Slashdot Mirror
Yet Another Use for Linux
TMOS writes "Well, more and more companies are using Linux, as if we all didn't know that. This is one
that utilizes Linux to operate and maintain small to large
telephone systems used by organizations such as the FAA and 911. It is nice to know that an underdog OS can be used to save lives."
Hasn't this been done a while back? Have a look here
I once had a dog that was like that...
oh, wait! what am I saying?
Well, let's be very glad they aren't running windows...
I can see it now...
"HELP! SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME AND TURN ME INTO STONE!"
"Allright, sir... now where are y... er... um, could you hold on a sec... I have to reboot..."
-- Dr. E --
Once upon a time, all these systems had no computers to rely on whatsoever. And they managed. With all due respect to Linux for reaching yet another audience, we should keep in mind that every step like this is just a relatively small improvement for whichever group took it. Yea, windows boxen crashing daily on 911 systems isn't a pleasant thought -- but think of it as 0.01% cases falling through because of that being replaced by 0.0001% now.
// zyqqh
Presumably they have done some amount of kernel hacking on their systems. I don't see any GPL compliance information on their page though. Perhaps this is like tivo, prior to our pointing out that they need to provide source?
I prefer real people. Cartoons? WTF are you thinking?
Isn't it about time you kind of people grew up ? Is it really that amusing to post drivel while hiding behind anonmous coward ? Why not go and talk to 13 year old boys masquarading a women behind the anonymity of their keyboards ?....oh, yeah, you ARE on of those 13 year olds, masturbating while apparently speaking to women !
you have some issues.
Time to set an appointment with the shrink again!
why 13? why couldn't they be 14? or 12? perhaps they are adults that just can't get any and have to masturbate. don't even try to get out of the point that you masturbate. at least they're speaking to women...........
that all cartoons look alike.
Nice Sailor Moon site DICK
I work with a company that has one of these, and I have played with it a little bit. Pretty darn cool setup. They run mostly from RAM. The phone system has dual linux boxes (with some arbiting code) for fault tolerance -- if the primary linux box goes down, the secondary box picks up automatically, without dropping any calls in progress.
They can do all kinds of phone system statistics and reporting, using MySQL as a backend for the data. They have a full featured ACD as well. They have support for many flavors of CTI, and I have seen some pretty nifty CSTA based CTI stuff that works with this equipment (they use Delphi for software development).
From what I understand they will shortly have available email, text messaging, and voice over IP as available features, all routed/controlled by the linux based switch. For the next generation call center...
By this point, I suspect that the vast majority of the Slashdot community, including those who do not use Linux, are convinced that Linux is a robust operating system capable of handling critical applications. Hence, the marginal value of reporting stories of this type on Slashdot is zero. You are preaching to the converted.
Please, please, please could we get some stories that don't involve Linux being used in some obscure and utterly irrelevant way. I know this may be a big step, so as a transition, how about some stories about FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD being used for obscure purposes? I'm sure someone out there is using FreeBSD to control their high energy particle accelerator or something of the sort.
This is getting seriously tiring. It seems like everytime anyone mentions that they made a product based on Linux it has to be announced on slashdot like some massive personal hurdle has been overcome. Next thing we're gonna hear is that Linux was the youngest OS in a family of 13 living in a mud floored one-third bedroom home with only a bucket in the corner to piss in. Father died in a coal mining accident when Linux was only six days old and the mother had to turn tricks to support the family. And all Linux ever dreamed of was to be able to take care of the family like pa would have wanted it to. It's just such a touching story I'm going to have to cry now.
Can't we just realize that the shit is there. Linux has "made it." There's no need to act like every little product is an accomplishment in the face of worldwide adversity.
It doesn't surprise me that Linux is getting into as many far-reaching industries as it is. Computers are practically involved in everything today, from driving your car to ordering a pizza. Everyone of these computers needs some form of operating system that is fast, efficient, and can be easily configured or optimized for the task at hand. Linux fits all of these bills!
I think we've only began to see the beginning of the proliferation of Linux into mainstream applications and business. Forget about Jini and Microsoft CE. They are both things of the past. Linux's power comes from its open source model which makes it readily available to every developer out there.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see such applications as MP3 players for cars which run on Linux, or even home theater systems that utilize the power of Linux. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg.
