Given that OpenStreetMap Cairo looks pretty complete I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of GPS devices already out there.
It's interesting to watch the trickle down effect of technology and grassroots efforts to harness it, coming fact to face with traditional government regulation, such as amateur cartography being illegal in Russia. I guess personal GPS devices and the internet are pretty subversive.
You can run ARM Debian without any porting work - that will give you all non-GUI apps working straight away. The G1/HTC Dream does not run Xorg, so GUI apps will not work. The Android desktop is based on the Skia graphics library. So for GUI apps you have two choices: 1) Port to Skia or 2) Get Xorg running on the G1. (Actually, you could use embedded QT or GTK directly on the framebuffer, but base Xorg would be more useful..) The G1 kernel does expose a standard framebuffer device to user space, so getting xorg running should be easy enough. The difficulty comes if you want to run the Google Skia apps on top of that - Skia has a Cairo backend, which in turn uses X, so in theory it would be perfectly possible to link those libraries and run Skia apps. Over time I expect we will see the emergence of some standard distro that unifies all this stuff in a reasonable way. Nokia's Maemo has already shown that it is possible to run a cut down desktop with standard Linux apps on this kind of device.
You come here and say they'll replace the closed source stuff with open source in the GTA03 however you've got no proof, it even says so on the wiki.
It isn't closed source - it's open source but closed specification. There is a difference. And despite the disclaimer, the page also says that the hardware has been taped out and evaluation boards already manufactured. The disclaimer just means that the specs aren't set in stone, the reality is that there's a high probability that GTA03 will contain the listed hardware... and as for me not having any proof - well, you're right, I'm willing to accept that I can never provide a proof that some future event will occur. Can you?
and I am sure all 2 people that care about kernel access are happy.
Just because you do not care about kernel access, does not mean that nobody else in the world does. One of the first things that Saurik did after the G1 was jail-broken was to load kernel modules for ext2 and unionfs. Kernel access is a good thing.
There is hardware in the openMoko you can not access either.
The crucial difference is that the openmoko hardware doesn't require closed source kernel drivers, and the hardware directly driven by the kernel has open specs, with the notable exception of the Smedia Glamo chip - that's one of the reasons it's being replaced in GTA03.
His argument basically boils down to "Auto-scaling is a bad idea because you might implement it badly and then it will do the wrong thing". Isn't that true of everything? The flip side, is that if you implement it well, then auto-scaling would be a great idea!
It's like saying that dynamically sized logical partitions are a bad idea, because you should just anticipate your needs in advance and use statically sized partitions. Or dynamically changing CPU clock frequencies are a bad idea, because you should just anticipate your CPU needs and set your clock frequency in advance. Or dynamically changing process counts that adapt to different multi-core/CPU availability factors are a bad idea... you get the picture.
The idea that some computational factor can be automatically dynamically adjusted isn't necessarily a bad idea, it's just the implementation that might be.
bluehost, dreamhost etc. plenty of HDD & Bandwidth for few $ a month. Don't even try to run any regular website on it, they'll cut you off (CPU & Ram usage)
Not having used the providers in question, I have to ask, why shouldn't I try to run a regular website on them? Isn't that exactly what they do - web hosting, of regular web sites? There's no reason why a regular web site should use excessive amounts of CPU or RAM.
but for filehosting, it's great bang for buck:)
I just skimmed the DreamHost TOS and saw that they explicitly ban "File upload / sharing / archive / backup / mirroring / distribution sites." Maybe not that great for file hosting after all...
So, JavaFX Mobile has nothing to do with Sun, because they just bought it from another company and rebranded it as their own? And yet JavaFX Mobile is just JavaFX running on a Linux JVM optimised for mobile devices... functionally, it is the same as the desktop JavaFX, just running on mobile devices... and yet somehow that makes it totally different, and nothing to do with Sun or this article? Here's a novel idea: if Sun didn't want JavaFX Mobile to be associated with JavaFX, then they shouldn't have branded it as "JavaFX Mobile", and they shouldn't have promoted it to mobile developers as JavaFX!
This article is about JavaFX, not JavaFX Mobile.
You still don't get it?! JavaFX Mobile is a part of JavaFX. Your comment is like saying that an article about GCC is about the Fortran compiler and not the C compiler... it's the same damn thing.
