..Create an application that is distributed with windows...
hey how about.. IE ! it does allow one to download the browser of his choice ! Just type the right URL.. Oh.. so you mean an application that provides a choice of browsers ?... but *WHICH* browsers ? who decides of the list ?... WAIT ! my 'IwroteABrowserlastnight' browser isn't listed - I'm suing MS !
Wait.. ssl you said ? who decides of the trusted CA list ? WAIT ! my ISellCertsSoICanGetLayed CA isn't in the list ? I'm Suing MS !.. And wow ! which crypto stack are you going to use to provide SSL ? WAIT ! my ItsWeaksButItsSexy SSL provider isn't proposed as an SSL provider.. I'm Suing MS !
IE on top.. who comes second ? who decides ? And why put IE on top ? are you saying that for the 'avg pc' user, Firefox & Opera & whatnot are not satisfactory ?
And believe me.. IE will probably *NEVER* be separated from windows.. maybe they can just remove the bootstrap code that instantiates the browser, but they still need the core functionalities for most windows components (not to mention a lot of 3rd party softwares).
z/VM they *REALLY* should make open source/free software (in no particular order with no preference)..
VM used to be shipped with *ALL* the source.. And yes.. You could rebuild an entire functional system out of sources by yourself.. (it is no longer the case - since VM/SP6 and the advent of OCO (Object Code Only) modules).. No it wasn't free software (a la RMS).. although it might have been considered open source.. some ppl like SDI made a living out of selling patches for VM.
Anyway.. VM could *really* get benefit from going open source.. I don't think they are making a substantial revenue out of z/VM anyway.. *YET* it makes them sell z hardware by the truckload.. and I know of a few people who have great virtualization ideas (which could get incoporated into z/VM)..
But of course.. the hobbyist license would be a wonderful start !
And although the project I am contributing to may 'irk' some powers (HAL).. I still believe it's the right thing to do.
Ok.. I'm contributing.. On my free time.. No hope or expectation of any form of return (except for some sort of pride - and sometime recognition from my peers)..
Basically.. it's just *FUN*..
And I believe it's the right thing to do !
But do I feel like I have to hide who I am ? Certainly not ! I am proud of what I do (however modest my contribution might be)
--Ivan Warren
PS : I did feel compelled to provide my full name on that particular subject.. go figure !
PPS : The project I contribute to is the hercules mainframe emulator.. google it if want to know more (shameless plug !)
If only had the exchange rate wrong, it would have been fine.
But most of the information for France is basically bogus. Apparently written after interviewing some executive who's only insight about Parisian life includes going to high profile food outlets (come on.. $4.15 for a load of bread ??? $1 is closer to the truth) - having had run-ins with the local telco (hard to get a land line ?? 2 days is the norm).. Hard to open a bank account ?? cough cough.. It's a 20 minutes process in most cases.. Prize of housing.. and wanting to live in downtown Paris (like saying prize of housing in New York is expensive because he looked at the prize of a high rise condo in downtown Manhattan - PS : I have no idea how much that would cost, but it's probably not cheap).. Choosing nationals over foreigners ? Businesses avoid doing this because this usually means a run-in with the law..
Must be the same guy that predicted that keyboards would go away, replaced by voice interface.. (although he seems to have finally parted out with this one !)
So the guy is basically envisioning that people are going to go for something like what you can see in the 'Minority Report' flick right ?
Try holding you hands high in the air for 8 hours in a row while not eating or drinking, not speaking to anybody on the phone or in the office or your dear kin.
The guy is basically forgetting one of the main reason the mouse is here (and here to stay too) : it allows multitasking, with your hand comfortably resting on the table (ok.. leading to CTS, but that's another story).. You can work, or have fun while you also interact with the world..
The scroll button on the mouse is also here to stay !
Wii type motion sensor controllers are too tiring and too demanding, touchscreen requires to have you hands up in the air and to be within a few inches of the screen, and facial recognition requires you to focus entirely on the task at hand..
Tss tss.. I wish I was paid to be an 'analyst' to make phony predictions like this guy..
