Late response, but does "bugger all" mean it does nothing? If so, that's not true.
Q160656 Last Reviewed: February 1, 1999
The information in this article applies to: Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0
Windows NT 3.51 and earlier boosts the foreground application responsiveness by boosting the foreground thread priority base. Windows NT 4.0 boosts the foreground responsiveness by assigning a longer timeslice (quantum) to the foreground thread than what background threads receive, not by assigning a higher thread priority.
And a OpenGL screensaver can still impact performance on a server quite seriously. This can be easily tested by putting WinNT on a Pentium-level machine and doing some file copy tests.
"And just think.. all that could be gone tomorrow."
Replaced by two or three companies with a total market capitalization even greater than Microsoft currently has.
BillG isn't stupid. A Microsoft that has been structurally remedied will keep him well on the top of the world's richest list. He just needs to tell all the Microserfs (and himself) "Oww Oww! The Government made me do it!" --
My understanding is that XHTML is designed to be used with other XML DTDs to provide "rigorous structure" while still allowing the "flexible presentation" advantages of HTML. I freely admit that I'm trying to generalize the problems to the toolset, rather than generalizing the toolset to the problems. Appropriate because the current situation is apparently toolset limited, and a new XML DTD appearing only complicates that situation.
Of course DocBook (and GNU Info) aren't 'nitch' formats in the sense that nobody uses them. They are, however, sorely out of place in operating system 'distributions' that really should be providing a unified, user-accessible help system. --
Interesting. I had an Ebay transaction go bad once because the AOL seller didn't recieve any email from me at work. I could see from the logs that your SMTP servers were accepting the mail, but the guy insisted that I was ignoring him.
Maybe my work is spamming people, or maybe the guy just wanted to give me negative feedback. Has made my shy away from sellers on AOL, tho. --
The one time I got spam from a legitimate AOL user (and not a fake @aol.com address), I sent it to abuse@aol.com. After a few days, I got back a confirmed kill letter. That's a hellava better response than I've gotten out of any other ISP. --
I'm not sure what you mean by saying that HTML has "insufficient structure" on the presentation layer. Maybe some examples would help....
(Of course, the eXtended part of a XHTML documentation schema would need to be designed to handle the structure issues.)
The reason I suggested XHTML is that common, popular, open source renderers already exist and could be easily extended to handle a common documentation format. Yet Another SGML/XML format that requires it's own viewer/converters is doomed to the same fate as Info or DocBook - nitch penetration, more hassle for users, not less, etc, etc.
Of course, if a Linux distribution shipped all of the documentation in one format, I'd probably be so happy that I wouldn't care what format that is. --
The Linux distributions need to get it through their heads that documentation is an important part of the OS, and is a huge opportunity for them to do the "integration services" that they are supposedly shoud be doing. Instead they just take the documentation in whatever format the original author used and just dump it on the file system. (If GNU wants to use Info, fine. But shame on RedHat et al for dumping it on the end user!)
I agree that XHTML is probably a good starting point for unified Linux documentation. A well designed schema should be able to reflect the features of the other systems, and using HTML as a presentation layer allows for standard, well-known interfaces (lynx, mozilla, etc.). --
Column-level security is just what it sounds like it is - the ability to assign access rights to columns. I'm not edumicated enough to know if this has been implemented anywhere (except in some non-RDBMS systems like Lotus Notes), but you can see that it might be problematic for inserts.
The workaround is to deny the users access to the base table(s) and allow them access to a view that contains a subset of the original information.
As for a join in a view versus a join in a stored proce, you're right, it's the same difference. --
The built-in SCSI in even later Macintoshes like the 8600 was only Fast SCSI-2 at 10MB/s. That's the same as what shipped with the Mac IIfx eight years eariler. Pretty sad -- if you wanted real SCSI performance you needed to buy an upgrade card anyway.
Shipping ATA/USB/1394 is a better solution for the average consumer. For those who still need SCSI, Apple ships an Adaptec U2W card.
Look at Linux and Windows 2000. They both support almost every bit of PC hardware under the sun, but yet you still hear people bitching about how they can't get their Winmodem working, or their crappy label printer or business card scanner doesn't work.