And Jonathan Schwartz loves Android, despite the fact that that it totally undermines Sun's own mobile Java product? Have you actually read the comments on the Schwartz blog you linked to?: "How come the stock tanked with such a good news? After hours trading JAVA down 2.8% or 12 cents to $5.56" "Funny.... I didn't see any mention on either the OHA site or any of the tech blogs of Java being part of the phone stack. That coupled with the fact that no one from Sun was at the presentation, makes one wonder if Java is even part of the google phone stack.""Confusing... Is this a spin or a loss for JAVA ??" "Can you explain in simplistic bullet points how JAVA benefits from Google employing JAVA? You appear almost giddy at the announcement but I am hard pressed to see how JAVA is going to make money from this." "Today NAS is up about 1% ; Sun is down 10%. As a long time stockholder I'm sick of this."
Look, Android is great, Sun is great, but let's not pretend for a moment that Android is good news for Sun. As Schwartz himself said, Java is Sun's number 1 product, they even changed the SUNW ticker to JAVA. A non-Java VM with Java source compatible compiler being offered for free to mobile vendors by a company with the brand power of Google is an absolute disaster for Sun.
Android is more than just an operating system - it is a complete software stack designed to run Java applications. The Linux kernel is only one component. You don't seem to realise that running Java applications is one of the major features of Android. And JavaFX is more than just a JVM - JavaFX mobile is a complete software stack (including a Linux kernel) for running Java applications on mobile devices.
JavaFX doesn't do what Android does. Android doesn't do what JavaFX does. The two are not competitors
Two different Java implementations, with different classes, both including and running on a Linux kernel, both on mobile phones, are not competitors?
what the fuck do Flash, Silverlight and Java FX have to do with Android?
In very simple terms, from the Wikipedia page on JavaFX: "The other component is JavaFX Mobile, a Java operating system for mobile devices, including PDAs, smartphones and feature phones. It features a Java SE and Java ME implementation running on top of a Linux kernel."
If you can't see "what the fuck" a Java implementation running on top of a Linux kernel has to do with Android, then there is no hope for you.
Re:Flash and Silverlight the target?
on
Sun Releases JavaFX
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Why is it so difficult to understand that Google's Dalvik - an implementation of Java being used for free by mobile phone manufacturers - is a direct threat to Sun's J2ME? This is not some secret conspiracy theory - professional business analysts, who actually make a living from watching these kinds of things, have noticed the same thing.
"However, Google's move threatens Sun's business strategy, Mazzocchi said. He believes that Sun sees a bright future in the mobile market and hopes to earn revenue off the use of the Java virtual machine by phone makers. Google's plan diminishes that opportunity for Sun." source
"But with this you'll need to develop a separate application that's not standard. Unless Android becomes main stream and kills J2ME..." source
This blog post from over a year ago proposes that JavaFX Mobile is just the next stage for J2ME to compete with Android.
It was known publically in March 2007 that Google had already been working on a major mobile phone project for months (eg see one report here). The fact that this project wasn't officially unveiled until November is irrelevant; everyone in the industry knew what was going on, and Sun would certainly have been aware of their plans.
Android includes its own "JVM" - except it isn't really a JVM, but a "Dalvik" VM that interprets Dalvik bytecode translated directly from Java bytecode - the end result is the same. The Dalvik VM, and its new classes (which incidentally include media playback codecs, one of the big JavaFX announcements) are a direct competitor to J2ME. If Google succeeds in having every phone manufacturer shipping Dalvik+Google classes, and takes the developer mindshare with its App Store, then J2ME is effectively dead.
If JavaFX has nothing to do with mobile phones, then why does the article say that it is being targetted to mobile phones, and offered to mobile phone manufacturers, and why did Schwartz say "We're making our binaries available to mobile-phone makers so we can unify the Java platform implementations"?
She also wants to outlaw prostitution between consenting adults, and get the Women's Institute to spy and report on amorous young women throughout the country.
Unfortunately the motives of the Conservative party in opposing the laws you list are just as suspect - Conservatives opposing 42 days detention for terrorist suspects? Have you ever met a Conservative who was pro-terrorist-suspect rights? Or being against CCTV nationally, but Conservative councils all over the country implementing CCTV? Or being against ID cards in 2008, but backing them in 2004, with Michael Howard apparently wanting to introduce them during the last Conservative government?
I can't help feeling that if their current roles were reversed, both Conservative and Labour would still feel quite at home...