I'd be interested in your "lesson" about specific impulse...
Because, to me, an Ion Engine has a VERY HIGH Specific impulse - but a low thrust ! Isp and thrust are 2 completely different things ! Specific Impulse is measured in Seconds, thrust is measured in Newtons. Specific impulse is basically the measure of efficiency of an engine (and not how strong it can push).
An Ion Engine has (depending on technology) a Isp of about 3K to 9K seconds, but with a thrust of less than a Newton.. In comparison, a chemical rocket has a thrust exceeding several K Newtons, but a specific impulse of around 200..
I have this application that DOES require a terminal.. And 'screen' has always been my primary choice to run that application unattended (it's served me for that purpose for many years)..
The only thing to remember : be careful about "login" and "su" - something to do with ownership of the PTY..
But otherwise, it's a wonder tool !
--Ivan
If I still had my mod points (which I wasted yesterday by not doing anything), I would have modded this as 'insightful'..
I kinda agree with you on those points. What is a difference between a 2 weeks old embryo and say.. err.. a blood sample of an adult ? Well... the only diff is : different DNA and different cell composition - that's all.
What throw people off is that an embryo is a 'potential' human being (which a blood sample is not aside from using white cells for cloning).
It's an ethical puzzle alright.. And the can of worm MUST be opened.. Unless we solve this, we, as a human race, are doomed to just stray down the evolutionary path.. Man.. we are the first known species that may be capable of altering its own evolution (we may already have done so).
My opinion : let's try it out.. not without discussing it (like I have any power in this.. well.. maybe I do !) - but let's make "ethics" evolve - because we can.
Title of article says : B. Gates denied visa to Nigeria..
The contents it completely different... It says B. Gates was INITIALLY denied the visa (apparently because he didn't file the appropriate paperwork).. Come on.. Bill Gates is NOT a Gvt official, he doesn't have diplomatic privilege, so he is to submit to the visiting country's immigration laws like any other private citizen visiting..
The article says that basically, the required paperwork was finally filled and he did get his visa alright - since it sure wasn't hard to prove he had sufficient financial backing - and on that basis, he could probably apply for a permanent resident visa if he were to ask for one.
Granted, some guy at the Nigerian embassy must've had a fit filling in the visa denial form (or maybe he didn't know who Bill Gates is - or maybe he couldn't assert it was THAT Bill Gates)..
I wasn't aware the schedulers for those systems were so deficient !
In my days (yes, I'm an old fart) - the schedulers had basic principles :
- Voluntary yielding led you to get accounted for the time you spent running. - You could stay in the interactive queue for only a certain amount of time. After some amount of time had passed (a few secs) you were either bumped to non-interactive if you were running (with longer time slices but lower priority) or removed off the scheduler list for good (if the time spent there was idling). They had a special 'idle but interactive' (not eligible for dispatching) queue for that. - Scheduling a new task restarted a new time slice
That particular scheduler even had a 3 queue system so that if you got accidentally bumped into the non-interactive queue or if your process was semi-interactive you had a better chance of gaining interactive status again. And they had a 'really' not interactive queue for those CPU hogging processes.
Of course this requires the hardware to have a precise timing feature (something with a granularity that is finer than the process interleaving time slice time and ideally in the magnitude of instruction execution). And this scheduler wasn't using time sampling and time quantums.. (but something more like the OSX timer on demand paradigm).
Ok.. Let me, just for a sec, take the conspiracy theory just a tad further...
Let's say the government has something REALLY big to hide.. What could be one of its approach.. Well : Take an insignificant incident and PRETEND it's a cover up (that is, give obviously phony explanations, use wandering and puzzled looks during media conferences, have people sign funny papers, etc..).. For the 60 years to come, people are going to be going CRAZY about *this* particular cover-up (which may incidentally - should the double cover up theory be true - not even be one, but rather an elaborate hoax).
Now *THAT* is conspiracy !
--Ivan
(PS : I'm not actually buying this - and believe it or not, I'm going with the weather balloon gone awry explanation)..
