Unfortunately, it could be nearly a year after Linux 2.2 ships before this new system could be robust enough to support the cards and technologies that we already take for granted as working. My personal opinion is that this is the right idea, but I'm going to withhold judgment until we see exactly how far Linus and the developers decide to take this feature.

As an added side-effect of this new feature, primitive multi-heading has been added into the kernel for some devices. Currently, this is limited to some text-mode output but it is reasonable to assume that this very new addition to the Linux kernel will mature somewhat during the 2.2.x and 2.3.x cycles.

It should also be mentioned that it is now possible to remove support for 'virtual' terminals as provided by the kernel. This allows very memory-conscious people to save just a tad more.

Although unimaginable to the desktop user, Linux can now work even better on systems that do not actually include any sort of video device. In addition to being able to log in over serial or networked lines, as Linux 2.0 and previous Linuxes allowed, it is now possible to redirect all the kernel messages (usually sent to the console directly before any hardware was initialized) to a serial device.

Networking: Ethernet, ISDN, and the lowly modem. I don't have a huge amount of experience here; I've been using the same network cards in all my machines for several years. But, it doesn't take an Alan Cox to see that the number of supported Ethernet and ISDN devices supported in Linux 2.2 has risen sharply. I have been told that newer solutions such as cable modems are supported, also.

My only gripe in this regard is the continued non-support of so-called 'Winmodems.' Not that I blame Linux for their absence, making modems that are 80% software is just a dumb idea anyway, but the idealist in me hopes that some day these pesky devils will be supported like their less stripped cousins.

Amateur Radio people are Linux people, too. Since before Linux 2.0, Linux has been one of the few desktop OSes to include native support for computer-based amateur radio people. (Not that I actually know what that entails but it seems to be a more popular option outside the US.) Linux 2.2 adds support for NetROM and ROSE amateur radio protocols. The basic AX.25 layer has also been materially enhanced. Filesystems for the World Linux 2.2 has a wide array of new filesystems and partition types for interconnectivity. In addition, many of Linux's supported filesystems (including those I haven't listed here) have been updated with a new caching system to markedly improve performance. (In fact, not updating the drivers wasn't even an option if one wanted them included in Linux 2.2.)

For the Microsoft nut, Linux will now read NTFS (Windows NT) drives and Windows 98's FAT32 drives (also used by some later versions of Windows 95). Linux 2.2 also understands Microsoft's Joliet system for long filenames on CD-ROMs. And finally, Linux also understands a new type of extended partition that Microsoft invented. Drivers to read and write Microsoft and Stacker compressed drives are being developed but not yet included in the kernel. There is continuing work with NTFS to allow for both reading and writing, but that support is still experimental.

For Mac connectivity, a HFS driver for reading and writing Mac disks has been included. HFS+ and MFS (ancient floppy format) are not yet supported. Macintosh partition tables can now also be read by the kernel; this allows Mac SCSI disks to be mounted natively.

Sadly, OS/2 users will still not be able to write to their HPFS drives. Some updates have been made to the HPFS driver to support the new 'dcache' system but not the complete overhaul that some were hoping for. There is ongoing work outside the kernel to include read/write support in this driver but those changes did not make it into the initial release of 2.2.0.

If there are any Amiga users left (and there are), they will be pleased to know that the FFS driver has undergone some minor updates since 2.0. This is especially useful as the new generation of PPC Amigas will continue to support this format.

For connectivity to other UNIXes, Linux 2.2 has come forward in leaps and bounds. Linux 2.2 still includes the UFS filesystem which is used on BSD derived systems, including Solaris and the free versions of BSD. Linux 2.2 can now also read the partition table formats used by FreeBSD, SunOS, and Solaris. For SysV-style UNIXs, Linux 2.2 features a somewhat updated version of SysVFS. Linux 2.2 can also read the Acorn's RiscOS disks. And finally, Linux 2.2 features a somewhat updated version of the ever-popular Minix filesystem, which can be used for small drives and floppies on most UNIXes. With so many incompatible formats (and Linux 2.2 reading so many of them), it's amazing anyone ever got any work done.

In other news, support for 'extended' drives (the format used by much older versions of Linux) has been removed in favor of the 'second extended' filesystem. (This shouldn't matter to many people, 'ext2' is far superior to its predecessor.) With the increased support of initial ramdisks, a 'romfs' has been created which has very minimal overhead.