Apple would be foolish to try to support Wintel hardware -- "Wah! my GeForce doesn't work!", "Wah! ATA-66 doesn't work", "Wah! It doesn't support my overclocked Taiwanico motherboard!" People even bitched about OpenStep's hardware support and it was an extremely nitch market system that was only sold to people that presumably knew what they were doing.
So, Apple could make their own x86 boxes, or they could pay Gateway to do it for them. But if you could only run MacOS on a small number of Apple certified boxes, what's the f-ing point?
99% of iMac buyers could care less what CPU is inside of their magic box. And most G4 buyers only care that it's faster than the G3, not that it's faster than the Pentium III or that it's slower than the DEC Alpha --
Actually, Cisco is worth lots because they are one of the few companies that has actually made any real money on the Internet. When people are bidding up the value of wells of red ink, it makes sense to invest in the real revenue stream.
Come to think of it, the Internet as a whole has been totally overblown (to this point) as a profit center. Cisco's made money. Sun has made money. IBM has made money, but it's a fraction of their revenue stream. Same with Oracle. Microsoft has been giving away products just to hold market share. The ISP business is flat, and AOL just essentially divested itself and bought a movie studio. Netscape went under, and the PC hardware people (including Apple) are treading water. Not to mention the millions flushing down the toliets of ecommerce.
The future looks bright, but the present is pretty gloomy (unless you are Cisco or Sun). --
Yes, I should make it more clear that I'm of mixed views about Rent Control. On one hand, I understand the problems that led to Rent Control, and I'm glad that I live in a rent controlled apartment.
On the other hand, it does create a situation where some people are paying far below "market" rents, while others who have just moved in are actually paying far above the market rents. The difference between the below-market rent (that artists etc can afford) and the above-market rent (that computer professionals can afford) is so great that eventually the Landlord figures out some way to evict the tenents -- even if they could afford the 'average' rent somewhere in the middle. This is radically changing the population of the city.
It's the law of unintended consequences, I guess. And there isn't a really good way to fix the problem. (God help us if they repeal rent control at this point.)
BTW, Rent Control in SF applies to any building built before 1979 with two units or more. That's probably ~80% of the rental housing stock. As for Marin County, it's an upper class enclave and there's almost no rental housing there, except way up in Novato. I have a few blue collar cousins that grew up in Marin and were basically forced over to the East Bay because of the lack of even moderately affordable housing. --
I live in SF, and have to admit that I'd like to see the Beauty Bar burned to the ground when the revolution comes as much as the next guy. But, in general, San Franciscians are actually a pretty small minded lot, and only see the 'big picture' in a ten block radius from where they live.
A couple things are happening here: 1) Land values are skyrocketing around the whole bay. There simply isn't enough land to go around, and poor people and industrial usage are feeling it. Unlike in the 1980s boom, San Francisco hasn't been excepted this time, and rents here are actually similar or lower to Cupertino or anywhere else. The perception is that SF is being 'invaded' by computer jocks that want to enjoy the lifestyle while destroying it. The reality is that many people are being pushed here by the more intolerable situation in SV.
2) Rent Control is having the reverse effect of increasing evictions, rather than decreasing them. Quite a few people have been holed up for years in a victorian flat paying $800/month, split 4 or 5 ways. Obviously, if the landlord can slap on a coat of paint and get $3000 for the same flat, he'll find a way. And since he doesn't want to get into a situation where he's below market again, he might jack that $3000 up to $3500. This sort of thing totally distorts the economics in a city where most people rent.
But anyways, you're right. The days of San Francisco being a real artistic center are probably over. Most of that community is either trust funded or entrenched and over 35 years old. The fear is that we'll end up like a big version of Carmel-by-the-Sea or Sausilito, and the art will be pastel pictures of balloons and seagulls floating over the golden gate. --
You should look at Microsoft Interix, which is a loadable UNIX subsystem for Windows NT. It doesn't emulate "Linux", but it does meet the UNIX specifications. --
The Apple Network Servers were actually pretty nice boxes -- hardware RAID, 2-4 PPC604 CPUs, AU/X only. I know a few people that would love to run Mac OS X server on a similar box, rather than some G3 desktop.