The fact that Chase Masterson (the DS9 "Dabo" girl) will be attending is probably more interesting (and definitely more probable) than potential aliens showing up;)
Making better engines uses the science of Physics and chemistry..
Cooking uses the science of chemistry..
To me it's like saying : 'Lego Science'.. It's not 'science'.. You don't need to know the physical aspects of a lego block to assemble something.. Although you need some insight into how the thing works - but it's not science per-se !
Then again, it depends on how 'science' is defined !
Ah.. I wasn't talking about support but whether it was hypothetically possible or not..
Actually, I don't see any technical reason why you wouldn't be able to run OS/390 R10 at ALS-1 (31 bit) on a z9.. ALS-2 (64 bit) is a bit more of a problem because of the infamous problem with the LASP instruction which started occurring on z890 & z990 with driver 55k (enabling the ASN and LX Reuse optional feature [1]) - but that should have been fixed with a PTF for APAR OA06873 - in which case... z/VM or not, you're in trouble (because z/VM will without any doubt propagate virtual CR0 via VSIE all the way down to PR/SM - no matter how many levels of VM you ditch in the middle [2]!)
Otherwise, zapping the NIP should allow one to clear Bit 44 of CR0 and off we go !
--Ivan
[1] Which is a z/Architecture only feature.
[2] VM CP at level n intercepts the SIE issued by the VM CP running at level n+1, builds a SIE control block based on the one embedded in the VMDBK and the one passed as a parameter to the intercepted SIE - so as to account for storage indirection (dumping in it the level n+1 guest virtual machine Control Registers specified in the intercepted SIE unmodified) and issues SIE itself with the custom SIE block.. If the whole stack is z/Architecture capable, then the CRs aren't going to be modified.. If one of the VM in the stack isn't z/Architecture capable then anything above isn't either - and the problem is moot ! So basically, if you have an OS/390 with CR0 bit 44 set to 1, running on z/VM 4.4, running on z/VM 5.2, running on a z/Arch system with ASN and LX Reuse the next LASP issued by OS/390 will incur a PIC 9[3] (unless LASP is intercepted)
[3] Because the LASP (Load Address Space Parameters) instruction format changes when ASN and LX Reuse is installed and CR0 bit 44 is set.
I would suggest for anyone who would like to get a taste of the "IBM Mainframe" computer architecture to try out "hercules"..
Obviously, the emulator is only as good as the underlying hardware (so it may not qualify as a "mainframe" *), but it allows anyone to see for themselves what the whole thing is about..
</ShameLessSelfPromotion>
* Unless of course when one runs the emulator on a linux instance running on a mainframe !
To be more accurate (or rather complement the previous post), the first virtualization installment was probably CP67/CMS which ran on a S/360 Model 67... Which was a ca. 1967 machine (so we are talking 40 Years)..
The first implementation that went out to customers was VM/370 (which required an almost complete rewrite) on the DAT (Dynamic Address Translation) capable S/370 models (which means almost all S/370 models). This is ca. 1972 or 1973..
Note that not ALL mainframe require(d) raised floor and air conditioning.. The 9370 line of systems could run in office space (but does it qualify as a mainframe ?)..
And of course, some models (notably the 308x and 3090 systems) required water cooling and industrial power..
Perhaps. However, that's not quite what I said. I just said they run mathematical proofs on their software. If you know anything about formal methods (no shame in not knowing. Few CS graduates even know a lot about it), then you'd know that proofs should only be a part of a verification (testing) regimen. There can still be bugs in an implementation (or its compiler!), even after its algorithm has been "proven". Ah ! Thanks for the clarification. It was obviously a misunderstanding on my part. First I was confusing algorithm with implementation of say algorithm, and second, I was confused by the concept of 'mathematical proof' (which is not what I thought it was).
Slashdot Mirror
But nothing prevents current OEMs to ship their machines with a default browser that's NOT IE !
