"Demolish his argument"? All you've done is suggest that it's essentially impossible to compare any two cars, because at least a few of their "hundreds" of attributes will differ.
No, what I have done is shown that you can't decide "diesel vs hybrid" on the basis of a flawed comparison between a compact Lupo and a family-sized petrol-hybrid. You are just being silly, or stupid, if you think what I said is even remotely like what you just claimed I said.
You mean the 29 city / 37 highway Honda Accord Hybrid? That one? Didn't you just get done telling me that 40mpg highway is not exciting?
Didn't you just get done telling me that _no_ hybrid can do 0-60 in less than 10 seconds?
with a 0-60 time less than 5 seconds, which is twice as fast as any hybrid. Hmm.
Why yes, that's exactly what you said. Don't try and change the subject when you're wrong.
But you can compare miles-per-gallon when performance is completely different? Doesn't sound fair to me. It's possible to design a 150mpg car, but it's 0-60 time would be even longer than that of a Prius (if that's possible).
No, it's not fair to compare any of these cars using just the mpg figure. My intention was to demonstrate that mpg by itself did not justify the parent's conclusion that diesel is better than petrol-hybrid. The parent needed to consider at least weight and fuel-type in addition to mpg. Yes, he should also have considered performance. He should also have considered emissions, life expectancy, repair costs, reliability, operation in cold conditions, torque, power, and 100s of other possible differences. But listing all possible differences was not necessary. The two differences I did list were enough to demolish his argument.
You can buy a [ed: non-hybrid] car today that'll do over 40mpg (highway)
40mpg highway is not exciting. Toyota Prius and Honda Insight are both rated at 70mpg highway. In practise, they both get better than 70mpg.
with a 0-60 time less than 5 seconds, which is twice as fast as any hybrid. Hmm.
The Honda Accord hybrid does 0-60 in 7.5 seconds. Hmm?
"Project Peabody" is really the code name for Sun's secret development of The Wayback Machine to send Scott McNealy back to a time when Sun was relevant.
If you want great gas mileage, diesels are unbeaten. Driving normally, [British motoring journalist] Jeremy Clarkson got 75mpg out of a Volkswagen Lupo diesel.
Diesel has a significantly higher energy density than petrol. So it's a mistake to compare the "mileage" in "miles per gallon" between petrol-hybrid and diesel. They're different fuels. You might as well compare vodka to rocket fuel.
The Lupo is also a tiny compact. Hybrids like the Prius are decent sized family cars. Once again, you can't compare "miles per gallon" when the physical mass is completely different.
Yet despite the Prius being larger, heavier, and using a less dense fuel, it still gets 50mpg for normal driving and the record is 85mpg. That beats the Lupo's once-off record of 75mpg.
And you say diesel is unbeaten? I think you're wrong.
OK. Cars convert gasoline to energy in the neighborhood of 17% efficiency after all things like wind, friction, heat loss, and whatnot are taken into effect.
Power plants are 50-70% efficient in converting dinosaur bits into energy. Much is lost over the wire, being stored in batteries, and being transmitted back out. It's probably a wash for efficiency.
70% doesn't sound right, and it's not a wash. EV (Electric Vehicle) is still significantly more efficient than ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) even when taking into consideration losses due to electrical power distribution.
EV Overall Efficiency 28%
ICE Overall Efficiency 14%
-- http://www.electroauto.com/info/pollmyth.shtml
There's a table on that page which breaks down where energy is lost. Electric Vehicles are more efficient than petrol/diesel engines, end to end, despite the losses due to transmission and battery charging.
Centrally generated electricity is cleaner (not clean but cleaner) by orders of magnitude than burning it at the point where it's going to be used. Not only that but central power plants can be placed in poor neighborhoods where most of us never have to see the pollution and those that do don't vote.
Correct. Even when using "dirty power" such as coal-fired power plants, Electric Vehicles produce lower emissions per mile than petrol/diesel cars. The following figures are for California which has relatively clean electrical power, but the claim is still true even for states with "dirtier power".