Most of the people in the UK believe everything they read or see from the Rupert Murdoch empire. The man has too much power, and too much reason to desire a weak, divided Europe. You should judge the E.U. and its various organisations on their accomplishments and failures, not what the Murdoch press has to say about them. The European Court of Human Rights case law database is online, but unfortunately few in the UK will ever use it, believing instead what they are encouraged to believe by the media.
Flash and Silverlight the target?
on
Sun Releases JavaFX
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Flash and Silverlight? Yeah, right. Sun knows that Yet Another Web Development Framework isn't going to take over the desktop. This is a blatant attempt to stop Android taking over the mobile phone space. Android added native media playback classes and a bunch of other stuff to the J2ME mix, the HTC G1 was a surprise hit, and a whole bunch of cell phone manufacturers have now announced Android phones - not J2ME phones. Sun is seeing its lock on the mobile phone application market disappearing overnight, and Google side-stepped whatever patent claims it might have exerted by running "Dalvik" byte-code instead of Java byte-code.
"We're making our binaries available" to mobile-phone makers "so we can unify the Java platform implementations," said Schwartz, who expects rapid adoption. "We're starting with a couple billion handsets in the marketplace and swimming downstream."
The business case Sun also will charge those handset makers a per-unit royalty for JavaFX
So, it's closed source, and phone manufacturers have to pay a royalty to Sun for every handset shipped? In the meantime, Android is getting the press, HTC has shipped half a million G1 handsets in the past couple of months, Android is open source and free to implement, and there are numerous Android phones from multiple manufacturers on the horizon. Why would any of these manufacturers choose JavaFX instead?
Since Berlusconi didn't expand on what he meant, the Register article is slightly alarmist. Maybe he wants to regulate download speeds, or legislate net neutrality? The bald statement of wanting to "regulate the internet" is worthless. If he did want to restrict freedom of speech, and an E.U. directive were put forward, it would still need to be passed into national law by the E.U. member states, and even if that occurred it could still be challenged at the European Court under the Human Rights legislation.
But realistically, the Internet is already regulated. Try putting a copy of Photoshop or pornography involving a 15 year old girl on your web page and see how long it lasts. The question is not whether the Internet is regulated, but the level of regulation. In China, criticising the government is prohibited. In the Middle East, pornography is prohibited. In the United States, reproducing commercial sensitive data is prohibited via copyright and patent laws, in Germany Nazi memorabilia is prohibited. Every society has its limits.
Not speaking Chinese makes navigating the Chinese Red Flag site difficult, and the English one appears to be somewhat behind, but I note that the.iso files on the web site have accompanying -src.iso files. I haven't downloaded any of the isos to check that they really do include all the source, but start here if you really care: ftp://ftp.redflag-linux.com/pub/redflag/dt5/
And you think that Yahoo, Google, Cisco, Microsoft etc. aren't in league with the PRC government? In order to do business in China, you have to do as the government say. Actually, it kind of works like that in every nation...
The backdoor fears are being overblown, this is open source after all. It would be trivial to compare the binary packages installed on one of the internet cafe computers with a standard Red Flag install to see if any have been modified. Then strace or disassemble the modified binary to find out what it is doing. If you're worried that the entire Red Flag distribution might be compromised, consider that the Chinese government is recommending that this distribution be used on government and corporate computers. If there were a deliberately introduced backdoor, then it is highly likely that either a Western security researcher, or the NSA, would find it, and then be able to gain access to the Chinese computers. Thus the Chinese government actually has a very strong motive to ensure that there isn't a generic backdoor. And again, finding such a backdoor would be trivial - all you have to do is compile your own distribution using the same versions of each source package, and then compare the output binaries. Having said that, Debian had a modified ssh package with a gaping security vulnerability for a long time before anyone noticed... but eventually someone did.
I really think that there is a higher risk of the Chinese government sneaking a backdoor into Windows through a Chinese-American employee of Microsoft, or through compromising a Chinese CDROM factory or OEM manufacturer, than of being able to covertly introduce a secret backdoor into an open source Linux distribution like Red Flag. Having the source makes hiding a backdoor very difficult - if they ever did introduce a backdoor, they would probably be quite blatant about it. And as for the Windows comparisons, we still don't really know what the _NSAKEY was for.
These benchmarks never do any kind of statistically valid analysis. Even when testing CPUs, where variance may be close to 0 on a single platform, there will be variance between different mainboards, different RAM setups, etc. It would be nice to see a benchmarking site actually do proper valid benchmarking for a change.