--Ivan
..Create an application that is distributed with windows...
hey how about .. IE ! it does allow one to download the browser of his choice ! Just type the right URL.. Oh.. so you mean an application that provides a choice of browsers ?... but *WHICH* browsers ? who decides of the list ?... WAIT ! my 'IwroteABrowserlastnight' browser isn't listed - I'm suing MS !
Wait.. ssl you said ? who decides of the trusted CA list ? WAIT ! my ISellCertsSoICanGetLayed CA isn't in the list ? I'm Suing MS !.. And wow ! which crypto stack are you going to use to provide SSL ? WAIT ! my ItsWeaksButItsSexy SSL provider isn't proposed as an SSL provider.. I'm Suing MS !
IE on top.. who comes second ? who decides ? And why put IE on top ? are you saying that for the 'avg pc' user, Firefox & Opera & whatnot are not satisfactory ?
And believe me.. IE will probably *NEVER* be separated from windows.. maybe they can just remove the bootstrap code that instantiates the browser, but they still need the core functionalities for most windows components (not to mention a lot of 3rd party softwares).
--Ivan
And z/VM.. !
z/VM they *REALLY* should make open source/free software (in no particular order with no preference)..
VM used to be shipped with *ALL* the source.. And yes.. You could rebuild an entire functional system out of sources by yourself.. (it is no longer the case - since VM/SP6 and the advent of OCO (Object Code Only) modules).. No it wasn't free software (a la RMS).. although it might have been considered open source.. some ppl like SDI made a living out of selling patches for VM.
Anyway.. VM could *really* get benefit from going open source.. I don't think they are making a substantial revenue out of z/VM anyway.. *YET* it makes them sell z hardware by the truckload.. and I know of a few people who have great virtualization ideas (which could get incoporated into z/VM)..
But of course.. the hobbyist license would be a wonderful start !
--Ivan
And although the project I am contributing to may 'irk' some powers (HAL).. I still believe it's the right thing to do.
Ok.. I'm contributing.. On my free time.. No hope or expectation of any form of return (except for some sort of pride - and sometime recognition from my peers)..
Basically.. it's just *FUN*..
And I believe it's the right thing to do !
But do I feel like I have to hide who I am ? Certainly not ! I am proud of what I do (however modest my contribution might be)
--Ivan Warren
PS : I did feel compelled to provide my full name on that particular subject.. go figure !
PPS : The project I contribute to is the hercules mainframe emulator.. google it if want to know more (shameless plug !)
If only had the exchange rate wrong, it would have been fine.
But most of the information for France is basically bogus. Apparently written after interviewing some executive who's only insight about Parisian life includes going to high profile food outlets (come on.. $4.15 for a load of bread ??? $1 is closer to the truth) - having had run-ins with the local telco (hard to get a land line ?? 2 days is the norm).. Hard to open a bank account ?? cough cough.. It's a 20 minutes process in most cases.. Prize of housing .. and wanting to live in downtown Paris (like saying prize of housing in New York is expensive because he looked at the prize of a high rise condo in downtown Manhattan - PS : I have no idea how much that would cost, but it's probably not cheap).. Choosing nationals over foreigners ? Businesses avoid doing this because this usually means a run-in with the law..
Must be the same guy that predicted that keyboards would go away, replaced by voice interface.. (although he seems to have finally parted out with this one !)
So the guy is basically envisioning that people are going to go for something like what you can see in the 'Minority Report' flick right ?
Try holding you hands high in the air for 8 hours in a row while not eating or drinking, not speaking to anybody on the phone or in the office or your dear kin.
The guy is basically forgetting one of the main reason the mouse is here (and here to stay too) : it allows multitasking, with your hand comfortably resting on the table (ok.. leading to CTS, but that's another story).. You can work, or have fun while you also interact with the world..
The scroll button on the mouse is also here to stay !
Wii type motion sensor controllers are too tiring and too demanding, touchscreen requires to have you hands up in the air and to be within a few inches of the screen, and facial recognition requires you to focus entirely on the task at hand..
Tss tss.. I wish I was paid to be an 'analyst' to make phony predictions like this guy..
--Ivan
Excuse me ?
I'd be interested in your "lesson" about specific impulse...