While not quite a filesystem, Linux 2.2 includes enhanced support for stretching a filesystem across several disks transparently. At present, this support can be used in RAID 0, 1, 4, and 5 modes as well as a simple linear mode.

Networking II: Under the Hood On the protocol front, a lot has happened that I simply don't understand completely. The next generation Internet protocol, IPv6, has made an appearance. SPX, a compliment to IPX is new, as well. DDP, the protocol of choice for older AppleTalk networks has also been improved. And, just as you would come to expect by now, the existing protocols have been improved, as well. I only wish I had the need to use some of this stuff...

On the low-end front, not much has changed. PPP, SLIP, CSLIP, and PLIP are all still available for use. I guess some things don't need much improvement. (Although each of those drivers have been updated in one way or another.)

The list keeps going, however. Linux 2.2 will have an excellent new networking core, new tunneling code, a completely new firewalling and routing system called 'ipchains', support for limiting bandwidth consumption, and a ton more. It's just amazing. I wish I could keep track of it all. (But, who am I kidding?)

It should be noted that file and printer sharing protocols have also been improved and markedly enhanced. SMB, the protocol for accessing Windows-based shared filesystems has been somewhat improved with bugfixes and the like. If you are a fan of NetWare (some people are...), you'll be happy to know that Linux 2.2 supports a large number of improvements in this area, including access to two different kinds of NCP long file names. Trusty NFS has also been improved, both at the server level and the client level. And finally, those eggheads over at CMU have been hard at work developing the new distributed network filesystem, Coda. This filesystem supports a large number of highly-requested features including disconnected operations for laptops, an advanced cache system, and security improvements.

On somewhat of a tangent, Linux 2.2 also includes a driver which will allow one to share (and remotely mount) whole disk images over a network.

Not Everyone Speaks English. Linux 2.0 is a very international OS with support for international keyboards and the like. Linux 2.2 adds to this and other internationalization features the ability to load some Microsoft/UNICODE codepages for translating filenames into Linux's native system. (Which is UTF8, another encoding of UNICODE) Currently, the only filesystems that use these translations include Microsoft's VFAT and Microsoft's Joilet ISO 9660 (CD-ROM filesystem) extension. Unix98: The Next Generation Linux 2.2 will be a more 'standard' UNIX in a number of ways. The most pronounced of these ways to the end user will be the addition of UNIX98-style Pty devices using a new filesystem (devpts) and a cloning device to provide the functionality. And, finally... In addition to those noted above, there are a large number of other drivers and things that just don't fit in anywhere but should still be noted. So, in no given order, the oddball updates of Linux 2.2:

The loopback driver, which allows disk images to be mounted and manipulated just like any regular drive, has been improved in a number of ways. Of these improvements, the most notable difference to users will be its increased support for encryption and the mounting of encrypted hard disks and disk images.

A driver for accessing your computer's CMOS memory has also been provided in Linux 2.2 which may be useful in some applications. (Sadly, a similar driver to access your BIOS's flashable RAM did not make it, it will still be necessary to boot from a DOS floppy to flash your computer's BIOS to a new version.)

And finally, in the past, Linux used a half-user/half-kernel method of loading in and out drivers (called 'modules') called 'kerneld' This method was good but inefficient. Linux 2.2 has removed kerneld and replaced it with a smaller all-kernel solution called 'kmod'.

This is the 'revised millennium penguin' version of this document (1/26/99) and is really just a minor update over the last three final versions. Linux 2.2 is out now, so obviously no new features will be added and I should be safe.

As always, I can be reached at jpranevich@lycos.com.

Thank you, and Good Night.

Joseph Pranevich

Joseph Pranevich has written up an excellent piece on Linux 2.2 where he practically sums up the major features of the new kernel. This will be quite useful to any of you who are curious, but haven't been reading LinuxHQ every patch for the last year. Related, 2.2.0ac1 is now out. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Joseph Pranevich The Wonderful World of Linux 2.2 Well, the long wait is over and 2.2.0 has finally appeared for the masses. For the sake of history, Linux 2.2 was officially released on 1/25/99. As of this writing, the mainstream press has not caught on to the release so it is hoped that this will not get out too late to be useful to those folks. At this time, no distributions have announed dates as to when they will begin shipping 2.2.x kernels but it is reasonable to expect that there will be mainstream 2.2.x options by March.

