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These exist for several microcontrollers (HC11) and for older x86 chips but for a modern P4 system you would need to emulate the host-bridge, RAM, system timer, essentially the entire motherboard. To give you an idea of the scope of this, when Intel verified the logic of the P4 it took 1 week to simulate 6 billion cycles. This used a compute farm of several thousand P3 machines(yes, running Linux). Interesting paper about the process

I actually made an 8080 emulator that ran on an FPGA PCI card. It had a host bridge, RAM and an interface to the PCI bus. Unfortunately it ran at 400 kHz(1/12 the speed of the original) but one could change the microcode on the fly and view/modify just about any register in the design.

My university library replaced all the photocopiers with some fancy shrink/enlarge/collate/digitize/duplex models. In my mind, the one feature a photocopier should present is the ability to lay down a page, press a button, and get a copy. But no, these machines required you to enter the paper size, number of copies, and cropping options first. And then, once you copied one page, you had to do it all again for the next. I'm sure these machines are very efficient for a person who has some complex copy jobs and is trained properly, but they are inappropriate in a library where most people have simple tasks and will never use the same machine again.

In programming, I try to follow the theme of keeping simple things simple. In my C++ class for a random number generator, you can initialize and seed the generator with no parameters. The code gets a seed from /dev/urandom or time() on its own, since that's what most people would do anyways. If someone wants to be more careful, they can do the seeding themselves, but software should always allow simple tasks to be performed easily.

AlpineR

I am sure you have seen a bat right? Its a rat with Wings. There are very few other animals like it that fly. Did the rat randomly develop wings?

I have, in fact, seen bats.
You, however, have obviously never heard of flying squirrels.

No, the problem is a ballot that is confusing and easy to screw up. And once you do punch the wrong candidate, election officials would not allow you to caast it correctly. Furthermore, Hanging chads were a problem because some election machines didn't totally punch out the paper -- leaving a small scrap hanging on 1, 2 or 3 sides, or sometimes even just an indentation! Which of the above counts as a vote?

I found some Linux outliners at 1st Spot Linux (scroll to the bottom of the page) You'll see Java Outline Editor, Think, Thoughtstream: News, Thoughttracker, Tkoutline, VIM Outliner, and Yank.
Good Luck!

Does this mean they might finally break that 7-qubit barrier that quantum computers up until this point had seemed to have been limited to?

There are many ways in which to perform quantum computing. The "7-qubit barrier" probably refers the factorization of 15 using 7 qubits. This was done using NMR-qubits (nuclear magnetic resonance). NMR-computing uses the nuclear spin of atoms in some molecule to represent the qubits. This is relatively easy to achieve, as the atoms are bound close together by the molecule, but it doesn't scale well, because there is a limit to the complexity of the molecule. NMR-qubits are therefore ideal for a proof-of-consept and the research with them is invaluable in the development of quantum computers, but they probably won't have any practical applications. (Of course, it's always possible that some breakthrough comes along...)

The next big thing will probably be trapped ion qubits, where ions trapped with a magnetic and/or electrical field are used to represent the qubits. This allows a much larger number of qubits, but it, too, has its practical limits. There are also other methods (eg. holding particles on a liquid-helium surface), which are not currently practical, but show great potential for the future.

In any development there often seems to be some barriers which cannot be broken, until someone does. This will probably be the case of quantum computers, too.

While I like Linux and use it in some situations, I can tell you for sure that most distributions are far from competing with OpenBSD in terms of safety. You are right in saying that OpenBSD has a lot less resources than Linux, but they use their resources in a far more focused way.

• Yes, there are 3rd party patches which hack many anti-buffer overflow protections into the Linux kernel, similar to what OpenBSD has.

• Yes, there is a stateful firewall for Linux.

• Yes, there is ipv6 support for Linux.

But OpenBSD takes all of these things, which under Linux can be half baked and kludged, and packages them together as a polished, stable end product. Their PF work is quite frankly amazing. The features and documentation are unbeatable. Checkpoint and Cisco, watch out!

The key difference between GNU/Linux and the various BSDs is integration. The BSDs assure you that the various things will play together properly. Features are added more conservatively, but they are going to work. The system as a whole is stable.