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Given that OpenStreetMap Cairo looks pretty complete I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of GPS devices already out there.
It's interesting to watch the trickle down effect of technology and grassroots efforts to harness it, coming fact to face with traditional government regulation, such as amateur cartography being illegal in Russia. I guess personal GPS devices and the internet are pretty subversive.
You can run non-GUI binary packages without recompiling Debian & Android Together on G1
You can run ARM Debian without any porting work - that will give you all non-GUI apps working straight away. The G1/HTC Dream does not run Xorg, so GUI apps will not work. The Android desktop is based on the Skia graphics library. So for GUI apps you have two choices: 1) Port to Skia or 2) Get Xorg running on the G1. (Actually, you could use embedded QT or GTK directly on the framebuffer, but base Xorg would be more useful..) The G1 kernel does expose a standard framebuffer device to user space, so getting xorg running should be easy enough. The difficulty comes if you want to run the Google Skia apps on top of that - Skia has a Cairo backend, which in turn uses X, so in theory it would be perfectly possible to link those libraries and run Skia apps. Over time I expect we will see the emergence of some standard distro that unifies all this stuff in a reasonable way. Nokia's Maemo has already shown that it is possible to run a cut down desktop with standard Linux apps on this kind of device.
G1/HTC Dream kernel git source and build instructions
It isn't closed source - it's open source but closed specification. There is a difference. And despite the disclaimer, the page also says that the hardware has been taped out and evaluation boards already manufactured. The disclaimer just means that the specs aren't set in stone, the reality is that there's a high probability that GTA03 will contain the listed hardware... and as for me not having any proof - well, you're right, I'm willing to accept that I can never provide a proof that some future event will occur. Can you?
Just because you do not care about kernel access, does not mean that nobody else in the world does. One of the first things that Saurik did after the G1 was jail-broken was to load kernel modules for ext2 and unionfs. Kernel access is a good thing.
The crucial difference is that the openmoko hardware doesn't require closed source kernel drivers, and the hardware directly driven by the kernel has open specs, with the notable exception of the Smedia Glamo chip - that's one of the reasons it's being replaced in GTA03.
I'm pretty sure you can just reflash the Calypso GSM firmware used on the Openmoko - e.g. see this Openmoko thread on firmware hacking Though apparently it's all based on leaked docs, and may be illegal.
His argument basically boils down to "Auto-scaling is a bad idea because you might implement it badly and then it will do the wrong thing". Isn't that true of everything? The flip side, is that if you implement it well, then auto-scaling would be a great idea!
It's like saying that dynamically sized logical partitions are a bad idea, because you should just anticipate your needs in advance and use statically sized partitions. Or dynamically changing CPU clock frequencies are a bad idea, because you should just anticipate your CPU needs and set your clock frequency in advance. Or dynamically changing process counts that adapt to different multi-core/CPU availability factors are a bad idea... you get the picture.
The idea that some computational factor can be automatically dynamically adjusted isn't necessarily a bad idea, it's just the implementation that might be.
Not having used the providers in question, I have to ask, why shouldn't I try to run a regular website on them? Isn't that exactly what they do - web hosting, of regular web sites? There's no reason why a regular web site should use excessive amounts of CPU or RAM.
I just skimmed the DreamHost TOS and saw that they explicitly ban "File upload / sharing / archive / backup / mirroring / distribution sites." Maybe not that great for file hosting after all...
So, JavaFX Mobile has nothing to do with Sun, because they just bought it from another company and rebranded it as their own? And yet JavaFX Mobile is just JavaFX running on a Linux JVM optimised for mobile devices... functionally, it is the same as the desktop JavaFX, just running on mobile devices... and yet somehow that makes it totally different, and nothing to do with Sun or this article? Here's a novel idea: if Sun didn't want JavaFX Mobile to be associated with JavaFX, then they shouldn't have branded it as "JavaFX Mobile", and they shouldn't have promoted it to mobile developers as JavaFX!
You still don't get it?! JavaFX Mobile is a part of JavaFX. Your comment is like saying that an article about GCC is about the Fortran compiler and not the C compiler... it's the same damn thing.