What about the power plant emissions generated by electric vehicles?
UCS's detailed analyses show that for each gasoline car replaced by an electric vehicle, electric cars would slash air pollution in California by 99 percent for smog-forming emissions and by 70 percent for carbon dioxide emissions -- including power plant emissions. And as power plants become cleaner, so, too, will electric cars. When electric cars are powered by solar and wind power plants, these vehicles will be zero-emitting throughout the fuel cycle.
-- http://www.ece.umr.edu/links/power/Energy_Course/e nergy/ev/faq.html
Greater efficiency, lower emissions, better low-end torque, fewer parts, quieter operation. The EV only loses because of the terrible range and the difficulties in refueling on long trips.
There are two issues here: does the company get the original GPL code (I'd say no) and does the company get the OP's changes to the GPL code (I'd say yes).
I agree with both those issues and your answers. However there is a third issue. The company has already distributed the derivative work. Did the company have any right to distribute the derivative under any license except the GPL? I'd say no. The derivative work they distributed contains GPL code written by IBM!
Has anybody done a 1-to-1 comparison between Solaris Zones and the features that Xen provides?
They're completely different technologies. Short summary: Xen is para-virtualisation, Zones are a kernel abstraction.
With Solaris zones there is a single kernel. The process structure has been extended with a zone ID, so the kernel knows which zone each process belongs to. Solaris boots normally and becomes the master. Then each slave zone boots inside the master. Zone filesystems are simply subdirectories of the real filesystem. Zones are extremely fast and efficient.
With Xen there are multiple kernels running in "domains". Xen boots first and then launches the kernels of each domain. The Xen VMM manages memory and CPU. Xen provides "virtual hardware" for network and disk but the driver is actually in domain 0. Each kernel has its own filesystem. Often those filesystem are provided by really big files residing on a real filesystem from domain 0, though you can also assign partitions or logical volumes to each domain.
One of the benefits of Xen's approach is that you can run different versions of the kernel and even completely different kernels (eg, BSD and Linux) side-by-side. With zones you are always running the same Solaris 10 kernel on all zones. However this means Xen isn't as efficient as zones due to wasted resources and hardware contention from multiple kernels. Xen requires extensive modifications to the boot sequence, modifications to the guest kernel, and changes in the way you maintain the server. Zones don't affect you until you need to use them, and when you go to use them you don't need to change the boot sequence or how you maintain the server. Because Xen sits on top of the hardware, you lose features like ACPI and APM until Xen has support for those features. Xen also makes debugging a kernel problem far more complicated.
I personally don't see the benefit of Xen over something like Plex86. Roughly speaking, Plex86 placed the VMM component of Xen inside the Linux kernel. So a standard Plex86/Linux kernel is both the Xen VMM and the domain 0 kernel. Though Xen and Plex86 don't share code; I'm just using those names to link the parallel concepts. This makes everything a lot simpler in Plex86; the host kernel has full hardware access and in most ways is completely normal. It's only guest kernels that need anything special. Xen has gone to a lot of trouble to keep the VMM separate from the kernel, but at the expense of adding considerable complexity.
If I can install Linux on my existing hardware, I'm going to. But I'm not going to want to boot my machine that way all the time, because OS X has a good number of apps that I use ( for non-work purposes ) which don't exist ( really ) under Linux, and I'm not sure the wife and 3-year-old are ready to make the switch ot Linux.
Run MOL. You get MacOS X either fullscreen or in a window but with Linux running at all times. MOL is fast and stable. Even GUI effects like Expose are speedy enough. You can even set it so your wife and child's accounts launch automatically into MOL.
And if there's one thing that guy's taught us, it's that Australia is full of critters that will happily kill you if you just piss them off a little. It's probably much easier to kill yourself off there than it is here in the states (Although we also have our share of poisonous nasties.)
That reminds me...