You know that for example the buffer overflow protections are not going to break half your userland applications, because it has been thouroughly tested on the system as a whole. Some example results of this:

• You know that the packet filter will play nice with the IPv6 subsystem.
• You know that Systrace will work on an SMP kernel.

You also don't get silly things like stable kernels which corrupt your filesystem or ripping out the virtual memory subsystem in a stable kernel and completely changing it.

All these things are very nice when you are running serious production servers.

Linux can perform a large number of roles adequately.

OpenBSD can perform a smaller number of roles excellently

Ahem. While I hated it at the time, I'm glad my computer science program has a class on writing an assembler and a virtual machine for a very simple assembly language as a prerequisite for declaring your major.

The new scientist sort of misrepresented the findings of the paper. The fact that passwords and other sensitive information gets retained on swap for a long time. The paper was looking at memory tainting, i.e. if an application handles a password where does it end up in memory. The results were slightly surprising. Nontheless, most people would be even more surprised to see how much sensitive information ends up in swap. That's why you want to encrypt your swap partition.

That's why OpenBSD allows you to encrypt your swap.
Provos wrote this in 2001: Encrypting Virtual Memory

For Mac OS X, I recommend the following free software:
Audacity . Audio Editor.
Colloquy. An IRC Client.
Cyberduck. FTP client.
Fugu. FTP client.
Shiira. Web browser written in Cocoa.
Camino. Web browser.
Firefox. Web Browser.
Mozilla . Browser/E-mail/Composer/Address/Chat.
Thunderbird. E-mail Client.
GnuPG for Mac. GNU Privacy Guard for Mac = Encryption for the people!

Give the kids choices. All of the above are free as in freedom as well as gratis.

The Apple Store computers are set up with two partitions. One is hidden and contains the ASR (Apple Software Restore) image, while the other is the normal boot partition. They're setup to image at some point from their hidden partition. I'm sure they also have a FireWire disk with the image when someone hoses the computer totally. (No, I don't work there, just poked around one day :))

Some info on deploying OS X ASR images: http://www.bombich.com/mactips/asrx-original.html

We use ASR to image the base machines for the labs here at UC Davis, and then deploy the software install sets using Radmind

it a quote from southpark and its a defence that just doesnt make sense...

Nobody cares about your data. They just want your money, which is easy enough to find.

[10] For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

-- 1 Timothy 6:10 of the King James Bible

[1] The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

-- Psalms 24:1 of the King James Bible

[20] But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?
[21] So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

-- Luke 12:20-21 of the King James Bible

Nobody cares about your data. They just want your money, which is easy enough to find.

[10] For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

-- 1 Timothy 6:10 of the King James Bible

[1] The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

-- Psalms 24:1 of the King James Bible

[20] But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?
[21] So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

-- Luke 12:20-21 of the King James Bible

Nobody cares about your data. They just want your money, which is easy enough to find.

[10] For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

-- 1 Timothy 6:10 of the King James Bible

[1] The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

-- Psalms 24:1 of the King James Bible

[20] But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?
[21] So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

-- Luke 12:20-21 of the King James Bible

radmind - A suite of Unix command-line tools and a server designed to remotely administer the file systems of multiple Unix machines. For Mac OS X, there's also a graphical interface.

At its core, radmind operates as a tripwire. It is able to detect changes to any managed filesystem object, e.g. files, directories, links, etc. However, radmind goes further than just integrity checking: once a change is detected, radmind can optionally reverse the change.
Each managed machine may have its own loadset composed of multiple, layered overloads. This allows, for example, the operating system to be described separately from applications.

Loadsets are stored on a remote server. By updating a loadset on the server, changes can be pushed to managed machines. radmind is available under a BSD-style license.
Go Blue!

Graphics are for the weak. Allow me to respond with my own shameless plug for Orpie; it runs in the console, the way God intended.

From the redo_prebinding man page: "Redo_prebinding is used to redo the prebinding of an executable or dynamic library"

Shouldn't the prebinding on programs only change at major OS updates or changes to the libraries they access?

Yes, but I'd even go further to say that the OS should never change a system file without my intervention.

Shouldn't Application Packages already be excluded from backups for the most part anyway?

Sure, but when you are talking about a large scale deployment, you can't always control what end users backup.