Because, to me, an Ion Engine has a VERY HIGH Specific impulse - but a low thrust ! Isp and thrust are 2 completely different things ! Specific Impulse is measured in Seconds, thrust is measured in Newtons. Specific impulse is basically the measure of efficiency of an engine (and not how strong it can push).
An Ion Engine has (depending on technology) a Isp of about 3K to 9K seconds, but with a thrust of less than a Newton.. In comparison, a chemical rocket has a thrust exceeding several K Newtons, but a specific impulse of around 200..
I know it's not definite knowledge, but this may shed some light : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Impulse
--Ivan
Hmm.. why "ISP Netblock" ? does this mean that if I'm behind a PA block I am more in danger than behind a routable PI block ?
--Ivan
I have this application that DOES require a terminal.. And 'screen' has always been my primary choice to run that application unattended (it's served me for that purpose for many years).. The only thing to remember : be careful about "login" and "su" - something to do with ownership of the PTY.. But otherwise, it's a wonder tool ! --Ivan
It's probably either the heat shield or the chute --Ivan
I kinda agree with you on those points. What is a difference between a 2 weeks old embryo and say.. err.. a blood sample of an adult ? Well... the only diff is : different DNA and different cell composition - that's all.
What throw people off is that an embryo is a 'potential' human being (which a blood sample is not aside from using white cells for cloning).
It's an ethical puzzle alright.. And the can of worm MUST be opened.. Unless we solve this, we, as a human race, are doomed to just stray down the evolutionary path.. Man.. we are the first known species that may be capable of altering its own evolution (we may already have done so).
My opinion : let's try it out.. not without discussing it (like I have any power in this.. well.. maybe I do !) - but let's make "ethics" evolve - because we can.
Title of article says : B. Gates denied visa to Nigeria..
The contents it completely different... It says B. Gates was INITIALLY denied the visa (apparently because he didn't file the appropriate paperwork).. Come on.. Bill Gates is NOT a Gvt official, he doesn't have diplomatic privilege, so he is to submit to the visiting country's immigration laws like any other private citizen visiting..
The article says that basically, the required paperwork was finally filled and he did get his visa alright - since it sure wasn't hard to prove he had sufficient financial backing - and on that basis, he could probably apply for a permanent resident visa if he were to ask for one.
Granted, some guy at the Nigerian embassy must've had a fit filling in the visa denial form (or maybe he didn't know who Bill Gates is - or maybe he couldn't assert it was THAT Bill Gates)..
--Ivan
The article seems to have been withdrawn anyway ! Ah ah..
--Ivan
Some instances of IBM's VM.. (VM/HPO, VM/ESA and z/VM.. VM/370 and VM/SP had a more simplified version with only 2 queues).
--Ivan
I wasn't aware the schedulers for those systems were so deficient !
In my days (yes, I'm an old fart) - the schedulers had basic principles :
- Voluntary yielding led you to get accounted for the time you spent running.
- You could stay in the interactive queue for only a certain amount of time. After some amount of time had passed (a few secs) you were either bumped to non-interactive if you were running (with longer time slices but lower priority) or removed off the scheduler list for good (if the time spent there was idling). They had a special 'idle but interactive' (not eligible for dispatching) queue for that.
- Scheduling a new task restarted a new time slice
That particular scheduler even had a 3 queue system so that if you got accidentally bumped into the non-interactive queue or if your process was semi-interactive you had a better chance of gaining interactive status again. And they had a 'really' not interactive queue for those CPU hogging processes.
Of course this requires the hardware to have a precise timing feature (something with a granularity that is finer than the process interleaving time slice time and ideally in the magnitude of instruction execution). And this scheduler wasn't using time sampling and time quantums.. (but something more like the OSX timer on demand paradigm).
--Ivan
Ok.. Let me, just for a sec, take the conspiracy theory just a tad further...