It is true that of the 10 most poisonous arachnids on the planet, Australia has 9 of them. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that of the 9 most poisonous arachnids, Australia has all of them. However, there are curiously few snakes, possibly because the spiders have killed them all. But even the spiders won't go near the sea. -- Douglas Adams
As the name itself holds value as a propaganda tool, there is value in opposing the use of the name and changing the name.
Oh, please. Complaining about the name is about as silly as the "pro-life" vs "pro-choice" nonsense, or having a coronary whenever a reporter writes "hacker" instead of "vandal". Intellectual Property is the widespread popular name. Live with it. Complaining about it is petty.
And as long as there is value in that, you'll find yourself getting a lecture any time you use the concept in a dubious manner.
Uhh, I didn't get given the lecture, nor did I ever use the term in a "dubious manner". I complained about somebody else giving the lecture to zurtle. Zurtle obviously knew that IP is an umbrella term for many legal concepts because he wrote:
zurtle: I chose an IP example, not a patent example...
There's more to IP than just patents, buddy!!
Then damiam gives him the standard "IP is meaningless and you should say blah or blah or blah" lecture. I respond by saying it's not meaningless and give a workable definition.
nathanh: Intellectual property is an umbrella term for patents, trademarks, copyrights, designs, trade secrets, and a few other things.
I can't believe you didn't even bother to read the thread before condescendingly telling me off, because you seem to think I'm complaining that I received the lecture. No, I'm complaining that the lecture exists at all.
This is what pisses me off about The Lecture. It's given as the response instead of bothering to read what the other person wrote. People just see the word "IP" and they go off on the damn "IP is blah blah" lecture. It's like it's learnt by rote or something. Then if anybody disagrees, suddenly they're accused of being ignorant and in dire need of The Lecture. For God's sake people, stop using canned responses.
I've had enough of this thread. 4 responses and none of them have even bothered to respond to my point which is that IP is a real term, used in the real world, by real people. Saying "IP is a meaningless concept" obviously gets great mod points on Slashdot, and disagreeing obviously gets you modded into oblivion, but you won't change the world with mod points.
Every year, I've been posting that the OSS world needs one sane, unified development API for its desktops. I sometimes get modded down, sometimes get angry replies...but nobody ever actually refutes what I'm saying, because they know I'm right.
Sure, I agree with you, one API would be great... but which one?
And that's the problem in a nutshell. Nobody knows which one. Some people think they know, but how do you know if they're right?
The safest path is to let everybody do their own thing and let the market sort it out. Sort of like democracy crossed with natural selection.
Apparently, that inevitable lecture actually is needed to counter the propaganda carpet bombing performed by the so-called IP industries. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what would actually be needed would be a legal requirement for warning labels on any 'intellectual property', explaining the differences and what the foundation of the laws are, and how those laws are supposed to benefit the public.
Education never works. Consumer groups fought for mandatory nutritional information on all packaged foods. Do people eat any healthier these days? Are people aware of what they're eating? The sheer number of "food products" that contain high levels of sugar suggests otherwise. People eat what they like and I'd be surprised if even a tiny fraction of people knew what was in the food they were eating.
Similarly I don't think public awareness would work with IP. Nobody would read the "IP Warning" label. Most people just wouldn't care. They would still buy the latest album from this week's semi-naked teenage pop idol, despite the destructive effects of repeatedly extended copyright. They'll still buy the latest tech gadget from Mega Corp no matter how many abusive patents Mega Corp has used against competitors.
Unless IP laws intrude on their daily lives, not enough people to make a difference will care.
The 'IP' concept is both ambigous and misnamed. Temporary Intellectual Monopoly, would be more valid, as it is not, in fact, property, but temporary state sanctioned monopolies of certain rights. The 'IP' misnomer is simply a propaganda frame intended to shift the attention away from the fact that we're actually taking away rights from everyone else rather than protecting someones right to their 'property'.