And Jonathan Schwartz loves Android, despite the fact that that it totally undermines Sun's own mobile Java product? Have you actually read the comments on the Schwartz blog you linked to?: "How come the stock tanked with such a good news? After hours trading JAVA down 2.8% or 12 cents to $5.56" "Funny.... I didn't see any mention on either the OHA site or any of the tech blogs of Java being part of the phone stack. That coupled with the fact that no one from Sun was at the presentation, makes one wonder if Java is even part of the google phone stack.""Confusing... Is this a spin or a loss for JAVA ??" "Can you explain in simplistic bullet points how JAVA benefits from Google employing JAVA? You appear almost giddy at the announcement but I am hard pressed to see how JAVA is going to make money from this." "Today NAS is up about 1% ; Sun is down 10%. As a long time stockholder I'm sick of this."
Look, Android is great, Sun is great, but let's not pretend for a moment that Android is good news for Sun. As Schwartz himself said, Java is Sun's number 1 product, they even changed the SUNW ticker to JAVA. A non-Java VM with Java source compatible compiler being offered for free to mobile vendors by a company with the brand power of Google is an absolute disaster for Sun.
Android is more than just an operating system - it is a complete software stack designed to run Java applications. The Linux kernel is only one component. You don't seem to realise that running Java applications is one of the major features of Android. And JavaFX is more than just a JVM - JavaFX mobile is a complete software stack (including a Linux kernel) for running Java applications on mobile devices.
Two different Java implementations, with different classes, both including and running on a Linux kernel, both on mobile phones, are not competitors?
In very simple terms, from the Wikipedia page on JavaFX: "The other component is JavaFX Mobile, a Java operating system for mobile devices, including PDAs, smartphones and feature phones. It features a Java SE and Java ME implementation running on top of a Linux kernel."
If you can't see "what the fuck" a Java implementation running on top of a Linux kernel has to do with Android, then there is no hope for you.
Why is it so difficult to understand that Google's Dalvik - an implementation of Java being used for free by mobile phone manufacturers - is a direct threat to Sun's J2ME? This is not some secret conspiracy theory - professional business analysts, who actually make a living from watching these kinds of things, have noticed the same thing.
"However, Google's move threatens Sun's business strategy, Mazzocchi said. He believes that Sun sees a bright future in the mobile market and hopes to earn revenue off the use of the Java virtual machine by phone makers. Google's plan diminishes that opportunity for Sun." source
"But with this you'll need to develop a separate application that's not standard. Unless Android becomes main stream and kills J2ME ..." source
This blog post from over a year ago proposes that JavaFX Mobile is just the next stage for J2ME to compete with Android.
Yes, Android has native class support for multimedia, including H.264.
"The SDK specifies the Media API along with its MediaPlayer and MediaRecorder APIs. According to the AudioEncoder class, audio can be encoded to AMR-NB. The VideoEncoder class specifies H.263, H.264, and MPEG-4 SP." source
It was known publically in March 2007 that Google had already been working on a major mobile phone project for months (eg see one report here). The fact that this project wasn't officially unveiled until November is irrelevant; everyone in the industry knew what was going on, and Sun would certainly have been aware of their plans.
Android includes its own "JVM" - except it isn't really a JVM, but a "Dalvik" VM that interprets Dalvik bytecode translated directly from Java bytecode - the end result is the same. The Dalvik VM, and its new classes (which incidentally include media playback codecs, one of the big JavaFX announcements) are a direct competitor to J2ME. If Google succeeds in having every phone manufacturer shipping Dalvik+Google classes, and takes the developer mindshare with its App Store, then J2ME is effectively dead.
If JavaFX has nothing to do with mobile phones, then why does the article say that it is being targetted to mobile phones, and offered to mobile phone manufacturers, and why did Schwartz say "We're making our binaries available to mobile-phone makers so we can unify the Java platform implementations"?
She also wants to outlaw prostitution between consenting adults, and get the Women's Institute to spy and report on amorous young women throughout the country.
Unfortunately the motives of the Conservative party in opposing the laws you list are just as suspect - Conservatives opposing 42 days detention for terrorist suspects? Have you ever met a Conservative who was pro-terrorist-suspect rights? Or being against CCTV nationally, but Conservative councils all over the country implementing CCTV? Or being against ID cards in 2008, but backing them in 2004, with Michael Howard apparently wanting to introduce them during the last Conservative government?
I can't help feeling that if their current roles were reversed, both Conservative and Labour would still feel quite at home...