Submitted for your approval, my final i386 change summary. (I've now had three separate "final" versions, but I really mean it this time.) This document is intended as an expanded laundry list of new features and additions to the 2.2.x kernel, a major milestone in the history of Linux.

Please note that this document does not cover all the new hardware that Linux supports. Many devices, such as scanners and printers, are handled exclusively in user space. Other devices, such as video cards and mice, are handled by a combination of user and kernel drivers. If you don't see a device class that you are interested in listed in this document, it is quite likely that Linux 2.2 supports it -- just not necessarily using the kernel to do so.

Also, I do not claim that everything in this document is PC. I believe that I am being fair and I have pulled some puches with respect to how I phrased certain portions. If you think that I should reword a certain portion so as not to offend someone, let me know but I will not make any promises.

Chips Galore The world of Intel chips is a fast and interesting thing to follow, if you have nothing better to do. Merced, Celeron, MMX... the names of Intel technologies float past to be replaced by new cutting-edge technology. (Whether or not these technologies are worthwhile is a matter that I'm not even going to begin to try and debate.) In addition, AMD, Cyrix, and other companies have become solid competitors in the market and each have their own little optimizations, quirks, and bugs. It's a mess, to say the least.

Linux 2.2 will be the first stable Linux to support options for the various non-Intel processors in the kernel configuration tool. Perhaps even more importantly, Linux 2.2 (and later revisions of 2.0 for obvious reasons) supports bugfixes and workarounds for widespread processor bugs including the infamous F00F Pentium bug. Other bugs that can't be worked around, such as an AMD K6 sig11 bug, are reported during startup.

Merced hasn't arrived yet and probably isn't immediately forthcoming, but Linux 2.2 has already been ported to Sparc64, Alpha, and other 64-bit platforms so the infrastructure for a 64-bit native kernel is already happily in place. (There are, of course, other obstacles that would have to be overcome before Linux/Merced could be released but having a 64-bit ready kernel is an important step.)

Multiple-Processor machines now will operate much more efficiently than they did in Linux 2.0 with issues such as the global spinlock removed. Up to 16 processors are supported (the same as with 2.0) but the performance difference should be amazing. Also, there is now greater support for the IO-APIC on Intel boards that will make SMP generally better supported. And finally, it is now possible to specify a multi-processor configuration without ever leaving the kernel configuration tool.

In terms of other ports, Linux 2.2 will feature improved support for a large number of 'workstation' machines such as Sparc, Sparc64, and Alpha machines. As for 'desktop' machines, Linux 2.2 has been ported to Motorola's m68k and PPC processors and now can be expected to run on many of these platforms, including the Macintosh. (with varying degrees of hardware support, of course. Support for m68k Macs in particular is not ready for prime-time.) Linux is also moving to processors, such as ARM that are increasingly popular for embedded systems.

On somewhat of a tangent, there is continuing work to support a subset of the Linux kernel on 8086, 8088, 80186, and 80286 machines. This project will never integrate itself with Linux-proper but will provide an alternative Linux-subset operating system for these machines.

In terms of memory consumption, the average Linux 2.2 setup will require more memory than Linux 2.0. (Although a larger number of components can now be modularized or compiled-out to allow a system administrator more flexibility if memory is tight.) There is some debate as to what is the lower limit in terms of functionality with a text-only system but it should still be possible to have only 4 megs of RAM in many situations. (8 megs are still recommended.) On the bright side, Linux 2.2 includes a number of new optimizations that should actually improve the performance of machines with at least 16 megs of RAM. The more, the merrier.

System Busses and Assorted Ilk Although somewhat less crucial and cutting edge, Linux 2.2 will support a larger proportion of the existing x86 computers with the addition of complete support for the Microchannel bus found on some PS/2s and older machines.

In addition to hundreds of minor patches to the bus system (including many new PCI device names), larger improvements have taken place. The PCI subsystem, in particular, has undergone several major changes. Firstly, the PCI device reporting interface has been changed and moved to allow for easier addition of new information fields. This particular change doesn't spell much of a difference for an end user but it makes the lives of developers much easier. Additionally, it is now possible to choose whether you want to scan your PCI bus using your compatible PCI BIOS or through direct access. This allows Linux 2.2 to work on a larger set of machines as several PCI BIOSes were incompatible with the standards and caused booting problems.