More importantly to me, prebinding breaks tripwire. When a file is rebound, it triggers a tripwire event, adding noise to my reports. With so much noise, it's hard to tell what's important what's not. Tools like radmind from U of Mich alleviates this problem somewhat by integrating tripwire and system updates. But unless it, and other tools that use checksums are taught the horrors of prebinding, they won't work right.

A nice thing to have: a computer program that knows many important theorems I1, I2, I3, ... so that the user can specify "apply I12" followed by an application of I19 and then I6 and so on. The program doesn't have to understand the theorems, just use them in a sequence of deductions, as directed by a mathematician.

Yeah, it's amazing nobody ever thought of that.

Like Fugu?

Melted Penny

Face on Mars

Now we know how it must be a hoax, or a really big Martian penny.

aaah! there's a face in the image!.

they have burned the ants on mars? what gives?

Aluminium doesn't smell bad when it burns. I suspect whatever soda pop chemicals remaining in the can do.

And very possibly the paint they use to put the logo etc... on the can. He also stated that the aluminium can smelled really bad, not the aluminium that the can was made of. So when referencing to the can in that way would mean everything involved that makes it an aluminium can.

Seriously, this article is all about playing with a new destructive toy and not much about using the toy in question to do interesting science-related experiments.

While the expierments they did were fun, then did put some science into it.

The FAQ

Impressive as destroying a penny may seem, I estimated that we may have only managed to get maybe 10 percent of the available energy hitting the lens (roughly 1kW) into the penny:

* Mass of a zinc penny: 0.0025 kg
* Specific heat of zinc: 390 J/kgK
* Melting point of zinc: 419.58 degC
o Thus 20degC to about 420degC takes 390 J
* Latent heat of fusion for zinc: 1.1x10e5 J/kg
o Thus to melt the penny takes about 275 J
* We heated the liquid zinc considerably as well, but I will ignore that.
o Total energy in the penny: > 665 J
* It takes something under or around 6 seconds to melt a penny:
o 665 J / 6 sec gives us a lower limit of about >= 111 Watts
* Sunlight at the earth: 1365 W/m^2
* Transmission of the earth's atmosphere: maybe 65-70% at this angle with some clouds?
* Area of the lens is about 1.1m^2
o Power on the lens: approx. 1000 W
o Power to the penny >= 10.0%

I participated in 93, 94 and 95. I actuall won Grand award in 94. Those were some of the most fun times I had growing up. The projects really did vary in quality and dedication, but overall the experience is usually wonderful for anyone that participates. I met a number of physicists, and actually got a job at Fermi National Accelerator Lab as a result of my projects and the interest they generated. I actually left my PhD program and now work in the real world, but the ISEF really did introduce me to science on the grand scale. I wouldn't have gone into physics if it hadn't been for the ISEF. I am also currently trying to get my company to sponsor special awards at the ISEF. I figure it is the least I can do to give back.
-F
My four projects are on my webpage

As if the books Christianity and Judaism are innocent and peace-loving?

They're not talking about getting high.

All the muslims are peace loving family people.

I believe you mean IRA and not NRA, as well - else you are even worse off than I imagined.

As a result of my experience building nuclear reactors for fun, I was a science advisor for a BBC show, "The Nuclear Boyscout." I have had to answer questions about this a thousand times, and it has been /.-ed before (second down).

Also, I don't work for Los Alamos. I worked for Fermi National Accelerator Lab, but now I am at General Dynamics.

And by way of reference, the Scav Hunt rocks. We had a great time every year. Too bad I can't be there as an honorary judge this year. I would, but I can't make it... (Sorry Matt Kellard)

-Fred

My Webpage

Now, if you'll excuse me, I feel very unclean and need to take a bath in a tub of bleach.

[1] Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
[2] And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.
[3] And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
[4] They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
[5] Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
[6] This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
[7] So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
[8] And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
[9] And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
[10] When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
[11] She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

-- John 8:1-11 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

The only thing man can create 'out of nothing' (albeit with prior environmental influences) are ideas.

[15] And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
[16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
[17] That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

-- 2nd Timothy 3:15-17 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

[1] Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[2] For by it the elders obtained a good report.
[3] Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

-- Hebrews 11:1-3 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

[17] So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

-- Romans 10:17 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

The only thing man can create 'out of nothing' (albeit with prior environmental influences) are ideas.

