Since the late 90s there have been mumblings ("Someone I know who works at MS said they knew someone who said...") that code from BSD TCP/IP stack was in Windows but there was never any proof. Some speculated that because they were susceptible to some of the same vulnerabilities they must share common code but there were some vulnerabilities that affected the Windows TCP/IP stack not the BSD one (and vice versa) so this seems unlikely.
Software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system is used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft's Windows software, such as in the "TCP/IP" section
This assertion is somewhat broard but it was enough to kick off a new round of speculation and rebuttals with regard to the Windows TCP/IP stack but everyone loves a good tale so the counterclaims are less well known. Perhaps this would qualify as a Snopes urban myth.
[H]ow did it end up being passed of as fact on wikipedia?
Who says Wikipedia only consists of facts?:-) Nothing saves you from having to use critical analysis on sources, especially since anyone can edit Wikipedia but I will note there is a citation needed link further down on that page.
All the above sources were found via a Google Windows/BSD stack query so with these starter links and a quick search you're now well armed to correct Wikipedia and anyone else who repeats this rumour. Welcome to the club!
Nokia has a WebGL version of their web maps which has a Google Earth like functionality to it. While they don't label many places initially the search seems to recognise names of towns which are then labelled on the map and there are things like 3D buildings in certain locations (e.g. London). The regular Nokia Maps offers a more complete solution at the moment but it's surprising to see a web mapping solution that isn't Bing or Google especially using new web technologies (to the best of my knowledge Google are the only other ones using WebGL to serve up their maps).
The big gain in entropy when using multiple words is from password length. Having symbols, case changes and unusual characters all increase entropy but over a certain length there are just to many combinations of lower case letters for brute force to be effective. Why complicate it further and risk slower typing speed/mistyping?
To the best of my knowledge, the ath5k/madwifi drivers are the only Linux drivers to be ported from the BSDs (OpenBSD/FreeBSD) to Linux. Which other drivers out of the 56 Linux wifi drivers were ported from the BSDs to qualify the "large number of WiFi drivers were written for FreeBSD or OpenBSD and then ported to Linux" statement?
Linux has had its own 802.11 stack called mac802.11 since the 2.6.22 kernel four years ago which was developed by Devicescape. The only driver I know of that carried a (Net)BSD 802.11 stack over to Linux was madwifi which had net802.11, was never mainline and was superseded by ath5k... The madwifi driver never went mainline, nor did its net802.11 stack. Why do you think that the 802.11 stack from a BSD needs copying into a Linux driver when mac802.11 exists?
I do not doubt for one moment that you are seeing some sort of issue on your machine. The problem is you've effectively half mentioned a potential bug report but in a context (a Slashdot comment) where it is unlikely any one is going to follow up on it in a meaningful way. Instead of being useful I'm going to be tedious!
a) What is the nature of the death? Frozen screen? Screen corruption? b) What graphics card are you using and which drivers are you using it with? c) Which version of the kernel are you using? d) Does it break the kernel or just X (i.e. does caps lock still work, can you still ssh into machine)? e) When it crashes does anything appear in dmesg? f) How frequently does the issue you are seeing occur? Can you reproduce it 100% of the time on demand? g) Is your machine being forced to swap when the issue occurs?
I'm NOT going to follow up on the above but those are the questions that you would begin to have to answer to get insight into the problem you are seeing and attribute the issue to the correct location. Different answers to them would make different sets of people immediately stop investigating your issue which is why there are so many people complaining about bug reports that go nowhere.
For what it's worth an issue like this is either in the kernel or in X but it takes experience to be able to tell which and there is no guarantee of a resolution - a wild guess is that you have buggy graphics drivers (kernel/X) but that's about all anyone can say from the above. Regardless, Flash is the messenger and publicly linking it to complete system instability is pushing things too far...
RAR predates zlib and is very popular in circles you mention above but zlib is built into web browsers and is here to stay. Such issues aren't settled in just one place - give it time and we'll see what happens. Sometimes you end up with both...
My understanding is that 32 bit Ubuntu binaries are compiled with i686 instructions which means you will be able to go all the way back to Pentium Pro era machines (according to distrowatch the switch from i386 to i686 happened in Ubuntu 10.10). Those packages that are performance sensitive typically have multiple versions of the code (typically selected between at run time).
I would be amazed if typical 32 bit packages were compiled to use even SSE by default (rather than optionally) let alone SSE2 (which "only" arrived on AMD Athlon64 machines in 2003). I think the next step minimum will be 64 bit only...
However your point holds - would you want to run a recent Ubuntu on such an old machine given all the other requirements?
If you're less than 25 years old, Chrome is cool. Firefox is not.
which was followed up by
I'm 17 and I don't get it:/. [...] I'm sure there was a point in time where Chrome was faster than Firefox, but there's really no reason to stick with it anymore.
So the poster was trying to point out why their personal data refuted the statement.
Surely people your age can sympathise when a post that mentions age attracts followup posts that mention age too?