At about the same time, Apple came out with MkLinux, which runs on 601 NuBus hardware. --
Realistically, if a Linux distribution has this problem out-of-the-box, it's broken. The common (99%) case here is the IBM PC AT Keyboard, not some VT220 terminal, and not some Sun X Terminal.
The idea of a 'distribution' is that someone is doing the integration work to make all these software parts floating around the Internet work with your hardware. If that's not being done, it's really too bad. --
As others have said, the GUI stuff is not required to run a UNIX system.
However, inclusion of CDE and Motif are required as part of the "Single UNIX(tm) Specification", so you could consider the windowing systems as part of UNIX(tm). This is one main reason that free Unix clones will never be certified -- CDE is not free software, and nobody has any interest in cloning it. --
The big problem is that the default setting NT Server 4.0 is "Give Foreground Application Highest Priority". (Why is this the default on NT Server? Who knows.)
Next thing you know, some MCSE-wannabe has enabled one of the software OpenGL screensavers, and as the 'foreground' application, it's eating 98% of your CPU and has ground your server to a halt.
So, what they should be teaching the monkeys is to (A) Let background services have their share of the CPU, and (B) Don't run CPU intensive things like OpenGL Screensavers on a server. But that would be far to complex to explain, so 'Don't run a screensaver' is the 25 cent answer.
(A kernel because of the video driver is possible, but practically, it never happens with a screensaver and the vanilla SVGA video hardware on a server.) --
It's a well-kept secret that the NT Executive has a single-rooted hierarchy, containing device nodes, named pipes, and filesystem roots.
Yes, but unlike Unix where Everything Is A File, in NT only some things are files. There are also various mysterious base system objects which you can apply an ACL to, but does not exist on the filesystem. --
Maybe you only see the workstation side, so it's non-obvious -- Planning, installing, and configuring all of the domain controllers, WINS machines, DHCP machines, and Master Browser machines for a 50,000 system WinNT LAN is a non-trivial operation. Way more than 20 minutes per server.
Windows networking seems easy because the machines will broadcast and small LANs are "auto-configuring". However, on a large network it actually takes some real work.
As for Microsoft Premier Support, it just means that you have the priviledge of having a higher paid employee tell you that "It's not a bug, it's a design issue." (Actual words spoken to me from Microsoft in 1996 wrt an issue with Win95 users changing their NT Domain passwords with certain policy restrictions in place.) If you want any real help from Microsoft, you need to open your wallet and bring in the Microsoft Consulting guns. Not exactly "support" at that point..
Welllll, the main problem was that the "IT Professionals" were too busy being guardians and weren't busy enough providing useful applications to users like Word Processors and Spreadsheets and BASIC interpreters.
Frankly, it sucks that we had to have a "PC Revolution", but frankly overthrowing the powers-that-were was the only way to get anything out of the damn computer. Now were stuck with the mind-numbing task of putting the glass house back together again, something that nobody has quite figured out how to do. (And isn't Linux on the desktop a poor way to start?)
Meanwhile the "IT Professionals" have become the guardians of anti-virus DAT files and Ghost reinstall images. And the users have their Microsoft Excel, their Lotus Notes, their Quake III, and their porn sites. It's drudge work, but a far more profitable racket than "qualty and stability" ever was... --
In Oregon and California, courts have ruled that such penalty contracts are unenforceable.
These contracts are not illegal in CA -- all cell phone companies and many ISPs use them. The problem with the MSN deal was that it was structured as an equipment purchase loan rather than a standard service contract. Why? Who knows. --
why did they even include an IDE port in the first place
They probably are planning to come out with an upgraded model that supports a hard disk. Either that or they are buying the boards off the shelf, and that is how they come. --
Slashdot Mirror
Late response, but does "bugger all" mean it does nothing? If so, that's not true.