But Intellectual Property is what it's called. There's no value in complaining about the name. Just deal with it.
It may be pedantic, bad politics, or (frequently, here) misinformed, but distinguishing between different types of rights bundles granted by the state is not "onlya stupid Slashdot meme".
Distinguishing between different types of rights is not the stupid meme. The stupid meme is that "IP is a meaningless concept". Anybody who even dares to write "IP" on Slashdot gets a predictable lecture. However IP is not a meaningless concept. At the very worst it is ambiguous. What is needed is some recognition that IP does have meaning. What isn't needed is the inevitable lecture whenever anybody uses "intellectual property" in a sentence, especially when the lecture says something outlandishly wrong like "IP is a meaningless concept".
Um, would you care to explain what exactly is wrong with the construction "it is [adj] to [verb]..."?
Actually, there's nothing to IP whatsoever; IP is a meaningless concept. Trademark, copyright, and patent law are distinct entities with different rules and purposes. It's fallacious to lump them together under "IP". Your statement about trademark law is almost entirely irrelevant when we're talking about patents.
It is not a meaningless concept. Intellectual property is an umbrella term for patents, trademarks, copyrights, designs, trade secrets, and a few other things. It's as if you'd said:
"Pets is a meaningless concept. Dogs, cats, and goldfish are distinct entities with different rules and purposes. It's fallacious to lump them together under "pets".
People who deal in the industry call it IP. It's only a stupid Slashdot meme that "IP is meaningless". It is MEANINGFUL. You have to look no further than the full expansion of WIPO to realise that IP has meaning.
Oh, and here's another rant.
It's fallacious to lump them together under "IP".
The word "fallacious" is an adjective. If you don't know what a word means, try not using it.
I guess this is what I get for trying to have an intelligent argument with someone who wasn't even around when this stuff was going on. Look, there is more to computing history than tidbits you get out a book. I would recommend to you a thorough study of the Xerox PARC's early activities including Engelbart's collaboration at the time.
Interesting that you think Engelbart created the mouse at PARC, seeing as he demonstrated the mouse two years before PARC was even formed.
On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962... This was the public debut of the computer mouse. -- [http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html ]
Xerox Corporation gathers together a team of world-class researchers in information sciences and physical sciences and gives them the mission to create "the architecture of information." The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) officially opens its doors at 3180 Porter Drive in Palo Alto, California on July 1, 1970. -- [http://www.parc.xerox.com/about/history/default.h tml]
Perhaps you think Xerox PARC also built the world's first time machine?
I would also recommend finding an knowledgeable elder who was in the industry at the time to sit you down and tell it to you how it is!;).
Just because you're OLD doesn't mean you're RIGHT. Seeing as Alan KAY himself says you're wrong, and you don't even seem to be able to spell his name correctly, I think your opinion is as worthless as they come.
By the way your AC troll was fun, isn't the internet so great that when you can't get your way and you know you're wrong, you can just anonymously blast people?
The anonymous comment was not my doing, so don't be an ass.
Not sure what you're smoking, but I'd give credit for the GUI to Alan Key of PARC,
Alan Kay, not Key. Alan Kay himself gave credit to Sketchpad (1962) for defining the modern graphical user interface. As one observer noted of Alan Kay's 1986 speech discussing Dynabook:
One persistent myth about the work of Xerox in this era--which Kay has worked actively to dispel in historical talks such as this one--is that PARC invented the mouse and graphical user interface (GUI). The mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart and others at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC); the GUI has its roots in systems such as Sketchpad, Grail, and ARC's NLS. -- http://www.newmediareader.com/cd_samples/Kay/
So, you were saying?
and Engelbart was also at the Xerox PARC for invention of the mouse, so credit goes there in both cases.
You are simply mistaken. I already gave you the research institute where Engelbart worked (SRI) when he and his team invented the mouse. Educate yourself, because you are grossly ignorant.
Xerox PARC gave us the mouse, the gui, and ethernet.