Buy a couple of PATA -> USB adaptors, hook them up to multiple computers and away you go. It's going to take time though but one pass of 0s will put it beyond conventional data recovery means. Of course, this only works if the disks continue to work...
For what it's worth Chrome has a general click to play feature but you need to enable it in chrome://flags/ , restart and then enable the newly available option in the general plugin preferences.
I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say "None of what Intel did to Linux with Moblin has any repercussions for anyone not using an x86-compatible Intel processor." For now I will interpret that as "they did nothing of interest for machines with CPUs from AMD/ARM etc.
Surely the fact that much of this work has gone upstream/mainline is a positive thing rather than a negative one? It's hard to tell which way you view this from your comment...
In my experience being in employment is one of the best long term things you can do for yourself. Don't stay in the same job forever but please avoid spells (4 months or more) of unemployment - it makes getting the next job so much harder.
In 10 years time I hope you are able to look back on this as a low rung on a ladder you have climbed much higher on. Good luck!
The article says that CS unemployment is (5.1% unemployed) is worse than unemployment for all courses (3.8%) for grads from 06/07 four years later. However a larger precentage of the CS cohort (81.5%) were in full time employment compared to all grads (73.2%).
So things are tough for all grads and many are not going into full time employment in any subject...
Slashdot Mirror
Also try
make V=0
to disable silent mode if it was a Makefile generated by automake.
Where does this myth come from
Since the late 90s there have been mumblings ("Someone I know who works at MS said they knew someone who said...") that code from BSD TCP/IP stack was in Windows but there was never any proof. Some speculated that because they were susceptible to some of the same vulnerabilities they must share common code but there were some vulnerabilities that affected the Windows TCP/IP stack not the BSD one (and vice versa) so this seems unlikely.
In 2001 the FreeBSD folks decided to search for proof but other than utilities nothing much was found. You can even see them correcting the "Windows uses the BSD TCP/IP stack" misconception years later.
Around the same time an article saying Microsoft uses open source code was published in the Wall Street Journal. Here's a quote:
Software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system is used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft's Windows software, such as in the "TCP/IP" section
This assertion is somewhat broard but it was enough to kick off a new round of speculation and rebuttals with regard to the Windows TCP/IP stack but everyone loves a good tale so the counterclaims are less well known. Perhaps this would qualify as a Snopes urban myth.
[H]ow did it end up being passed of as fact on wikipedia?
Who says Wikipedia only consists of facts? :-) Nothing saves you from having to use critical analysis on sources, especially since anyone can edit Wikipedia but I will note there is a citation needed link further down on that page.
All the above sources were found via a Google Windows/BSD stack query so with these starter links and a quick search you're now well armed to correct Wikipedia and anyone else who repeats this rumour. Welcome to the club!
I would argue that the Windows TCP/IP stack is the bit that processes the packets in the kernel and this was originally licensed from Spider and then rewritten for Windows 3.5 NT and neither was BSD derived. The current Windows networking bits that are BSD derived are userland legacy utilities like ftp, nslookup and telnet and aren't necessary to have a useful TCP/IP stack.
This myth needs to be allowed to rest - BSD has plenty of real wins that are more recent.
Mentions of Ken Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust should also mention David A. Wheeler's "Fully Countering Trusting Trust" which provides a means of identifying and resolving a malicious compiler.
Nokia has a WebGL version of their web maps which has a Google Earth like functionality to it. While they don't label many places initially the search seems to recognise names of towns which are then labelled on the map and there are things like 3D buildings in certain locations (e.g. London). The regular Nokia Maps offers a more complete solution at the moment but it's surprising to see a web mapping solution that isn't Bing or Google especially using new web technologies (to the best of my knowledge Google are the only other ones using WebGL to serve up their maps).
The drivers for the GMA500 parts were written by Tungsten Graphics rather than Intel or Imagination Technologies. In a roundabout way other people did write the drivers :-).
The big gain in entropy when using multiple words is from password length. Having symbols, case changes and unusual characters all increase entropy but over a certain length there are just to many combinations of lower case letters for brute force to be effective. Why complicate it further and risk slower typing speed/mistyping?
The recently released (11th May 2011) Pulseaudio 2.0 lists improved jack detection as one of its features so you will probably be waiting longer for a fix to show up in a non-rolling distro...
Matthew Garrett recommends against (natively) running Linux on Macs and as he is one of the developers active on Linux EFI/UEFI related stuff that would be required to natively boot Linux on a Mac...
Where does it say you can't use Linux for browser testing?
From the rules page:
The targets will be running on the latest, fully patched version of either Windows 7 or Lion.
Back in 2008, Linux was a available as a target in Pwn2Own but in an interview Aaron Portnoy of TippingPoint explained that Linux is now not included in Pwn2Own to avoid controversy.
I don't like the argument that many are pirating software as some sort of protest against draconian measures. A few sure, but they are the exceptions.
I say this because even the Humble Indie Bundle sees piracy and that has no DRM.
Many pirates are doing it because they dislike the price/find it more convenient to pirate/want to share something cool with friends.
