Just FYI, I believe the xScale line is an offshoot of Intel's purchase of Advanced RISC Machines and the StrongARM processor designs, not either of Intel's (mostly) failed RISC designs, the i860 and i960. (Yes, I know they're still used in microcontroller/coprocessing roles, and have been for years - but for their original intended purposes, they were both pretty much stillborn.)
There is this fun thing called PAE (Physical Addressing Extensions), which lets any P6-and-later x86 CPU use up to 64 GB of RAM. I'm reasonably sure both Windows and Linux do support it.
Sure, their hardware's okay - because they don't make it, it's all contracted out to third parties. The Xbox and Xbox360 in particular - Microsoft brings in outside talent to do the design, then contracts with outside parties to do the manufacturing. They just get to put their brand on it.
Well, actually that term was coined well before Xen came around. I'm pretty sure the VMM that's part of z/VM on IBM's machines was referred to as a "hypervisor" as well - and it far predates Xen's use of the word.
The Blackdown JDK is under the same license, and blackdown.org hadn't been updated in quite awhile last I looked; besides, Sun stole all the work Blackdown did to port Java to Linux to provide their Java packages.
You can also use GFS, or one of the other clustered filesystems to do this, though what I'm really waiting to see is XenFS - as far as I know it's still in the works, and it'll definitely put an interesting new spin on Xen virtual machines.
To give you only the trivial example, you can't do much sysadmin with editing some root-only files, and most editors have a shell-out function. The moment you give anyone usuful sysadmin capabilities using sudo you've made their password a root password.
Yes, yes; that's why there's 'rvi'. (And don't tell me "but what about emacs?" - it doesn't count.) There are some programs that can be run via sudo that aren't going to immediately compromise your security.
I dunno, her voice was so flat in Kingdom Hearts II (yeah, I'm playing it - so sue me). At least the girl they had voicing Aerith in the original one had a little more substance to her voice - Mena Suvari should *not* do voice acting, based on what I've heard so far in this game.
"Me & My Katamari" cancelled? Uh, you might ought to break the news to Gamestop and other retailers - they seem to be under the delusion that they have copies to sell. Did they just imagine them?
(a) The CentOS guys don't get paid. (b) Mr. City Manager was *not* his customer. therefore... (c) This CentOS developer responding *at all* should be considered a favor.
I mean, really. Think about if it'd been Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the machine - if he'd e-mailed or called Red Hat with that kind of crap, they'd probably (a) have charged him through the nose, (b) told him "you need to contact the hosting provider", and (c) told him never to contact them again because of the blind threats. Why should individuals working for NO MONEY put up with things no corporation would (or should, IMO) put up with? What idiot came up with this idea?
What did any of those have to do with system administration? A BitTorrent client, a music player, and X applications to show system activity aren't what I think of when I think "system administration". Someone needs to explain to this kid what real (read: people who get paid good money for their work) admins do in the way of adminly tasks, and how completely incongruous his list is.
I've netinstalled Fedora more times than I care to count. It's not the fastest, but it's not bad with a local mirror. It's not as dog slow as, say, SuSE; netinstalling it is about as mind numbing as watching paint dry.
The first 12 are still, and as far as I know will remain, free for download on the Guardian website; you might go download those first and give 'em a listen. Personally I don't own an iPod (I have a PSP and it does double-duty as an MP3 player), so this is going to put the kibosh on any more listening to his podcast, even ignoring the $7/month. Of course, there seems to be some disagreement on if that's $7/month, or $7 one off...
You can't be serious. Almost nobody *actually* gets their own channelized T1s and remote access concentrators and sets up their own authentication servers and all the other infrastructure anymore. It's *not profitable*. Why? Volume. That's why. They contract with one of the aforementioned "big-name like SBC or Comcast" companies to provide all that, and take a little off the top. It's not much, mind you, but it's more than they'd be getting if they set up all the equipment themselves. Especially if they provide "oh yes, you can get a dialup account with us here and dialup anywhere! Even nationwide!" - they can't do that. They don't have that kind of resources. Who does? The big companies - usually the ILECs that everyone loves to hate, too.
Not only would it be a great strategic move for Apple, but it is hard to see how they could pass up developing such a product, if only because they could give it such a great name.
