Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Plexion, Kernelism, Salaryness
Plex those muscles, yeah, and one and two and three ... dhunley expressed himself thusly: "A handful of days after getting Dos, Win95, and Linux to boot, Plex86 does it again! Initial support for booting QNX now works! Screenshot is here!" And shortly thereafter, the very same dhunley wrote: "Plex86 boots NT 4.0! Well, at least to the login dialog box. This is an old bochs disk image file. The mods will be uploaded to CVS soon."
Thanks, d. Watch out soon for an interview with bochs and plex86 lead Kevin Lawton, who promises to take time out from his busy schedule to tell you what's up in the worlds of emulation and virtualization.
While you're here, why not take a tour of the whinery? Apropros the wacky things that people have decided to put in the kernel lately (like GNOME ORBit), Booker writes: "Every time there's a major new kernel release, there's whining on Slashdot about killing uptime, and how much it sucks to have to reboot to get a new kernel. Well, whine no more.
Erik Hendriks at scyld.com brings us Two Kernel Monte, a 'kernel module which allows Linux to load another kernel image into RAM and restart the machine from that kernel.' The only major limitation appears to be that it will not work with SMP machines. Apparently Erik got the idea from the Linux Bios Project."
Now if some smart distribution maker (anyone, anyone) were to integrate that into their updates system, would that be so wrong?
We join this survey already in progress: Marketing Manager writes: "Anyone who's been in the job market knows how tough it is to find information about salaries and compensation. For system administrators, the search is compounded by the varieties of tasks, talents and responsibilities required to get the job done. Now there's something you can do to fix this.
SAGE invites you to participate in the 2000 System Administrator Salary Survey starting December 1, 2000. This annual survey is part of SAGE's ongoing effort to advance Systems Administration as a profession through information and advocacy. By participating in this survey, you join thousands of system administrators in examining the market and defining compensation according to your talents, your location, and your technical prowess."
So now you can find out where you stand in comparison to others with similar positions, perhaps a valuable bargaining chip come contract renewal (or incentive to check out a new city). The results will be available early next year -- automatically sent to SAGE members, available by request to everyone else.
Number One, can't you do anything about that rabble? bluets writes: "Some leading scientists and open-source advocates are attempting to raise awareness that the Celera/Science Magazine deal is a 'Big Mistake.' More details [here]."
And if you didn't know about this, it's only because you're not opening the barrel-of-monkeys Slashdot Science Section often enough. We're considering an experiment where everyone who opens it gets a food pellet, and everyone who doesn't ... well, do we have to bring out the Punishment Stick?
Salary.com
:)
I am not sure how accurate they are:
JobSmart's Salary Surveys
Pencom Systems Incorporated: Interactive Salary Guide
SalaryZone
http://www.realrates.com
Are there any others and how accurate are they? Thanks.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Outside of specific groups like Slashdot and a few scientific journals, I have heard ZERO conversation on this in meat-space or meat-media.
Come on people -- real life makes The 6th Day look like a fucking walk through Disneyland.
---
seumas.com
Somebody finally explained the word warez to me! I always thought they were some kind of tupperware!
How is shutting your machine down to a minimal state and bringing it back up NOT downtime? What exactly is the point of uptime if it's not that?
That's kind of like cheating, if you ask me. Why not just create a kernel module that will log your uptime when you shutdown and start it at that point when you boot up?
Additionally, this project is a perfect example of why businesses don't trust Linux. Not only does this tweak the statistics to make Linux look more reliable than it is, but it does something much worse in the eyes of business.
This modification shows the business community that Redhat is only developing more toys for their toy operating system, instead of making important advancements that are necessary to let the operating system finally break through on the desktop. These kernel developers need to get in line if they want users.
-lb
from the survey:
62.Does your organization provide any special benefits or working conditions that you particularly like? (please specify)
Sure; for our company Christmas gift we got a bag of microwave popcorn and a hockey puck with our company logo on it, since apparently our big marketing coup this year was to sponsor a "play of the game" segment for Washington Capitals games. Bonus? What's that?
Looking for a buzzword-heavy sinking ship? come work with me!
Assholes. I can't wait until my Oracle DBA class is finished and I can get the fuck out of technical support.
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
The open letter from Ewan Birney and Sean Eddy that the genomeweb article talks about can be read in full at:b er/001826.html
http://bioperl.org/pipermail/bioperl-l/2000-Decem
If you plan to write to Donald Kennedy check the listserv email thread to read about a correction to his email address.
-chris
Of course since you have to unmount the filesystems to use this Linux kernel swapper it really is effectively a reboot. The system will still be up for the upgrade, but anything anyone is trying to do on it will be restarted, so you can still strike fear into the hearts of users. Not to mention of course that if you are not using an obsolete version of Windows, changing IP addresses and adding protocols do not require a reboot - stop spreading FUD.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I haven't played with it yet, but I heard that the newest Solaris revision supports live patching of the kernel. That's very cool. Imagine never having to reboot for a software related thing again? Hell, on some of the E class Sun boxen, you can hot swap memory, CPUs, and other I/O devices. About time someone started working on technology like that for the PC (granted it's a different market and less demand).
Speaking of which, it would also be nice to have an x86 hardware bootloader instead of the outdated BIOS. Being able to load an OS or boot from a differnt device via a commandline would be a great feature for the home PC.
Two Kernel Monte stops you from a having to do a warm reboot of your system, but it is 100% equivalent to it, from the user perspective. The entire system, including the previously running kernel, is killed off and the new kernel is booted up. All you save is the 10 (or more) seconds waiting for your system to do a reboot. So, the whining will continue :-).
Get us all a raise.
Post inflated numbers to SAGE and then direct the boss to the site during your next salary negotiation.
C'mon, everyone. Chip in!
Linux : built to your spec, optimize to your hearts content. Preserve uptime(ugh)
Windows : Change IP address reboot. Add protocol : reboot. Install program : reboot. Upgrade : reboot
MS has has won an important aspect in the ever lucrative server market. That is the "reboot" aspect. Reboots are becoming more and more popular. Reboots are now considered fun, they give sysadmins a good excuse for a traditional "coffee break". Reboots are familliar. What will sysadmins do without them? How will a sysadmin be able to wield his usual power. The phrase "We will be down for an upgrade!" no longer holds water! ACK what is Linux doing?? What are they thinking?? Are they putting us SYSADMINS out of business? Reducing our free time? I no longer strike fear into the hearts of lusers by saying "we have to upgrade the software on the server"
Do you realize just how difficult it is to write with my tongue so firmly stuck in my cheek?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I'm currently using VMWare and I actually think it's very worth having. I'm developing cross-platform (Linux/Windows/Mac) software, and while I do 90% of the coding in Linux, I need to recompile the Windows version all the time. It's much faster to resume my VMWare session and do the Windows compile there than it is to reboot into Windows. Plus, I can continue using Linux while it compiles, and the system is totally responsive. When I'm done using Windows for a while, I can just suspend my VMWare session and free up all of its memory.
The other reason I use it is that there are still a fair number of fun web sites out there that only really work in IE. I do 90% of my browsing using Konqueror or Netscape in Linux, but if my AOL-using friend sends me a link to a cool game that requires a Windows plug-in, I like being able to check it out without having to reboot.
So I'm all in favor of Plex86. As soon as it can run VC++ and IE, I'll be switching.
Whoops, I need to take that back.
You aren't able to view the results, but if you fill out the survey, you can submit information and the results will be sent to you.
I was under the impression that one could not view the results due to the surveys being password protected on the web site.
My most sincere apologies.