Engelbart and his team from Stanford Research Institute gave us the mouse. Sutherland gave us the GUI with Sketchpad. Improvements on GUI ideas came from countless researchers, undergrads, postgrads, professors, enthusiasts, and research institutes over nearly a decade before PARC was even formed. Xerox PARC just put all the latest ideas together in a convenient technology demo.
So sick of PARC being given the credit for all things GUI. They were good, and they did do some pretty neat things, but they were not responsible for everything. Like all researchers they built upon the knowledge gained by others before them.
Yes, what would you know? I've worked for some pretty damn gigantic companies, and I've worked for the largest government department in the country, and I wouldn't know diddly-squat about how those places operated. You get to understand your little area and perhaps another couple of areas next to you. Apart from that, you're no more educated about the company than the interested lay-person.
The most egregious abuse I've heard was a guy telling me that because his brother worked in a particular department, that he knew more than me about that department.
Working in the place doesn't make you an expert. Telling the other guy their opinion is unimportant just because you "work there" is a copout.
I use linux, but I have seriously been considering buying a Mac for a while. At least, I was considering it until I actually tried using one. I used it for a whole summer, and learned to hate it. Nothing worked like I expected.
Macs are great. Shame about all the Mac users though.
Seriously, they've always been like this. I'm not sure why, but even in MacOS 7 days they were just as rude and just as sanctimonious. This was back when their operating system used cooperative multitasking, no memory protection, and the most popular third party application was an extension that replaced the god-awful virtual memory that shipped by default. You would have thought they'd have been more humble. I'm not sure if you used Windows 95, but it looked stable by comparison to MacOS 8.
I'm like you in that I don't like MacOS X either. It's not that "I don't understand it", which seems to be the common response from the Mac zealots, but rather that it's simply horrible. It's not really MacOS anyway. It's NEXTSTEP. I used MacOS (I had two Macs before MacOS X) and the MacOS 8 GUI was far superior to this MacOS X monstrosity. I dislike the new finder. I dislike the dock. I don't like how they've screwed up shortcuts. I'm envious of some technical marvels in MacOS X - for example, the windowing system - but the kernel is "ho-hum, 80s tech" as far as I am concerned.
However the Apple hardware is nice. I've not yet found any x86 vendor that can match Apple for style and features at the same price. Fortunately Linux runs beaut on most modern Apple hardware, so it's not like I have to do without:-)
Mention that the next time someone talks about how outrageously expensive Macs are. Design costs money. Designers cost money.
I bought a Powerbook because it was CHEAPER than other laptops. The cheapest brandname x86 laptop I could find was $2200. The PowerBook was $2800. But the x86 didn't have wireless, enough RAM, enough disk, bluetooth, or firewire. After I'd finished upgrading the x86 laptop so it was acceptable, the PowerBook was $50 cheaper. Take into consideration the stylish looks and the slot loading drive, neither of which were offered by the x86 laptop, and my decision was made.
Fortunately I run Linux so I had no allegiance to x86.
Right now you can buy a brand new iBook G4, which basically smokes my PowerBook, for $1599. The cheapest x86 laptop I can find is $1299 and it's a non-brandname without CD burner, without wireless, and without bluetooth, all of which are standard on the iBook G4. Add those features and the iBook comes out cheaper.
Apple's historical reputation of being overly expensive was well deserved. In my time I have owned a Duo and a PowerMac and they both cost far more than their x86 equivalents. But those days are long gone. Apple has reinvented themselves as the cheaper option while still retaining their stylish looks. The Mac mini is another example of Apple taking on the budget market. I tried to build or find an equivalent x86 machine (to be a MythTV frontend) and I couldn't do it for the price.
Umm... I don't know about you... but that description didn't help me much... infinite bandwidth? What is this? How is this? How does linux get past physical hardware limitations that other os's can't?