I mean look at the new processor Crusoe. Combine the speed and power saving features of this processor with the efficiency and stability of Linux and you have a winning combination. Say good-bye to "WinTel". Thats just my two-cents on the matter.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Your right Linux is hardly the be all and end all of OS's. We run our servers on FreeBSD since we found that it is even more stable than Linux and is also more scalable for industrial applications, such as database admin and even for serving up web pages. When it comes to a really serious OS I think Linux still has a way to go yet.
Linux tends to get a lot of the spotlight but it is just another version of Unix. Its basically a marketing thing. You get the name out then everyone starts talking about it which gives it even more publicity and pretty soon the whole thing snowballs into a huge "monopoly" for lack of a better word.
Windows is a prime example, just too bad it sucks so bad.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Yet Another Fucking Yet Another Use For Linux Story.
Sour grapes. The people who are most jealous of Linux are those who are emotionally tied to a certain family of failed operating systems like you know who. The failed family of operating systems struggle to stay afloat while Linux soars among the stars. We all know that Linux succeeded, and that you know who has failed. Deal with it.
Okay kids, today we're going to learn about Taco Corporate Speak. It's not difficult, just listen carefully:
...' - mmm money "
> I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release.
> My usual response is to tell them that I delay the release by 24 hours each time someone asks me when a new Slash tarball will be out.
"If you're not from Andover I don't give a damn what you want from me. (Alternate hidden meaning: I don't know how to use tar )"
> Seriously, there are only 3 people who really know how much work a source release for this is: CowboyNeal, Patrick and Me.
> And the three of us have been working on a lot of stuff. As I write this, we are bugfixing and documenting and preparing for a source release.
> There is a private CVS server that one day soon will be publicly read only.
"This code is a steaming pile of spaghetti, I would get an F- for it in school. Since releasing it would be ultimate embarrasment, it probably wouldn't be bring me too much fame and fortune, so just forget it."
> This isn't like other projects: it has been custom fit to our hardware and to our needs. It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code.
"Man, I'm having nightmares about debugging it"
> We're just too busy to play tech support helping dozens of people compile mod_perl and tune Apache.
"Let's try another lame excuse"
> We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.
"I've decided to try yet another lame excuse"
> It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of the source code every week.
"Somebody finally tell me how to use fscking tar"
> Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that.
"It's also easy to forget that in the last 6 months I've doubled my income and I had to find a good bank to handle my money"
> A new source release is secondary: Our job is running Slashdot. We want to release new versions of Slash, but it is a definite second priority to keeping Slashdot moving.
"'Money money money , must be funny
Alternate translation:
"Shut up and click the nice banners"
> Finally, it's coming soon.
"Cool, there is a manpage for tar !"
> It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.
"Acting like a 6 year old will probably scare away those bad-bad people"
----
Thank goes to previous interpreters for inspiration.
Free Slash !
Learn to write!
"you're" = you are
MILLENNIUM = one thousand years
MILLENIUM = one thousand assholes
And you're one of them, unless you learn to spell!
homo
Click here! Someday she'll be petrified, and life will be good again.
By Jimminy and by the Force, Taco's problem is in the AntiPatterns. He is suffering under the Spaghetti Code AntiPattern.
Just generally on medical devices.
Most medical devices use a custom built OS. For good reason too.
They require such outstandingly specialised features, run on such peculiar platforms and the developers also want to feel that they can 'own' the entire device.
Take an MRI machine, for example. That has its own customised platform, etc... why you ask? Because it would need fault tolerance, self diagnostics, etc... that are hardly available off the shelf, or would require such re-engineering to an open source product you may as well build you own damn OS.
Also, it gives you such great control over your own OS. Linux doesn't offer the developers the feeling that they 'own' their OS and have access to it, etc... and nobody interfering.
This is why I think linux will never make it into that area. Its a stuck mindset, and with good reason, imho.
With 911. You have an arguement. However, I still think vast majority will run on customised platforms. Linux is stable. Sure. However, when it comes to healthcare and other industries. you don't need stable, you need un-crashable or at least have such unbelievable fault tolerance and self diagonistics. There are some things that can't be left to chance.
Anyone for a ride on a warship running linux? I sure wouldn't. I'd want its own OS, and i'm sure its builders would too.
**This message was brought to you by the letters N, T and the number 666**
how can that be a three? that had to be the most fucking inane comment i've ever heard. which variety of crack were the moderators smoking at this time? oh right, ass-crack. very good guys.