Most of the people in the UK believe everything they read or see from the Rupert Murdoch empire. The man has too much power, and too much reason to desire a weak, divided Europe. You should judge the E.U. and its various organisations on their accomplishments and failures, not what the Murdoch press has to say about them. The European Court of Human Rights case law database is online, but unfortunately few in the UK will ever use it, believing instead what they are encouraged to believe by the media.
Flash and Silverlight? Yeah, right. Sun knows that Yet Another Web Development Framework isn't going to take over the desktop. This is a blatant attempt to stop Android taking over the mobile phone space. Android added native media playback classes and a bunch of other stuff to the J2ME mix, the HTC G1 was a surprise hit, and a whole bunch of cell phone manufacturers have now announced Android phones - not J2ME phones. Sun is seeing its lock on the mobile phone application market disappearing overnight, and Google side-stepped whatever patent claims it might have exerted by running "Dalvik" byte-code instead of Java byte-code.
So, it's closed source, and phone manufacturers have to pay a royalty to Sun for every handset shipped? In the meantime, Android is getting the press, HTC has shipped half a million G1 handsets in the past couple of months, Android is open source and free to implement, and there are numerous Android phones from multiple manufacturers on the horizon. Why would any of these manufacturers choose JavaFX instead?
Since Berlusconi didn't expand on what he meant, the Register article is slightly alarmist. Maybe he wants to regulate download speeds, or legislate net neutrality? The bald statement of wanting to "regulate the internet" is worthless. If he did want to restrict freedom of speech, and an E.U. directive were put forward, it would still need to be passed into national law by the E.U. member states, and even if that occurred it could still be challenged at the European Court under the Human Rights legislation.
But realistically, the Internet is already regulated. Try putting a copy of Photoshop or pornography involving a 15 year old girl on your web page and see how long it lasts. The question is not whether the Internet is regulated, but the level of regulation. In China, criticising the government is prohibited. In the Middle East, pornography is prohibited. In the United States, reproducing commercial sensitive data is prohibited via copyright and patent laws, in Germany Nazi memorabilia is prohibited. Every society has its limits.
Not speaking Chinese makes navigating the Chinese Red Flag site difficult, and the English one appears to be somewhat behind, but I note that the .iso files on the web site have accompanying -src.iso files. I haven't downloaded any of the isos to check that they really do include all the source, but start here if you really care: ftp://ftp.redflag-linux.com/pub/redflag/dt5/
And you think that Yahoo, Google, Cisco, Microsoft etc. aren't in league with the PRC government? In order to do business in China, you have to do as the government say. Actually, it kind of works like that in every nation...
The backdoor fears are being overblown, this is open source after all. It would be trivial to compare the binary packages installed on one of the internet cafe computers with a standard Red Flag install to see if any have been modified. Then strace or disassemble the modified binary to find out what it is doing. If you're worried that the entire Red Flag distribution might be compromised, consider that the Chinese government is recommending that this distribution be used on government and corporate computers. If there were a deliberately introduced backdoor, then it is highly likely that either a Western security researcher, or the NSA, would find it, and then be able to gain access to the Chinese computers. Thus the Chinese government actually has a very strong motive to ensure that there isn't a generic backdoor. And again, finding such a backdoor would be trivial - all you have to do is compile your own distribution using the same versions of each source package, and then compare the output binaries. Having said that, Debian had a modified ssh package with a gaping security vulnerability for a long time before anyone noticed... but eventually someone did.
I really think that there is a higher risk of the Chinese government sneaking a backdoor into Windows through a Chinese-American employee of Microsoft, or through compromising a Chinese CDROM factory or OEM manufacturer, than of being able to covertly introduce a secret backdoor into an open source Linux distribution like Red Flag. Having the source makes hiding a backdoor very difficult - if they ever did introduce a backdoor, they would probably be quite blatant about it. And as for the Windows comparisons, we still don't really know what the _NSAKEY was for.
We might as well link to the previous discussions of Phoronix testing: Ubuntu 8.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.5.5 Benchmarks and Is Ubuntu Getting Slower?
These benchmarks never do any kind of statistically valid analysis. Even when testing CPUs, where variance may be close to 0 on a single platform, there will be variance between different mainboards, different RAM setups, etc. It would be nice to see a benchmarking site actually do proper valid benchmarking for a change.
Speaking of which, I'm surprised the editor didn't link to Jade is black? and the previous discussion here.