Sadly, there is still little kernel support for Plug-and-Play ISA devices. While that would be a great addition, there are some problems with the currently proposed systems that will need to be resolved sometime in 2.3 before inclusion. Fortunately enough, there happens to be a great user-level utility, isapnp, for setting up PnP devices that requires just a tad more work than we'd like but gets the job done in true Linux fashion.

Laptops and many workstations can also benifit from improved support for power management, including worksrounds for a number of incompatible BIOS implementations. Also new in 2.2 is the ability to use some functions of an APM BIOS on multi-processor systems.

IDE, and SCSI, and USB... Oh my! As far as Linux IDE is concerned, not much obvious has changed for Linux 2.2. The most obvious change is that it is now possible to load and unload the IDE subsystem as a module, just like SCSI. (This also has the added bonus of allowing one to use a PnP-based IDE controller.) For less bleeding-edge machines, the updated IDE driver now supports older MFM and RLL disks and controllers without having to load an older version of the driver. Linux 2.2 now also has the ability to detect and configure all PCI-based IDE cards automatically, including the activation of DMA bus-mastering to reduce CPU overhead and improve performance. And finally, more drivers have been developed for controllers that are buggy or simply different. It's amazing how even excellent things can continue to get better.

Elsewhere in the IDE world, parallel port IDE devices have become more common and are now supported by Linux 2.2, for the most part. It is a good assumption that many devices that are not supported currently will be added as 2.2 progresses.

The SCSI subsystem's main improvements have been the addition of many new drivers for many new cards and chipsets. Too many, in fact, to even begin to name here.

PCMCIA adapters (or PC-card slots, as they are called now) are not supported in the standard Linux 2.2 but are supported by an external module provider. Thus, while not in the kernel, PCMCIA support will be included in most distributions.

IRDA support has also been added to the kernel although many controllers are not yet supported. As this feature was added only in the closing days of Linux 2.1 development, it may not be as generally usable as other, more mature, portions of the kernel.

Alas, there is some bad news here. Despite ongoing efforts by several parties to finish USB support, no support was included in time for a Linux 2.2 release. Several prominent developers have looked at USB support and it is likely that there will be some support before we get too far into Linux 2.2.x. (Alternatively, USB support could be provided through an external source in the same way that PCMCIA support is now.)

Ports: Parallel and Serial Nothing much new on this front, Linux has always had incredible support for these basic building blocks. The parallel port driver has been rewritten with cross-platform issues in mind and thus what was once just a 'Parallel Port' is now a 'PC-Style Parallel Port' Functionality-wise, the only obvious change is that you can now effortlessly share a single parallel port device with multiple device drivers. (Note however that the naming convention used to label parallel ports has changed so you may find that your lp1 has become your lp0. Distributions should allow for this change automatically however.)

Serial support is chugging along as well as it always has but with one notable difference. Previously, a serial device such as a modem involved two devices, one for call-in and one for call-out. (ttyS and cua respectively) As of Linux 2.2, the two are combined in one device (ttyS) and accessing the cua devices now prints a warning message to the kernel log. On the bright side, Linux 2.2 includes support for having more than 4 serial ports, it allows serial devices to share interrupts, and it includes a number of drivers for non-standard ports and multi-port cards. My only complaint with serial support is its lack of support for the standard methods for modules to pass device parameters at module-load time via the modules.conf file and kmod. (Instead, these parameters are set using the 'setserial' command. Somewhat yuck.)

It should also be mentioned that Linux 2.2 will support newer UART chips than 2.0 which may translate into higher transfer rates using newer modems.

CD-ROMs, Floppies, and removable media Thankfully, the hodge-podge of hundreds of CD-ROM standards has solidified behind the 'standard' of ATAPI CD-ROMs. This reprieve has given developers time to completely rewrite the CD-ROM driver system to be more standardized in terms of support. Small, quirky differences between the individual drivers have now all been fixed for better support.