Q160656
Last Reviewed:
February 1, 1999
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0
Windows NT 3.51 and earlier boosts the foreground application responsiveness by boosting the foreground thread priority base. Windows NT 4.0 boosts the foreground responsiveness by assigning a longer timeslice (quantum) to the foreground thread than what background threads receive, not by assigning a higher thread priority.
And a OpenGL screensaver can still impact performance on a server quite seriously. This can be easily tested by putting WinNT on a Pentium-level machine and doing some file copy tests.
--
"And just think .. all that could be gone tomorrow."
Replaced by two or three companies with a total market capitalization even greater than Microsoft currently has.
BillG isn't stupid. A Microsoft that has been structurally remedied will keep him well on the top of the world's richest list. He just needs to tell all the Microserfs (and himself) "Oww Oww! The Government made me do it!"
--
My understanding is that XHTML is designed to be used with other XML DTDs to provide "rigorous structure" while still allowing the "flexible presentation" advantages of HTML. I freely admit that I'm trying to generalize the problems to the toolset, rather than generalizing the toolset to the problems. Appropriate because the current situation is apparently toolset limited, and a new XML DTD appearing only complicates that situation.
Of course DocBook (and GNU Info) aren't 'nitch' formats in the sense that nobody uses them. They are, however, sorely out of place in operating system 'distributions' that really should be providing a unified, user-accessible help system.
--
Interesting. I had an Ebay transaction go bad once because the AOL seller didn't recieve any email from me at work. I could see from the logs that your SMTP servers were accepting the mail, but the guy insisted that I was ignoring him.
Maybe my work is spamming people, or maybe the guy just wanted to give me negative feedback. Has made my shy away from sellers on AOL, tho.
--
Did you report it to AOL?
The one time I got spam from a legitimate AOL user (and not a fake @aol.com address), I sent it to abuse@aol.com. After a few days, I got back a confirmed kill letter. That's a hellava better response than I've gotten out of any other ISP.
--
I'm not sure what you mean by saying that HTML has "insufficient structure" on the presentation layer. Maybe some examples would help....
(Of course, the eXtended part of a XHTML documentation schema would need to be designed to handle the structure issues.)
The reason I suggested XHTML is that common, popular, open source renderers already exist and could be easily extended to handle a common documentation format. Yet Another SGML/XML format that requires it's own viewer/converters is doomed to the same fate as Info or DocBook - nitch penetration, more hassle for users, not less, etc, etc.
Of course, if a Linux distribution shipped all of the documentation in one format, I'd probably be so happy that I wouldn't care what format that is.
--
The Linux distributions need to get it through their heads that documentation is an important part of the OS, and is a huge opportunity for them to do the "integration services" that they are supposedly shoud be doing. Instead they just take the documentation in whatever format the original author used and just dump it on the file system. (If GNU wants to use Info, fine. But shame on RedHat et al for dumping it on the end user!)
I agree that XHTML is probably a good starting point for unified Linux documentation. A well designed schema should be able to reflect the features of the other systems, and using HTML as a presentation layer allows for standard, well-known interfaces (lynx, mozilla, etc.).
--
Column-level security is just what it sounds like it is - the ability to assign access rights to columns. I'm not edumicated enough to know if this has been implemented anywhere (except in some non-RDBMS systems like Lotus Notes), but you can see that it might be problematic for inserts.
The workaround is to deny the users access to the base table(s) and allow them access to a view that contains a subset of the original information.
As for a join in a view versus a join in a stored proce, you're right, it's the same difference.
--
The built-in SCSI in even later Macintoshes like the 8600 was only Fast SCSI-2 at 10MB/s. That's the same as what shipped with the Mac IIfx eight years eariler. Pretty sad -- if you wanted real SCSI performance you needed to buy an upgrade card anyway.
Shipping ATA/USB/1394 is a better solution for the average consumer. For those who still need SCSI, Apple ships an Adaptec U2W card.
--
Look at Linux and Windows 2000. They both support almost every bit of PC hardware under the sun, but yet you still hear people bitching about how they can't get their Winmodem working, or their crappy label printer or business card scanner doesn't work.