To the best of my knowledge, the ath5k/madwifi drivers are the only Linux drivers to be ported from the BSDs (OpenBSD/FreeBSD) to Linux. Which other drivers out of the 56 Linux wifi drivers were ported from the BSDs to qualify the "large number of WiFi drivers were written for FreeBSD or OpenBSD and then ported to Linux" statement?
Linux has had its own 802.11 stack called mac802.11 since the 2.6.22 kernel four years ago which was developed by Devicescape. The only driver I know of that carried a (Net)BSD 802.11 stack over to Linux was madwifi which had net802.11, was never mainline and was superseded by ath5k... The madwifi driver never went mainline, nor did its net802.11 stack. Why do you think that the 802.11 stack from a BSD needs copying into a Linux driver when mac802.11 exists?
I do not doubt for one moment that you are seeing some sort of issue on your machine. The problem is you've effectively half mentioned a potential bug report but in a context (a Slashdot comment) where it is unlikely any one is going to follow up on it in a meaningful way. Instead of being useful I'm going to be tedious!
a) What is the nature of the death? Frozen screen? Screen corruption?
b) What graphics card are you using and which drivers are you using it with?
c) Which version of the kernel are you using?
d) Does it break the kernel or just X (i.e. does caps lock still work, can you still ssh into machine)?
e) When it crashes does anything appear in dmesg?
f) How frequently does the issue you are seeing occur? Can you reproduce it 100% of the time on demand?
g) Is your machine being forced to swap when the issue occurs?
I'm NOT going to follow up on the above but those are the questions that you would begin to have to answer to get insight into the problem you are seeing and attribute the issue to the correct location. Different answers to them would make different sets of people immediately stop investigating your issue which is why there are so many people complaining about bug reports that go nowhere.
For what it's worth an issue like this is either in the kernel or in X but it takes experience to be able to tell which and there is no guarantee of a resolution - a wild guess is that you have buggy graphics drivers (kernel/X) but that's about all anyone can say from the above. Regardless, Flash is the messenger and publicly linking it to complete system instability is pushing things too far...
RAR predates zlib and is very popular in circles you mention above but zlib is built into web browsers and is here to stay. Such issues aren't settled in just one place - give it time and we'll see what happens. Sometimes you end up with both...
My understanding is that 32 bit Ubuntu binaries are compiled with i686 instructions which means you will be able to go all the way back to Pentium Pro era machines (according to distrowatch the switch from i386 to i686 happened in Ubuntu 10.10). Those packages that are performance sensitive typically have multiple versions of the code (typically selected between at run time).
I would be amazed if typical 32 bit packages were compiled to use even SSE by default (rather than optionally) let alone SSE2 (which "only" arrived on AMD Athlon64 machines in 2003). I think the next step minimum will be 64 bit only...
However your point holds - would you want to run a recent Ubuntu on such an old machine given all the other requirements?
If you're less than 25 years old, Chrome is cool. Firefox is not.
which was followed up by
I'm 17 and I don't get it :/. [...] I'm sure there was a point in time where Chrome was faster than Firefox, but there's really no reason to stick with it anymore.
So the poster was trying to point out why their personal data refuted the statement.
Surely people your age can sympathise when a post that mentions age attracts followup posts that mention age too?
Buy a couple of PATA -> USB adaptors, hook them up to multiple computers and away you go. It's going to take time though but one pass of 0s will put it beyond conventional data recovery means. Of course, this only works if the disks continue to work...
As you mentioned Chrome makes all uncommon plugins click to play by default (you can even see an explicit note about this on the Java website.
For what it's worth Chrome has a general click to play feature but you need to enable it in chrome://flags/ , restart and then enable the newly available option in the general plugin preferences.
I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say "None of what Intel did to Linux with Moblin has any repercussions for anyone not using an x86-compatible Intel processor." For now I will interpret that as "they did nothing of interest for machines with CPUs from AMD/ARM etc.
Arjan van de van's work on asynchronous initialization of kernel subsystems means you will spend less time waiting for the kernel to finishon all sorts of CPUs - not just x86s. Powertop works on CPUs other than Intel's and has been used to help monitor power consumption of various program running on Linux.
Surely the fact that much of this work has gone upstream/mainline is a positive thing rather than a negative one? It's hard to tell which way you view this from your comment...
Well some points why the kernel may need to write area of the BIOS off the top of my head:
Back in 2008 a commenter on Matthew Garrett's blog proposed what sounds like this idea and called it "Rebootinate"
In my experience being in employment is one of the best long term things you can do for yourself. Don't stay in the same job forever but please avoid spells (4 months or more) of unemployment - it makes getting the next job so much harder.
In 10 years time I hope you are able to look back on this as a low rung on a ladder you have climbed much higher on. Good luck!
The article says that CS unemployment is (5.1% unemployed) is worse than unemployment for all courses (3.8%) for grads from 06/07 four years later. However a larger precentage of the CS cohort (81.5%) were in full time employment compared to all grads (73.2%).
So things are tough for all grads and many are not going into full time employment in any subject...
Linus has said that when kernel.org is back up the github repo will be turned into a mirror.