Rewritable CD-ROMs aren't supported nearly as well as one would like, unfortunately. SCSI CD-ROMs are well done (and most IDE drives use SCSI-over-ATA, the SCSI-emulation driver). With other rewritable CD-ROMs, your mileage may vary.

Floppies are working as well as ever. There are new developments in terms of large volume floppies and it remains to be seen whether or not all of these will be supported. Those devices that communicate using ATAPI (a large number of them, actually) are already supported to some degree.

IOMEGA's zip drive, an increasingly popular storage solution, is fairly well supported under Linux 2.2. These beasts come in three versions: SCSI, ATAPI (IDE), and Parallel. Under SCSI and ATAPI, the Zip drives are supported just as any other disk would be. The parallel version of these drives actually use a sort of SCSI-over-parallel protocol that is also supported in Linux 2.2. (Other IOMEGA solutions such as DITTO drives may also be supported using the ftape drivers.)

DVD drives are already supported, to some degree, under Linux as they represent themselves largely as ATAPI drives. (SCSI DVD drives may not, but they will probably work using the excellent SCSI CD-ROM driver.) Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean that all will be rosy in the Linux/DVD world as Linux does not currently support any DVD-centric filesystems that have been proposed nor are any user-space tools developed to display DVD movies and etc. Once the standards stabilize a bit, it is highly likely that the requisite parts will be added to the Linux kernel sometime during the 2.2.x cycle, following the initial release.

Other removable media may or may not be supported under Linux 2.2. If the device connects through the parallel port, it is possible that it is supported using one of the Parallel Port IDE device protocol modules that are included in the kernel.

Glorious Sounds! At long last, the sound code has been partially rewritten to be completely modular from start to finish. Distributions will be able to more easily include generic sound support out-of-the-box for their users as well as making it easier for the rest of us to load and configure sound devices. (Especially pesky Plug-and-Play ones.) Lots of new sound devices are supported as well and it looks like this is one area where Linux will really improve in the next year.

One very notable defect here is the remaining lack of support for the PC internal speaker, if only for completeness. Then again, Windows 95/98 doesn't do it either so who am I to judge?

Video4Linux Linux 2.2 now has amazing support for a growing number of TV and radio tuner cards and digital cameras. This is a truly bleeding edge addition to 2.1's roster so there may still be some outstanding issues but it is reasonable to assume that they will be fixed in time. In my humble opinion, this is just an amazing area for Linux to be in at all. Back me up, Scotty! Linux 2.2's backup and tape device subsystem has not changed much since the 2.0 release. More drivers for devices have been written, of course and substantial improvement has been made for backup devices that work off of the floppy disk controller (including the IOMEGA DITTO).

Rewritable CD-ROMs have become a popular solution for backing up data and they are supported under Linux 2.2 There are still outstanding issues in this regard, see my note above on CD-ROMs for details.

Joysticks, Mouse, and Input Devices Joysticks are better supported in 2.2 including a large number of new joysticks and joysticks with an inordinate numbers of buttons. Likely, your joystick will work under Linux 2.2.

Mice in 2.2 aren't really different from mice in 2.0. (As in 2.0, there are some inconsistencies regarding mouse support that will be addressed in the future. For the most part, mouse control is provided through a daemon external to the kernel. Some mouse drivers however deliberately emulate a Microsoft standard mouse. The reasoning behind this is obvious but it would be nice if it was decided on in one way or the other.) It should be noted that, while not solely a kernel issue, mice with Microsoft's spinning wheel extension are supported in recent versions of the XFree86, Linux's most popular GUI. (However many Linux applications have not been designed to take advantage of this feature.)

Additionally, several other input devices are now supported under Linux 2.2 including some digitizer pads. If your devices emulates a mouse (as many do) then it is already supported by Linux 2.2 (and, in fact, Linux 2.0).

Video Perhaps the most surprising and cutting-edge addition to the Linux kernel version 2.2 is what is called the 'frame-buffer console' driver (or 'fbcon', for short.)

Previously, the Linux kernel (for Intel-based machines) only understood and manipulated the video devices in text mode. Graphical support was to be provided by two other systems: 'svgalib' for console-based graphics, and a specialized X Server for window-based graphics. This kludgey system often required configuration information to be repeated and each system supported only a limited slice of the myriad of video devices in common use.