Let's say the government has something REALLY big to hide.. What could be one of its approach.. Well : Take an insignificant incident and PRETEND it's a cover up (that is, give obviously phony explanations, use wandering and puzzled looks during media conferences, have people sign funny papers, etc..).. For the 60 years to come, people are going to be going CRAZY about *this* particular cover-up (which may incidentally - should the double cover up theory be true - not even be one, but rather an elaborate hoax).
Now *THAT* is conspiracy !
--Ivan
(PS : I'm not actually buying this - and believe it or not, I'm going with the weather balloon gone awry explanation)..
--Ivan
That's engineering !
Making better engines uses the science of Physics and chemistry..
Cooking uses the science of chemistry..
To me it's like saying : 'Lego Science'.. It's not 'science'.. You don't need to know the physical aspects of a lego block to assemble something.. Although you need some insight into how the thing works - but it's not science per-se !
Then again, it depends on how 'science' is defined !
--Ivan
This is all fine.. But it doesn't explain something I have long thrived to understand :
What is computer science ?
Computer engineering.. yeah.. I can understand that.. But man.. Computer SCIENCE ?
That's like saying 'car science', 'cooking science' or 'go at the bar and have a drink science' !
--Ivan
He may experience it for at least 10e-43 seconds..
Then again.. maybe not !
--Ivan
Ah.. I wasn't talking about support but whether it was hypothetically possible or not..
Actually, I don't see any technical reason why you wouldn't be able to run OS/390 R10 at ALS-1 (31 bit) on a z9.. ALS-2 (64 bit) is a bit more of a problem because of the infamous problem with the LASP instruction which started occurring on z890 & z990 with driver 55k (enabling the ASN and LX Reuse optional feature [1]) - but that should have been fixed with a PTF for APAR OA06873 - in which case... z/VM or not, you're in trouble (because z/VM will without any doubt propagate virtual CR0 via VSIE all the way down to PR/SM - no matter how many levels of VM you ditch in the middle [2]!)
Otherwise, zapping the NIP should allow one to clear Bit 44 of CR0 and off we go !
--Ivan
[1] Which is a z/Architecture only feature.
[2] VM CP at level n intercepts the SIE issued by the VM CP running at level n+1, builds a SIE control block based on the one embedded in the VMDBK and the one passed as a parameter to the intercepted SIE - so as to account for storage indirection (dumping in it the level n+1 guest virtual machine Control Registers specified in the intercepted SIE unmodified) and issues SIE itself with the custom SIE block.. If the whole stack is z/Architecture capable, then the CRs aren't going to be modified.. If one of the VM in the stack isn't z/Architecture capable then anything above isn't either - and the problem is moot ! So basically, if you have an OS/390 with CR0 bit 44 set to 1, running on z/VM 4.4, running on z/VM 5.2, running on a z/Arch system with ASN and LX Reuse the next LASP issued by OS/390 will incur a PIC 9[3] (unless LASP is intercepted)
[3] Because the LASP (Load Address Space Parameters) instruction format changes when ASN and LX Reuse is installed and CR0 bit 44 is set.
I would suggest for anyone who would like to get a taste of the "IBM Mainframe" computer architecture to try out "hercules"..
Obviously, the emulator is only as good as the underlying hardware (so it may not qualify as a "mainframe" *), but it allows anyone to see for themselves what the whole thing is about..
</ShameLessSelfPromotion>
* Unless of course when one runs the emulator on a linux instance running on a mainframe !
To be more accurate (or rather complement the previous post), the first virtualization installment was probably CP67/CMS which ran on a S/360 Model 67... Which was a ca. 1967 machine (so we are talking 40 Years)..
The first implementation that went out to customers was VM/370 (which required an almost complete rewrite) on the DAT (Dynamic Address Translation) capable S/370 models (which means almost all S/370 models). This is ca. 1972 or 1973..
Note that not ALL mainframe require(d) raised floor and air conditioning.. The 9370 line of systems could run in office space (but does it qualify as a mainframe ?)..
And of course, some models (notably the 308x and 3090 systems) required water cooling and industrial power..
--Ivan
Simple question here :
Why wouldn't OS/390 run on a z9 ?
--Ivan
point taken and all my apologies.
--Ivan