My own understanding is hazy but basically you can think of Infiniband as a replacement for PCI, SCSI and Ethernet. Imagine having an AMD64 with an nvidia card and a P4 with an ati card, and having the AMD64 communicate with the ati card. That's what Infiniband permits. You can use Infiniband to hook up the internal disks, external disks, video cards, your local LAN, etc. This has important ramifications for clusters. Imagine having 10 computers and a single master computer streaming audio to all 10 audio controllers simultaneously. The master computer uses the 10 audio controllers directly via the Infiniband switched fabric. The operating systems on the other 9 computers don't need to waste their time handling the data. The audio controller is no longer "hidden" behind the CPU, needing the CPUs help to get audio data to and from the network. The audio controller is on the network.
Each Infiniband port is 10Gbps, which is fast for serial. By comparison, Firewire800 is 800Mbps, Ethernet is 1Gbps, and FibreChannel is 2Gbps. But the real kicker is that Infiniband is very low latency. Ethernet would be useless for replacing PCI, but Infiniband is practical.
For devices that need more bandwidth they can use multiple Infiniband ports in parallel. Notice how similar this sounds to PCI Express. With PCI Express the idea was that simple cards (eg, audio controllers) would use a single PCIe channel, but video cards might use 16 channels. PCI Express is switched, just like Infiniband. PCI Express has similar low-latency properties.
The big question now is, will Infiniband or PCI Express win in the marketplace? My money is on PCI Express because efforts have been made to be backwards compatible with PCI. The host interface is identical to PCI; you don't need to change a single line of code in an operating system to use a PCIe motherboard with PCIe peripherals.
.. why I don't believe the "Global Warming is being caused by greedy corporations" spiel..
Global warming != ozone layer.
quite simply, it's because most people (scientists included) quite simply don't have enough information to say for a FACT that THIS or THAT is causing ozone depletion:
It's a fact that CFC causes ozone depletion. They awarded a Nobel Prize to the 3 guys who figured it out.
Honestly, it's people like you who don't know what they're talking about that make me not believe the "[insert-disaster-here] is a natural phenomenon and isn't caused by humans" spiel. I bet you also believe a single volcano eruption produces more CO2 than humanity has in 100 years.
Slashdot Mirror
No, what I have done is shown that you can't decide "diesel vs hybrid" on the basis of a flawed comparison between a compact Lupo and a family-sized petrol-hybrid. You are just being silly, or stupid, if you think what I said is even remotely like what you just claimed I said.
Didn't you just get done telling me that _no_ hybrid can do 0-60 in less than 10 seconds?
Why yes, that's exactly what you said. Don't try and change the subject when you're wrong.
PS: and 40mpg isn't exciting.
No, it's not fair to compare any of these cars using just the mpg figure. My intention was to demonstrate that mpg by itself did not justify the parent's conclusion that diesel is better than petrol-hybrid. The parent needed to consider at least weight and fuel-type in addition to mpg. Yes, he should also have considered performance. He should also have considered emissions, life expectancy, repair costs, reliability, operation in cold conditions, torque, power, and 100s of other possible differences. But listing all possible differences was not necessary. The two differences I did list were enough to demolish his argument.
40mpg highway is not exciting. Toyota Prius and Honda Insight are both rated at 70mpg highway. In practise, they both get better than 70mpg.
The Honda Accord hybrid does 0-60 in 7.5 seconds. Hmm?
Quiet, you!
Diesel has a significantly higher energy density than petrol. So it's a mistake to compare the "mileage" in "miles per gallon" between petrol-hybrid and diesel. They're different fuels. You might as well compare vodka to rocket fuel.
The Lupo is also a tiny compact. Hybrids like the Prius are decent sized family cars. Once again, you can't compare "miles per gallon" when the physical mass is completely different.
Yet despite the Prius being larger, heavier, and using a less dense fuel, it still gets 50mpg for normal driving and the record is 85mpg. That beats the Lupo's once-off record of 75mpg.
And you say diesel is unbeaten? I think you're wrong.