Actually, I think it would be a killing blow for OS X. I've said it many times before - it's one of the mistakes that IBM made with OS/2, leaning on "We're compatible with Windows! You can run unmodified Windows apps!" to shore up their shortcomings in the applications department.
The trouble is that app developers tend to be lazy. If they can develop separate versions of an app for both OS X and Windows, or develop one version of the same app for Windows and have it run on OS X for free, what do you think will happen? Unless they can find a *huge* reason to do otherwise, they're going to take the easy way out and develop just the Windows version. It costs less in development time and effort, and they still make money from the Apple crowd. (Yeah, there might be a few hardcore Apple people who won't buy it, but they're still way ahead.) Then, when Microsoft makes some big change that makes Windows apps incompatible with OS X again, what happens? Goodbye OS X, it was nice while it lasted.
Because of this, I really seriously doubt that Apple would try to have Windows apps run seamlessly on OS X. They'd be selling out their own platform for no good reason, and sapping their developer base. It wouldn't be a win for them, and it'd leave them very much prone to Microsoft's will - which I think it's safe to say is *not* where they want to be...
As an owner of a PSP, I can say I'm among the group that would rather rip a DVD and recode it for use on the PSP than spend the money on a UMD of it. I've already bought the DVD. I have done this with several movies in the past - when I'm traveling, it's easy entertainment. I can slap a couple movies onto my Memory Stick, and hey - there's 4 hours' worth of entertainment, and I still have games and room for some music.
For people who can't or would rather throw money at the problem, fine, let them. But they really shouldn't blame the fact that not all people have infinite cash to throw at re-buying the movies they already own on UMD. In the meantime, worry about getting more good games on the PSP - I have some money, and I'd rather spend it on good games than buying my movie collection all over again.
But he's right - that's how Microsoft makes their money, keeping people on the upgrade treadmill. "Oh no, Windows [version] is all kinds of hosed up, we know... but all those issues will be fixed in Windows [version++]! And it'll make your breakfast and give you blowjobs too!" You'll note how with *every* new Windows version, Microsoft's marketing is along those lines - and they always claim the new version will cure all ills. Strangely, it never does.
And really, if they made the *perfect* version of Windows, that really had *all* the security issues fixed, yes, they'd get people upgrading to it - but what would be the draw for the next version? How can you improve on that? No one would upgrade. Microsoft would be killing that continuing revenue stream of upgraders. That's why it's not in their financial interest - and you know, they have to do everything they can to maximize profits, since they're a publicly-traded company...
Linux has one problem that over-shadows all others :
* A monolithic kernel
You're kidding, right? Microsoft has pretty much gutted Cutler's NT microkernel design, what with moving so many subsystems back into the kernel and all. And OS X? It's a full fledged BSD kernel running on top of a Mach microkernel - really, a microkernel arrangement in name only. The only reason they keep it around is because Mach provides some... interesting IPC facilities, which OS X exploits heavily. Everyone has either moved back toward the monolithic kernel, or hasn't strayed *that* far from it; outside of research or very limited, purpose specific OSes, a full-blown microkernel layout is pretty much nonexistant.
f Apple were to sell Macintosh hardware that can run MacOS X and Windows XP simultaneously, they could sell tons of those. Even if "simultaneously" means that one of the OSes is in sleep mode while the other is running, with some form of communication so that cut&paste works.
And it would be the biggest kamikaze move since Pearl Harbor. Apple would be killing their own software business to do such a thing - no one would buy software for OS X if they could just run Windows simultaneously, or otherwise (perfectly, seamlessly) run Windows and OS X apps side-by-side. If Apple really wanted to go out with a bang, I could see doing it; I think Unca Steve wants to stay around, so what you're talking about is a pipe dream.
As I've said before, OS/2 did it... look what happened to it. Admittedly that wasn't the only reason, but it was a big factor about why NO ONE developed any apps of any consequence for it.
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Just FYI, I believe the xScale line is an offshoot of Intel's purchase of Advanced RISC Machines and the StrongARM processor designs, not either of Intel's (mostly) failed RISC designs, the i860 and i960. (Yes, I know they're still used in microcontroller/coprocessing roles, and have been for years - but for their original intended purposes, they were both pretty much stillborn.)