Since this addition is rather new, it remains to be seen whether it will truly replace the previous and long-standing duality. Unfortunately, it could be nearly a year after Linux 2.2 ships before this new system could be robust enough to support the cards and technologies that we already take for granted as working. My personal opinion is that this is the right idea, but I'm going to withhold judgment until we see exactly how far Linus and the developers decide to take this feature.

As an added side-effect of this new feature, primitive multi-heading has been added into the kernel for some devices. Currently, this is limited to some text-mode output but it is reasonable to assume that this very new addition to the Linux kernel will mature somewhat during the 2.2.x and 2.3.x cycles.

It should also be mentioned that it is now possible to remove support for 'virtual' terminals as provided by the kernel. This allows very memory-conscious people to save just a tad more.

Although unimaginable to the desktop user, Linux can now work even better on systems that do not actually include any sort of video device. In addition to being able to log in over serial or networked lines, as Linux 2.0 and previous Linuxes allowed, it is now possible to redirect all the kernel messages (usually sent to the console directly before any hardware was initialized) to a serial device.

Networking: Ethernet, ISDN, and the lowly modem. I don't have a huge amount of experience here; I've been using the same network cards in all my machines for several years. But, it doesn't take an Alan Cox to see that the number of supported Ethernet and ISDN devices supported in Linux 2.2 has risen sharply. I have been told that newer solutions such as cable modems are supported, also.

My only gripe in this regard is the continued non-support of so-called 'Winmodems.' Not that I blame Linux for their absence, making modems that are 80% software is just a dumb idea anyway, but the idealist in me hopes that some day these pesky devils will be supported like their less stripped cousins.

Amateur Radio people are Linux people, too. Since before Linux 2.0, Linux has been one of the few desktop OSes to include native support for computer-based amateur radio people. (Not that I actually know what that entails but it seems to be a more popular option outside the US.) Linux 2.2 adds support for NetROM and ROSE amateur radio protocols. The basic AX.25 layer has also been materially enhanced. Filesystems for the World Linux 2.2 has a wide array of new filesystems and partition types for interconnectivity. In addition, many of Linux's supported filesystems (including those I haven't listed here) have been updated with a new caching system to markedly improve performance. (In fact, not updating the drivers wasn't even an option if one wanted them included in Linux 2.2.)

For the Microsoft nut, Linux will now read NTFS (Windows NT) drives and Windows 98's FAT32 drives (also used by some later versions of Windows 95). Linux 2.2 also understands Microsoft's Joliet system for long filenames on CD-ROMs. And finally, Linux also understands a new type of extended partition that Microsoft invented. Drivers to read and write Microsoft and Stacker compressed drives are being developed but not yet included in the kernel. There is continuing work with NTFS to allow for both reading and writing, but that support is still experimental.

For Mac connectivity, a HFS driver for reading and writing Mac disks has been included. HFS+ and MFS (ancient floppy format) are not yet supported. Macintosh partition tables can now also be read by the kernel; this allows Mac SCSI disks to be mounted natively.

Sadly, OS/2 users will still not be able to write to their HPFS drives. Some updates have been made to the HPFS driver to support the new 'dcache' system but not the complete overhaul that some were hoping for. There is ongoing work outside the kernel to include read/write support in this driver but those changes did not make it into the initial release of 2.2.0.

If there are any Amiga users left (and there are), they will be pleased to know that the FFS driver has undergone some minor updates since 2.0. This is especially useful as the new generation of PPC Amigas will continue to support this format.

For connectivity to other UNIXes, Linux 2.2 has come forward in leaps and bounds. Linux 2.2 still includes the UFS filesystem which is used on BSD derived systems, including Solaris and the free versions of BSD. Linux 2.2 can now also read the partition table formats used by FreeBSD, SunOS, and Solaris. For SysV-style UNIXs, Linux 2.2 features a somewhat updated version of SysVFS. Linux 2.2 can also read the Acorn's RiscOS disks. And finally, Linux 2.2 features a somewhat updated version of the ever-popular Minix filesystem, which can be used for small drives and floppies on most UNIXes. With so many incompatible formats (and Linux 2.2 reading so many of them), it's amazing anyone ever got any work done.