[15] And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
[16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
[17] That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

-- 2nd Timothy 3:15-17 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

[1] Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[2] For by it the elders obtained a good report.
[3] Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

-- Hebrews 11:1-3 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

[17] So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

-- Romans 10:17 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

The only thing man can create 'out of nothing' (albeit with prior environmental influences) are ideas.

[15] And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
[16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
[17] That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

-- 2nd Timothy 3:15-17 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

[1] Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[2] For by it the elders obtained a good report.
[3] Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

-- Hebrews 11:1-3 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

[17] So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

-- Romans 10:17 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

Challenge: Have a man really create something tangible with the five senses (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling) from absolutely nothing at all.

Oh come on, that's easy.

Though to be pedantic, it requires a man and a woman. ;-)

[TMB]

[26] And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
[27] To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
[28] And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
[29] And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
[30] And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
[31] And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
[32] He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
[33] And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
[34] Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
[35] And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
[36] And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
[37] For with God nothing shall be impossible.
[38] And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

-- Luke 1:26-38 of the KJV Bible at umich.edu

No heaven or hell to go to after you die. So you'll be behaving yourself because you're civilized and not just to get the price at the end of the ride.

Science will eventualy provide a full explaination of consciousness...

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

-- KJV Bible at umich.edu

No heaven or hell to go to after you die. So you'll be behaving yourself because you're civilized and not just to get the price at the end of the ride.

Science will eventualy provide a full explaination of consciousness...

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

-- KJV Bible at umich.edu

Lets say that the state of California collectively wakes up and knows it should be strong like Schwarzenegger. Comparing the two methods:

• For selective breeding, the state would set up tax breaks and other incentives to get as many people to use as many WWE members as egg and sperm donors as possible, and also to pay non-strong people to move to Nevada. After a few generations of intense ad campaigns about how great it is to use fertility clinics and how sexy it is to bench-press Mini Coopers: voila- stronger Californians.
• For genetic engineering, we'd go out and find the different muscle gene that makes chimps 10x as strong as humans. Substitute that into all new CA embryos: voila- stronger Californians in one generation. Unless of course we accidentally spliced in multiple genes: dunno the results but hopefully they'd use Bonobo not troglodytes...

• Instead, for genetic engineering, we find the gene that makes tiger muscle much stronger than human muscle. We splice that into all new CA embryos: voila- stronger Californians in one generation. Unless of course we accidentally spliced in multiple genes: voila: a furry's dream of progressive, recycling, salad loving Kzin-people in one generation.

In this thought experiment- are selective breeding and genetic engineering the same? Stronger humans through ad campaigns are the same as stronger humans through splicing Carnivora genes into primates? That because humans have already done a wonderful job of SB through sexual selection [especially wonderful given the low genetic diversity our species has overall (compared to most other mammals- even the 40k chimps have more diversity than all 6 billion humans)], we're not doing anything new by splicing genes from elsewhere?

Sexual selection within humanity has resulted in both the !Kung and Watusi in the same geographic regions. If we really wanted to we could get all humans to looks far more !Kung or Watusi - using that massive ad campaign first developed in California- without any genetic engineering at all. But that's far different from bringing in genes from other orders/classes/phylums, isn't it? [Speaking of which, perhaps some rhodopsin could be nice for the days you want to work outside but you forgot your lunch. Any Genies (genetic engineers) out there wanting to give this a go?]

Lets say that the state of California collectively wakes up and knows it should be strong like Schwarzenegger. Comparing the two methods:

• For selective breeding, the state would set up tax breaks and other incentives to get as many people to use as many WWE members as egg and sperm donors as possible, and also to pay non-strong people to move to Nevada. After a few generations of intense ad campaigns about how great it is to use fertility clinics and how sexy it is to bench-press Mini Coopers: voila- stronger Californians.
• For genetic engineering, we'd go out and find the different muscle gene that makes chimps 10x as strong as humans. Substitute that into all new CA embryos: voila- stronger Californians in one generation. Unless of course we accidentally spliced in multiple genes: dunno the results but hopefully they'd use Bonobo not troglodytes...