There is this fun thing called PAE (Physical Addressing Extensions), which lets any P6-and-later x86 CPU use up to 64 GB of RAM. I'm reasonably sure both Windows and Linux do support it.
Sure, their hardware's okay - because they don't make it, it's all contracted out to third parties. The Xbox and Xbox360 in particular - Microsoft brings in outside talent to do the design, then contracts with outside parties to do the manufacturing. They just get to put their brand on it.
Well, actually that term was coined well before Xen came around. I'm pretty sure the VMM that's part of z/VM on IBM's machines was referred to as a "hypervisor" as well - and it far predates Xen's use of the word.
The Blackdown JDK is under the same license, and blackdown.org hadn't been updated in quite awhile last I looked; besides, Sun stole all the work Blackdown did to port Java to Linux to provide their Java packages.
You can also use GFS, or one of the other clustered filesystems to do this, though what I'm really waiting to see is XenFS - as far as I know it's still in the works, and it'll definitely put an interesting new spin on Xen virtual machines.
To give you only the trivial example, you can't do much sysadmin with editing some root-only files, and most editors have a shell-out function. The moment you give anyone usuful sysadmin capabilities using sudo you've made their password a root password.
Yes, yes; that's why there's 'rvi'. (And don't tell me "but what about emacs?" - it doesn't count.) There are some programs that can be run via sudo that aren't going to immediately compromise your security.
I dunno, her voice was so flat in Kingdom Hearts II (yeah, I'm playing it - so sue me). At least the girl they had voicing Aerith in the original one had a little more substance to her voice - Mena Suvari should *not* do voice acting, based on what I've heard so far in this game.
"Me & My Katamari" cancelled? Uh, you might ought to break the news to Gamestop and other retailers - they seem to be under the delusion that they have copies to sell. Did they just imagine them?
(a) The CentOS guys don't get paid.
(b) Mr. City Manager was *not* his customer.
therefore...
(c) This CentOS developer responding *at all* should be considered a favor.
I mean, really. Think about if it'd been Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the machine - if he'd e-mailed or called Red Hat with that kind of crap, they'd probably (a) have charged him through the nose, (b) told him "you need to contact the hosting provider", and (c) told him never to contact them again because of the blind threats. Why should individuals working for NO MONEY put up with things no corporation would (or should, IMO) put up with? What idiot came up with this idea?
What did any of those have to do with system administration? A BitTorrent client, a music player, and X applications to show system activity aren't what I think of when I think "system administration". Someone needs to explain to this kid what real (read: people who get paid good money for their work) admins do in the way of adminly tasks, and how completely incongruous his list is.
I've netinstalled Fedora more times than I care to count. It's not the fastest, but it's not bad with a local mirror. It's not as dog slow as, say, SuSE; netinstalling it is about as mind numbing as watching paint dry.
It already comes with a hardware dongle, foo. It's called Apple's x86 machine. :)
Too bad that on the last one they said that "Chimpanzee that!" would be no more - I guess Karl got tired of making a fool of himself over it.
The first 12 are still, and as far as I know will remain, free for download on the Guardian website; you might go download those first and give 'em a listen. Personally I don't own an iPod (I have a PSP and it does double-duty as an MP3 player), so this is going to put the kibosh on any more listening to his podcast, even ignoring the $7/month. Of course, there seems to be some disagreement on if that's $7/month, or $7 one off...
You can't be serious. Almost nobody *actually* gets their own channelized T1s and remote access concentrators and sets up their own authentication servers and all the other infrastructure anymore. It's *not profitable*. Why? Volume. That's why. They contract with one of the aforementioned "big-name like SBC or Comcast" companies to provide all that, and take a little off the top. It's not much, mind you, but it's more than they'd be getting if they set up all the equipment themselves. Especially if they provide "oh yes, you can get a dialup account with us here and dialup anywhere! Even nationwide!" - they can't do that. They don't have that kind of resources. Who does? The big companies - usually the ILECs that everyone loves to hate, too.
Not only would it be a great strategic move for Apple, but it is hard to see how they could pass up developing such a product, if only because they could give it such a great name.
Actually, I think it would be a killing blow for OS X. I've said it many times before - it's one of the mistakes that IBM made with OS/2, leaning on "We're compatible with Windows! You can run unmodified Windows apps!" to shore up their shortcomings in the applications department.