Apple would be foolish to try to support Wintel hardware -- "Wah! my GeForce doesn't work!", "Wah! ATA-66 doesn't work", "Wah! It doesn't support my overclocked Taiwanico motherboard!" People even bitched about OpenStep's hardware support and it was an extremely nitch market system that was only sold to people that presumably knew what they were doing.
So, Apple could make their own x86 boxes, or they could pay Gateway to do it for them. But if you could only run MacOS on a small number of Apple certified boxes, what's the f-ing point?
99% of iMac buyers could care less what CPU is inside of their magic box. And most G4 buyers only care that it's faster than the G3, not that it's faster than the Pentium III or that it's slower than the DEC Alpha
--
Actually, Cisco is worth lots because they are one of the few companies that has actually made any real money on the Internet. When people are bidding up the value of wells of red ink, it makes sense to invest in the real revenue stream.
Come to think of it, the Internet as a whole has been totally overblown (to this point) as a profit center. Cisco's made money. Sun has made money. IBM has made money, but it's a fraction of their revenue stream. Same with Oracle. Microsoft has been giving away products just to hold market share. The ISP business is flat, and AOL just essentially divested itself and bought a movie studio. Netscape went under, and the PC hardware people (including Apple) are treading water. Not to mention the millions flushing down the toliets of ecommerce.
The future looks bright, but the present is pretty gloomy (unless you are Cisco or Sun).
--
Yes, I should make it more clear that I'm of mixed views about Rent Control. On one hand, I understand the problems that led to Rent Control, and I'm glad that I live in a rent controlled apartment.
On the other hand, it does create a situation where some people are paying far below "market" rents, while others who have just moved in are actually paying far above the market rents. The difference between the below-market rent (that artists etc can afford) and the above-market rent (that computer professionals can afford) is so great that eventually the Landlord figures out some way to evict the tenents -- even if they could afford the 'average' rent somewhere in the middle. This is radically changing the population of the city.
It's the law of unintended consequences, I guess. And there isn't a really good way to fix the problem. (God help us if they repeal rent control at this point.)
BTW, Rent Control in SF applies to any building built before 1979 with two units or more. That's probably ~80% of the rental housing stock. As for Marin County, it's an upper class enclave and there's almost no rental housing there, except way up in Novato. I have a few blue collar cousins that grew up in Marin and were basically forced over to the East Bay because of the lack of even moderately affordable housing.
--
I live in SF, and have to admit that I'd like to see the Beauty Bar burned to the ground when the revolution comes as much as the next guy. But, in general, San Franciscians are actually a pretty small minded lot, and only see the 'big picture' in a ten block radius from where they live.
A couple things are happening here:
1) Land values are skyrocketing around the whole bay. There simply isn't enough land to go around, and poor people and industrial usage are feeling it. Unlike in the 1980s boom, San Francisco hasn't been excepted this time, and rents here are actually similar or lower to Cupertino or anywhere else. The perception is that SF is being 'invaded' by computer jocks that want to enjoy the lifestyle while destroying it. The reality is that many people are being pushed here by the more intolerable situation in SV.
2) Rent Control is having the reverse effect of increasing evictions, rather than decreasing them. Quite a few people have been holed up for years in a victorian flat paying $800/month, split 4 or 5 ways. Obviously, if the landlord can slap on a coat of paint and get $3000 for the same flat, he'll find a way. And since he doesn't want to get into a situation where he's below market again, he might jack that $3000 up to $3500. This sort of thing totally distorts the economics in a city where most people rent.
But anyways, you're right. The days of San Francisco being a real artistic center are probably over. Most of that community is either trust funded or entrenched and over 35 years old. The fear is that we'll end up like a big version of Carmel-by-the-Sea or Sausilito, and the art will be pastel pictures of balloons and seagulls floating over the golden gate.
--
You should look at Microsoft Interix, which is a loadable UNIX subsystem for Windows NT. It doesn't emulate "Linux", but it does meet the UNIX specifications.
--
I mean ... "AIX only". Press Preview, dammit!