In other news, support for 'extended' drives (the format used by much older versions of Linux) has been removed in favor of the 'second extended' filesystem. (This shouldn't matter to many people, 'ext2' is far superior to its predecessor.) With the increased support of initial ramdisks, a 'romfs' has been created which has very minimal overhead.

While not quite a filesystem, Linux 2.2 includes enhanced support for stretching a filesystem across several disks transparently. At present, this support can be used in RAID 0, 1, 4, and 5 modes as well as a simple linear mode.

Networking II: Under the Hood On the protocol front, a lot has happened that I simply don't understand completely. The next generation Internet protocol, IPv6, has made an appearance. SPX, a compliment to IPX is new, as well. DDP, the protocol of choice for older AppleTalk networks has also been improved. And, just as you would come to expect by now, the existing protocols have been improved, as well. I only wish I had the need to use some of this stuff...

On the low-end front, not much has changed. PPP, SLIP, CSLIP, and PLIP are all still available for use. I guess some things don't need much improvement. (Although each of those drivers have been updated in one way or another.)

The list keeps going, however. Linux 2.2 will have an excellent new networking core, new tunneling code, a completely new firewalling and routing system called 'ipchains', support for limiting bandwidth consumption, and a ton more. It's just amazing. I wish I could keep track of it all. (But, who am I kidding?)

It should be noted that file and printer sharing protocols have also been improved and markedly enhanced. SMB, the protocol for accessing Windows-based shared filesystems has been somewhat improved with bugfixes and the like. If you are a fan of NetWare (some people are...), you'll be happy to know that Linux 2.2 supports a large number of improvements in this area, including access to two different kinds of NCP long file names. Trusty NFS has also been improved, both at the server level and the client level. And finally, those eggheads over at CMU have been hard at work developing the new distributed network filesystem, Coda. This filesystem supports a large number of highly-requested features including disconnected operations for laptops, an advanced cache system, and security improvements.

On somewhat of a tangent, Linux 2.2 also includes a driver which will allow one to share (and remotely mount) whole disk images over a network.

Not Everyone Speaks English. Linux 2.0 is a very international OS with support for international keyboards and the like. Linux 2.2 adds to this and other internationalization features the ability to load some Microsoft/UNICODE codepages for translating filenames into Linux's native system. (Which is UTF8, another encoding of UNICODE) Currently, the only filesystems that use these translations include Microsoft's VFAT and Microsoft's Joilet ISO 9660 (CD-ROM filesystem) extension. Unix98: The Next Generation Linux 2.2 will be a more 'standard' UNIX in a number of ways. The most pronounced of these ways to the end user will be the addition of UNIX98-style Pty devices using a new filesystem (devpts) and a cloning device to provide the functionality. And, finally... In addition to those noted above, there are a large number of other drivers and things that just don't fit in anywhere but should still be noted. So, in no given order, the oddball updates of Linux 2.2:

The loopback driver, which allows disk images to be mounted and manipulated just like any regular drive, has been improved in a number of ways. Of these improvements, the most notable difference to users will be its increased support for encryption and the mounting of encrypted hard disks and disk images.

A driver for accessing your computer's CMOS memory has also been provided in Linux 2.2 which may be useful in some applications. (Sadly, a similar driver to access your BIOS's flashable RAM did not make it, it will still be necessary to boot from a DOS floppy to flash your computer's BIOS to a new version.)

And finally, in the past, Linux used a half-user/half-kernel method of loading in and out drivers (called 'modules') called 'kerneld' This method was good but inefficient. Linux 2.2 has removed kerneld and replaced it with a smaller all-kernel solution called 'kmod'.

This is the 'revised millennium penguin' version of this document (1/26/99) and is really just a minor update over the last three final versions. Linux 2.2 is out now, so obviously no new features will be added and I should be safe.

As always, I can be reached at jpranevich@lycos.com.

Thank you, and Good Night.

Joseph Pranevich

AT&T, telecom Godzilla, and Lycos announced that they have worked out a financial deal, much like many of the other search engines. In this, there will be shared marketing, and Lycos will serve as the point-of-access for people who use AT&T's WorldNet service.

netweasel wrote in to tell us that Electric Monk now seems to have a Powered by Lycos logo on it. I popped in and it seemed to work quite nicely. I'm glad to see the site back. I'm very disappointed in alta vista for handling this the way they did. I hope Lycos and EM work together nicely.