The trouble is that app developers tend to be lazy. If they can develop separate versions of an app for both OS X and Windows, or develop one version of the same app for Windows and have it run on OS X for free, what do you think will happen? Unless they can find a *huge* reason to do otherwise, they're going to take the easy way out and develop just the Windows version. It costs less in development time and effort, and they still make money from the Apple crowd. (Yeah, there might be a few hardcore Apple people who won't buy it, but they're still way ahead.) Then, when Microsoft makes some big change that makes Windows apps incompatible with OS X again, what happens? Goodbye OS X, it was nice while it lasted.
Because of this, I really seriously doubt that Apple would try to have Windows apps run seamlessly on OS X. They'd be selling out their own platform for no good reason, and sapping their developer base. It wouldn't be a win for them, and it'd leave them very much prone to Microsoft's will - which I think it's safe to say is *not* where they want to be...
As an owner of a PSP, I can say I'm among the group that would rather rip a DVD and recode it for use on the PSP than spend the money on a UMD of it. I've already bought the DVD. I have done this with several movies in the past - when I'm traveling, it's easy entertainment. I can slap a couple movies onto my Memory Stick, and hey - there's 4 hours' worth of entertainment, and I still have games and room for some music.
For people who can't or would rather throw money at the problem, fine, let them. But they really shouldn't blame the fact that not all people have infinite cash to throw at re-buying the movies they already own on UMD. In the meantime, worry about getting more good games on the PSP - I have some money, and I'd rather spend it on good games than buying my movie collection all over again.
Webhosts, you say? Strange, I work for one, and we run the 2.6 kernel on pretty much everything these days.
Funny how everyone else manages to affect progress on their OS, without a complete ground-up rewrite of major subsystems every few years.
But he's right - that's how Microsoft makes their money, keeping people on the upgrade treadmill. "Oh no, Windows [version] is all kinds of hosed up, we know... but all those issues will be fixed in Windows [version++]! And it'll make your breakfast and give you blowjobs too!" You'll note how with *every* new Windows version, Microsoft's marketing is along those lines - and they always claim the new version will cure all ills. Strangely, it never does.
And really, if they made the *perfect* version of Windows, that really had *all* the security issues fixed, yes, they'd get people upgrading to it - but what would be the draw for the next version? How can you improve on that? No one would upgrade. Microsoft would be killing that continuing revenue stream of upgraders. That's why it's not in their financial interest - and you know, they have to do everything they can to maximize profits, since they're a publicly-traded company...
Linux has one problem that over-shadows all others :
* A monolithic kernel
You're kidding, right? Microsoft has pretty much gutted Cutler's NT microkernel design, what with moving so many subsystems back into the kernel and all. And OS X? It's a full fledged BSD kernel running on top of a Mach microkernel - really, a microkernel arrangement in name only. The only reason they keep it around is because Mach provides some... interesting IPC facilities, which OS X exploits heavily. Everyone has either moved back toward the monolithic kernel, or hasn't strayed *that* far from it; outside of research or very limited, purpose specific OSes, a full-blown microkernel layout is pretty much nonexistant.
f Apple were to sell Macintosh hardware that can run MacOS X and Windows XP simultaneously, they could sell tons of those. Even if "simultaneously" means that one of the OSes is in sleep mode while the other is running, with some form of communication so that cut&paste works.
And it would be the biggest kamikaze move since Pearl Harbor. Apple would be killing their own software business to do such a thing - no one would buy software for OS X if they could just run Windows simultaneously, or otherwise (perfectly, seamlessly) run Windows and OS X apps side-by-side. If Apple really wanted to go out with a bang, I could see doing it; I think Unca Steve wants to stay around, so what you're talking about is a pipe dream.
As I've said before, OS/2 did it... look what happened to it. Admittedly that wasn't the only reason, but it was a big factor about why NO ONE developed any apps of any consequence for it.
This works for Windows NT, even. (Well, if you disconnect the floppy drive ;-)
And the CD-ROM drive. And any other removable-media storage devices. (All removable media is subject to AUTORUN things...)
Based on some of the comments from people who've *used* the commercial product, it sounds like there might be some disagreement on this point...