If the system fails and someone dies, who could be sued? For that matter, who's really responsible?
The GPL makes a point of disclaiming all warranties and establishing a use-at-your-own-risk understanding.
Would that stand up in court though? Perhaps some liability can't be disclaimed. Who is sued then? Say they bought a distro. Is the distributor at fault? If they got it free, can they blame who gave it to them? Does getting it free erase giver's liability?
Could they hunt down the person responsible for the offending code and sue them?
Should this company be responsible for verifying that every line of the OS works right? Hell no - that's impossible for a single company that didn't design it. Should they then be using an OS that NOBODY has checked in this way?
Should the Linux community stand up and tell them, "this isn't a good idea. Nobody is ABSOLUTELY sure this code won't fail. Someone could die unless you use a better-checked product"?
Perhaps someone should hire marketing, distribution, and QA engineers, and sell a fault-checked Linux.
Someone is always liable. Now, whether this is actually the company who's implementing the GPL system, the decission maker or the company who develops the system, someone is responsible. Responsibility usually doesn't seem to be binding until money changes hands.
On the other hand, knowing the maerican legal system all hell could very well break loose.
Jay
My thought now is that Public Enemy (That Rap Group) is going to have to change their famous song, "911 is a joke" to "Linux is a joke" if this company makes a bad product.
I can just see Flavor Flav on MTV with the changed lirics, "Get up, Get Get Get down, Linux is a joke, a joke in yo' town".
Or better yet!
When someone is hurt, you run over to another person by a phone and say, "Quick! Someones been hurt, call L-I-N-U-X!"
Linux O Muerte!
I pity you, and your parents and anybody who has to hear your crap day in, day out;.
that's right folks, the great english society has meters (like parking meters) in their homes where they have to put coins into to get gas.
what fun!
I wouldn't call the OS that gets second
most press, hype and F.U.D. an "Underdog OS".
Anyone for a ride on a warship running linux? I sure wouldn't. I'd want its own OS, and i'm sure its builders would too.
...developers also want to feel that they can 'own' the entire device...
While I agree that standard Linux isn't a great choice for life-or-death systems, your argument doesn't support the conclusion that such systems should have their own OS.
Through an open source development environment, such projects could be far more reliable, and feature rich. The standard arguments still hold--more eyes peering at the code seems particularly important for critical applications.
Yes, I think that's the real reason!
Anything is better than my company's computer system at the moment. My company just upgraded to Windblows 4.0 with Novell. This is a upgrade for the phone systems as well. This upgrade had been taking place since Febuarary of 99. And of course the voice mail system is still not working throughout the company. I even had the luxury to recommend Linux and a Unix based phone and server operating sysyem only to be looked at like windows was the only alternative. I just laughed and went on my way. It would have been nice to save the company a couple of thousand dollars, probably more. Oh well it is not my company.:)
How many people have been killed as a direct result of relying on Windows?
i have an another use for grits. you can eat them. but its better to pour them down your pants. thank you.
Having a specialized platform, with specialized features, is all well and good - but 5-10 years down the line it becomes a major liability. Unless your "specialized platform" is widely used and supported, you're going to run into serious trouble when the hardware you were using becomes hard or even impossible to buy, and nobody has created any drivers for the hardware you can buy.
With Linux (or other open source solutions) it seems you can have your cake and eat it too - you can customize and debug and hack it to suit your needs, while still having a huge community that supports and maintains all the commonly used stuff, like ethernet adapters and video hardware.
If people are devoting resources to creating an uncrashable system (which some people do need), then basing it on a widely used, widely supported open source solution makes a lot of sense.
So yes, I'd definately prefer a warship running Linux (or one of the BSDs) than one running its own written-from-scratch OS. The many eyeballs rule applies especially to highly critical systems. That doesn't mean I want the warship designers to cut corners - I want them to spend their time and efforts on the stuff that actually matters for the application, not drudgery like writing a whole new OS from scratch.
Host your own websites, anywhere!
*Beos was used to diffuse a highly volitile terrorist situation and freed 25 hostages.
*NetBSD showed a person on the edge of a high rise there was still reason to live.
*OS2/Warp performed a delicate medical procedure using only a ball point pen.
It's turtles all the way down.