--
The Apple Network Servers were actually pretty nice boxes -- hardware RAID, 2-4 PPC604 CPUs, AU/X only. I know a few people that would love to run Mac OS X server on a similar box, rather than some G3 desktop.
At about the same time, Apple came out with MkLinux, which runs on 601 NuBus hardware.
--
Realistically, if a Linux distribution has this problem out-of-the-box, it's broken. The common (99%) case here is the IBM PC AT Keyboard, not some VT220 terminal, and not some Sun X Terminal.
The idea of a 'distribution' is that someone is doing the integration work to make all these software parts floating around the Internet work with your hardware. If that's not being done, it's really too bad.
--
As others have said, the GUI stuff is not required to run a UNIX system.
However, inclusion of CDE and Motif are required as part of the "Single UNIX(tm) Specification", so you could consider the windowing systems as part of UNIX(tm). This is one main reason that free Unix clones will never be certified -- CDE is not free software, and nobody has any interest in cloning it.
--
The big problem is that the default setting NT Server 4.0 is "Give Foreground Application Highest Priority". (Why is this the default on NT Server? Who knows.)
Next thing you know, some MCSE-wannabe has enabled one of the software OpenGL screensavers, and as the 'foreground' application, it's eating 98% of your CPU and has ground your server to a halt.
So, what they should be teaching the monkeys is to (A) Let background services have their share of the CPU, and (B) Don't run CPU intensive things like OpenGL Screensavers on a server. But that would be far to complex to explain, so 'Don't run a screensaver' is the 25 cent answer.
(A kernel because of the video driver is possible, but practically, it never happens with a screensaver and the vanilla SVGA video hardware on a server.)
--
It's a well-kept secret that the NT Executive has a single-rooted hierarchy, containing device nodes, named pipes, and filesystem roots.
Yes, but unlike Unix where Everything Is A File, in NT only some things are files. There are also various mysterious base system objects which you can apply an ACL to, but does not exist on the filesystem.
--
Maybe you only see the workstation side, so it's non-obvious -- Planning, installing, and configuring all of the domain controllers, WINS machines, DHCP machines, and Master Browser machines for a 50,000 system WinNT LAN is a non-trivial operation. Way more than 20 minutes per server.
Windows networking seems easy because the machines will broadcast and small LANs are "auto-configuring". However, on a large network it actually takes some real work.
As for Microsoft Premier Support, it just means that you have the priviledge of having a higher paid employee tell you that "It's not a bug, it's a design issue." (Actual words spoken to me from Microsoft in 1996 wrt an issue with Win95 users changing their NT Domain passwords with certain policy restrictions in place.) If you want any real help from Microsoft, you need to open your wallet and bring in the Microsoft Consulting guns. Not exactly "support" at that point..
--
Welllll, the main problem was that the "IT Professionals" were too busy being guardians and weren't busy enough providing useful applications to users like Word Processors and Spreadsheets and BASIC interpreters.
Frankly, it sucks that we had to have a "PC Revolution", but frankly overthrowing the powers-that-were was the only way to get anything out of the damn computer. Now were stuck with the mind-numbing task of putting the glass house back together again, something that nobody has quite figured out how to do. (And isn't Linux on the desktop a poor way to start?)
Meanwhile the "IT Professionals" have become the guardians of anti-virus DAT files and Ghost reinstall images. And the users have their Microsoft Excel, their Lotus Notes, their Quake III, and their porn sites. It's drudge work, but a far more profitable racket than "qualty and stability" ever was...
--
In Oregon and California, courts have ruled that such penalty contracts are unenforceable.
These contracts are not illegal in CA -- all cell phone companies and many ISPs use them. The problem with the MSN deal was that it was structured as an equipment purchase loan rather than a standard service contract. Why? Who knows.
--
why did they even include an IDE port in the first place
They probably are planning to come out with an upgraded model that supports a hard disk. Either that or they are buying the boards off the shelf, and that is how they come.
--
By the time this thing ships, 600Mhz chips will probably cost about $50 bucks at retail. PCs will be shipping with 1.5GHz chips.
Intel may well be giving the chips away for free. They could afford it.
--