• Instead, for genetic engineering, we find the gene that makes tiger muscle much stronger than human muscle. We splice that into all new CA embryos: voila- stronger Californians in one generation. Unless of course we accidentally spliced in multiple genes: voila: a furry's dream of progressive, recycling, salad loving Kzin-people in one generation.

In this thought experiment- are selective breeding and genetic engineering the same? Stronger humans through ad campaigns are the same as stronger humans through splicing Carnivora genes into primates? That because humans have already done a wonderful job of SB through sexual selection [especially wonderful given the low genetic diversity our species has overall (compared to most other mammals- even the 40k chimps have more diversity than all 6 billion humans)], we're not doing anything new by splicing genes from elsewhere?

Sexual selection within humanity has resulted in both the !Kung and Watusi in the same geographic regions. If we really wanted to we could get all humans to looks far more !Kung or Watusi - using that massive ad campaign first developed in California- without any genetic engineering at all. But that's far different from bringing in genes from other orders/classes/phylums, isn't it? [Speaking of which, perhaps some rhodopsin could be nice for the days you want to work outside but you forgot your lunch. Any Genies (genetic engineers) out there wanting to give this a go?]

But yeah, it's hard to think of anything else...

• Developer Tools
• fink, and then:
  • $ fink install nmap;
  • $ fink install osxutils
• Next is Carbon Copy Cloner,
• Transmit or some other ftp file browser.
• Finally, to make it "home", I'll install Windowshade X and Xounds.
• Also will edit my .bash_profile, naturally, and have been known to put a fnorder in the login script.

1. I'm Agnostic because it is the only intellectually honest thing that I can be.

This is a bit thoughtful, so please read it and give me your comments...

I'm an atheist for the same reason you're an agnostic.

An atheist can at the same time not have one or more god(s) and still not deny that others do have god(s).

I don't go out of my way to tell people the god they worship doesn't exist. Maybe it does. Maybe there are many gods. I haven't seen one, and everything typically associated with gods has a reasonable explanation or "I don't know" works better for. I'd be very curious if there were credible evidence for one or more, though each religion seems to be based on 'faith' alone; an assertion of truth w/o facts.

An observation:

1. When I use the word God, I put it in the category of
2. meta knowledge. In most cases when people discuss God they mean "conscience". Try it out yourself...it plugs in very very well for soul too. Trace that back to how a conscience works in society, and *bam* there's what people describe as important in faith and religion.

(The things associated with faith and religion are important.)

Because of that, I try not bringing up atheism or challenge what they think...it would take quite a bit of effort to get them to accept I have a different opinion with no effort to change what they think.

Democrats made a number of mistakes in 2000; the first was running Al Gore as their candidate, but the second was in how they pursued the Florida issue. They should have demanded a recount of the entire state; it would have reeked less of Gerrymandering, and it would have resulted in a win. The NYT was right in saying that the mistakes were more wide-spread than just the counties that the Democrats picked out.

However, if you poke around even a little bit, you find numerous articles talking about this issue. Sure, it is always "BUSH WOULD HAVE WON IF GORE'S RECOUNT HAD BET ALLOWED!!!! (but he might have lost if they'd have recounted the entire state)", but the studies are still there saying that he probably (which is the same as "maybe" if you don't like the results) would have lost.

I have a little more faith that people will read the content, not just the headlines.

By the way, you didn't "dig" at all, much less "any further". Four links down from the headline you chose to focus on was a link to the consortium study that showed that Gore won. Just so you don't miss it again here are some more links to various sources. Much of that is raw data of the research, but some of the links I originally provided reported the results of the research. At least one of the links provide a number of different interpretations of the data, all of which show that Al Gore would have won.

Aw, what the heck... since some people are incapable of following links more than one deep:

• Slate
• Washington Post
• Common Dreams

Simula is still used and there is a research facility named after it.

NFSv4 will also, unlike SMB, have support for automatic subdirectory delegations to other servers (not yet implemented, but upcoming), be compatible with Windows (ie. Windows will be able to function both as NFSv4 server and client, not that MS will write the drivers), be able to run over TCP (which is already the default, at least last I tried), and the RPC security layer also has support for several authentication backends, Kerberos just being one of them. Furthermore, NFSv4 includes the concept of a unified tree between servers a la AFS and Coda. Let's just say that NFSv4 is a major improvement over previous versions. Check out the reference implementation's homepage, including a (more) complete feature list here and (especially for Linux) here.