A company comes along, that may not even have sold a single dollar's worth of merchandise, and they use Linux? Who fucking cares? Show me some enterprise class operations using Linux. Not some college kid who's playing admin. Not some village in Ethiopia. How about some BIG IMPORTANT companies using it for something other than a print server for a 10 person workgroup. You people are funny. Next, you'll be ranting about HAM radios replacing telephones! After all, I know somebody using one!!!!
It's getting really off-topic, but way too interesting to keep for myself. I just found a snippet from an amazon.com (that we boycot it doesn't mean we can't read their interviews, does it? :) interview with Chuck D. Imagine this, in 1994 (!!!) they predicted what we now have with MP3 and the internet and the *wanted* it to be like this. These are mainstream artists, making big bucks...
Amazon.com: You're still finishing up the new album, There's a Poison Goin' On. How's it going?
Chuck D: It's going well. It's what we call 21st-century music. And in 1994 when I made Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, we predicted that the ways of distributing music would change, that the music business would change. I mean, people can go to Muse Sick and find [that], on Harry Allen's interactive superhighway phone call to Chuck D, we mentioned everything that is happening now. And we made that record for 1999, but this record here, There's a Poison Goin' On, is definitely for the year 2000. So it's going really well.
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
As a technical HR (Human Resources) coordinator at a major corporation, I see day in day out, just how difficult it can be to find _good_ quality MCSE's to adminstrate our networks. Recently, I have noticed that more and more of our departments are asking me to find Linux experts.
My big problem is this: The MCSE's I have spoken to claim that Microsoft's coverage of Linux in their curriculum (specifically on the NT4 Server Advanced techniques stream) is of a very low quality, leaving them in some cases with almost no knowledge whatsoever of Linux. I am worried that we will have our emergency services running on Linux, but with Non-MS Certified staff in control of the servers.
I am not really very technical (being in HR and all means I know all the TLA's but not what they mean :-) ) but I for one do not feel very comfortable about this state of affairs. After all, the whole point of certification is to prove the candidate has the skills for the job
Whilst running a "new and trendy" operating system such as Linux or even FreeBSD may result in short term savings, one has to wonder at the wisdom of running saftey critical systems on a platform where certified professionals are in such short supply.
I just hope when that Linux machine has a "general protection bug" (as I believe they are called) that the MCSE there knows how to reboot the Linux server, before someone has to die as a result of the drive for IT people to have the "latest and greatest".
There's a Big 10 university (upper midwestern U.S.) whose phone system is run off a generic Linux/PowerPC system, and apparently has been for several years at this point. Cool stuff.
-- haaz.
Seriously, is anyone fixing Linux so that it will roll-over to 2038 correctly?
If the problem has already been fixed, then please ignore this port.
Waiting to be hooked up a machine to check the capacity and pressure dynamics of the bladder, I checked out the screen.
It was a Windows based application, running on a standard PC.
While I was watching, a DOS based screen saver kicked in, suspending windows, and giving a blank screen. When the nurse returns, she mutters "this machine is always doing this", and reboots it, giving the standard Win95 boot sequence, which loads a DOS based TSR screen saver, and finally the custom application full screen.
This does not inspire confidence in a person who is about to have said machine threaded into his privates.
Oh my God! What a touching story! However, I saw no mention of Linux's poor upbringing anywhere! Perhaps the documentation I have been reading thus far has not been as complete as it should have been...
Ouch. You have my sympathy.
**This message was brought to you by the letters N, T and the number 666**
how exactly does an OS save lives? I mean surely you had better compliment the sysadmn on his/her job keeping flawless uptime too? but isnt this story just scraping the barrel of linux do good links? a Uk company called Andrews and Arnold ships perfectly good Linux based voice mail and call control software AS AN ALTERNATIVE to paying Lucent mega$ for WinCrap licenses (which are i think about $3,500 equiv just to get voicemail up) all on network alchemy hware. i bet someone somehwre willl diall 999 / 911 and save a life on that kit too. will that justify a story?
My $1 LinuxMall FreeBSD CD is currently serving to prevent those nasty little water rings in the picture of wood that's glued to the top of my chipboard coffee table. It's still in the plastic sleeve, and therefore still usable for it's intended purpose (controlling high-energy particle accelerators)
To mail me, take out the hoopie, dammit.
I have never seen Computer Aided Dispatch (911) done on either. Try a Tandem or RS/6000. Since neither Linux nor NT is in that class for scalability, stability, and reliability I don't see either OS performing the task any time in the next several years.
Grow up people...