70% doesn't sound right, and it's not a wash. EV (Electric Vehicle) is still significantly more efficient than ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) even when taking into consideration losses due to electrical power distribution.
There's a table on that page which breaks down where energy is lost. Electric Vehicles are more efficient than petrol/diesel engines, end to end, despite the losses due to transmission and battery charging.
Correct. Even when using "dirty power" such as coal-fired power plants, Electric Vehicles produce lower emissions per mile than petrol/diesel cars. The following figures are for California which has relatively clean electrical power, but the claim is still true even for states with "dirtier power".
Greater efficiency, lower emissions, better low-end torque, fewer parts, quieter operation. The EV only loses because of the terrible range and the difficulties in refueling on long trips.
I agree with both those issues and your answers. However there is a third issue. The company has already distributed the derivative work. Did the company have any right to distribute the derivative under any license except the GPL? I'd say no. The derivative work they distributed contains GPL code written by IBM!
That would be a tinfoil hard hat, right?
/me wonders if the canary also has a tinfoil hat.
They're completely different technologies. Short summary: Xen is para-virtualisation, Zones are a kernel abstraction.
With Solaris zones there is a single kernel. The process structure has been extended with a zone ID, so the kernel knows which zone each process belongs to. Solaris boots normally and becomes the master. Then each slave zone boots inside the master. Zone filesystems are simply subdirectories of the real filesystem. Zones are extremely fast and efficient.
With Xen there are multiple kernels running in "domains". Xen boots first and then launches the kernels of each domain. The Xen VMM manages memory and CPU. Xen provides "virtual hardware" for network and disk but the driver is actually in domain 0. Each kernel has its own filesystem. Often those filesystem are provided by really big files residing on a real filesystem from domain 0, though you can also assign partitions or logical volumes to each domain.
One of the benefits of Xen's approach is that you can run different versions of the kernel and even completely different kernels (eg, BSD and Linux) side-by-side. With zones you are always running the same Solaris 10 kernel on all zones. However this means Xen isn't as efficient as zones due to wasted resources and hardware contention from multiple kernels. Xen requires extensive modifications to the boot sequence, modifications to the guest kernel, and changes in the way you maintain the server. Zones don't affect you until you need to use them, and when you go to use them you don't need to change the boot sequence or how you maintain the server. Because Xen sits on top of the hardware, you lose features like ACPI and APM until Xen has support for those features. Xen also makes debugging a kernel problem far more complicated.
I personally don't see the benefit of Xen over something like Plex86. Roughly speaking, Plex86 placed the VMM component of Xen inside the Linux kernel. So a standard Plex86/Linux kernel is both the Xen VMM and the domain 0 kernel. Though Xen and Plex86 don't share code; I'm just using those names to link the parallel concepts. This makes everything a lot simpler in Plex86; the host kernel has full hardware access and in most ways is completely normal. It's only guest kernels that need anything special. Xen has gone to a lot of trouble to keep the VMM separate from the kernel, but at the expense of adding considerable complexity.
Run MOL. You get MacOS X either fullscreen or in a window but with Linux running at all times. MOL is fast and stable. Even GUI effects like Expose are speedy enough. You can even set it so your wife and child's accounts launch automatically into MOL.
That reminds me...
We also have ants that can kill you with a single bite, the world's most poisonous snake, and the world's most poisonous creature, the box jellyfish.
With all the time spent looking out for deadly snakes, ants, spiders, and fish... the crocodiles really don't concern us all that much :-)
Oh, please. Complaining about the name is about as silly as the "pro-life" vs "pro-choice" nonsense, or having a coronary whenever a reporter writes "hacker" instead of "vandal". Intellectual Property is the widespread popular name. Live with it. Complaining about it is petty.
Uhh, I didn't get given the lecture, nor did I ever use the term in a "dubious manner". I complained about somebody else giving the lecture to zurtle. Zurtle obviously knew that IP is an umbrella term for many legal concepts because he wrote:
Then damiam gives him the standard "IP is meaningless and you should say blah or blah or blah" lecture. I respond by saying it's not meaningless and give a workable definition.