I think SMB sucks much more. Just like so much other Windows stuff, it's a legacy technology from the 80's designed for DOS, and has now been riddled with layering from hell to make up for the base protocol's deficiancies. If not for any other reason, the protocol is just plain ugly to look at. ;-)

NFSv4 will also, unlike SMB, have support for automatic subdirectory delegations to other servers (not yet implemented, but upcoming), be compatible with Windows (ie. Windows will be able to function both as NFSv4 server and client, not that MS will write the drivers), be able to run over TCP (which is already the default, at least last I tried), and the RPC security layer also has support for several authentication backends, Kerberos just being one of them. Furthermore, NFSv4 includes the concept of a unified tree between servers a la AFS and Coda. Let's just say that NFSv4 is a major improvement over previous versions. Check out the reference implementation's homepage, including a (more) complete feature list here and (especially for Linux) here.

I think SMB sucks much more. Just like so much other Windows stuff, it's a legacy technology from the 80's designed for DOS, and has now been riddled with layering from hell to make up for the base protocol's deficiancies. If not for any other reason, the protocol is just plain ugly to look at. ;-)

I am not familiar with shfs other than a brief read of the website and this thread.

w/r/t NFS security, NFSv4 should solve most if not
all of the problems. Fundamentally two things always bothered me about NFS security.

RPC - NFS makes heavy use of sun-style RPC, requiring you to use the RPC libraries and the portmapper. This stuff has a bad reputation for security problems, eg, buffer overflows, and there is a lot of it, and it runs on random ports so it's difficult to filter/firewall/tunnel it.

no user credentials - NFS through V3 doesn't provide any user credentials - root on the client has access to all users' files on the mounted filesystem. There's no server-enforced security.

NFSv4 fixes the RPC/multiple ports problem.
I don't know about the user credential problem but i bet it fixes that too.

On to the quick-and-dirty:
In the past, I've set up a samba server and used the linux smbfs client to access it, and tunneled the whole business over SSH. It worked reliably, to the limited extent that i tested it (YMMV).
I don't really remember how well it performed - it was more of a proof-of-concept for me.

Actually, this has been studied and quantified. Specifically, see:

"Kim, H. C., G. A. Keoleian, S. Spatari and J. W. Bulkley. Optimizing Vehicle Life Using Life Cycle Energy Analysis and Dynamic Replacement Modeling. in Proceedings of the 2000 Total Life Cycle Conference, P-353. Detroit, MI: SAE International, 2000, Paper No. 2000-01-1499, 241-250"

This was work produced by the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan.

As I recall, the conclusion on how often to replace a car really depended on what you were most concerned about (energy, air pollution, etc.), but it worked out that you should probably be replacing the car at least every ten years because of advances in technology.

In general, the use phase will dominate both from an energy and a pollution standpoint.

We are using Sun's JVM and compilers to build the agents and the testers. I was think about using gcj/classpath to build that programs, but that would be really 'reliable' ?

I've seen Java "agent" code work fine under both gcj and Sun or IBM's JVM. I mean stuff like Coabs.

How my project would be intepreted in scientific congress when people see it is not developed under Sun's JVM but on GNU's one ?

Nobody with a scientific mindset should care at all. Scientists view choice of software provider as an inconsequential implementation issue. Both Sun Java and GCJ have certain problems with numerical accuracy that bother some scientists, but as long as you correctly report what you used, you'll be fine.

doesn't sound very pleasant for the programmers.

Pleasant for programmers? That depends on what they're doing. In general there's so much more support for official Sun Java in IDEs and what have you that it'll be easier to jump right in and get started without thinking about configuration. And since most Java programmers probably use the Sun version anyway, it'll be simplest to stick with what they're used to.

However, there are situations where GCJ is actually much easier to use than Java. Especially if you're an experienced Unix C++ or GCC programmer, or if you need to work with programs that combine C/C++ and Java in one executable, then GCJ can be better.

Fugu is a fantastic open source SFTP client.

Personally, I think Transmit was worth the $25.

Simply a routine part of their studies...

(original credit, of course, goes to The Onion, but they're not hosting it on their site anymore)