I can't believe you didn't even bother to read the thread before condescendingly telling me off, because you seem to think I'm complaining that I received the lecture. No, I'm complaining that the lecture exists at all.
This is what pisses me off about The Lecture. It's given as the response instead of bothering to read what the other person wrote. People just see the word "IP" and they go off on the damn "IP is blah blah" lecture. It's like it's learnt by rote or something. Then if anybody disagrees, suddenly they're accused of being ignorant and in dire need of The Lecture. For God's sake people, stop using canned responses.
I've had enough of this thread. 4 responses and none of them have even bothered to respond to my point which is that IP is a real term, used in the real world, by real people. Saying "IP is a meaningless concept" obviously gets great mod points on Slashdot, and disagreeing obviously gets you modded into oblivion, but you won't change the world with mod points.
Sure, I agree with you, one API would be great... but which one?
And that's the problem in a nutshell. Nobody knows which one. Some people think they know, but how do you know if they're right?
The safest path is to let everybody do their own thing and let the market sort it out. Sort of like democracy crossed with natural selection.
Education never works. Consumer groups fought for mandatory nutritional information on all packaged foods. Do people eat any healthier these days? Are people aware of what they're eating? The sheer number of "food products" that contain high levels of sugar suggests otherwise. People eat what they like and I'd be surprised if even a tiny fraction of people knew what was in the food they were eating.
Similarly I don't think public awareness would work with IP. Nobody would read the "IP Warning" label. Most people just wouldn't care. They would still buy the latest album from this week's semi-naked teenage pop idol, despite the destructive effects of repeatedly extended copyright. They'll still buy the latest tech gadget from Mega Corp no matter how many abusive patents Mega Corp has used against competitors.
Unless IP laws intrude on their daily lives, not enough people to make a difference will care.
But Intellectual Property is what it's called. There's no value in complaining about the name. Just deal with it.
Distinguishing between different types of rights is not the stupid meme. The stupid meme is that "IP is a meaningless concept". Anybody who even dares to write "IP" on Slashdot gets a predictable lecture. However IP is not a meaningless concept. At the very worst it is ambiguous. What is needed is some recognition that IP does have meaning. What isn't needed is the inevitable lecture whenever anybody uses "intellectual property" in a sentence, especially when the lecture says something outlandishly wrong like "IP is a meaningless concept".
Yeah, my bad.
It is not a meaningless concept. Intellectual property is an umbrella term for patents, trademarks, copyrights, designs, trade secrets, and a few other things. It's as if you'd said:
People who deal in the industry call it IP. It's only a stupid Slashdot meme that "IP is meaningless". It is MEANINGFUL. You have to look no further than the full expansion of WIPO to realise that IP has meaning.
Oh, and here's another rant.
The word "fallacious" is an adjective. If you don't know what a word means, try not using it.
Why? Will you not use the software unless it's innovative?
Let's say just for argument's sake there is no innovation in Oo.org. What's the problem?
Interesting that you think Engelbart created the mouse at PARC, seeing as he demonstrated the mouse two years before PARC was even formed.
Perhaps you think Xerox PARC also built the world's first time machine?
Just because you're OLD doesn't mean you're RIGHT. Seeing as Alan KAY himself says you're wrong, and you don't even seem to be able to spell his name correctly, I think your opinion is as worthless as they come.
The anonymous comment was not my doing, so don't be an ass.
Alan Kay, not Key. Alan Kay himself gave credit to Sketchpad (1962) for defining the modern graphical user interface. As one observer noted of Alan Kay's 1986 speech discussing Dynabook:
So, you were saying?
You are simply mistaken. I already gave you the research institute where Engelbart worked (SRI) when he and his team invented the mouse. Educate yourself, because you are grossly ignorant.
Engelbart and his team from Stanford Research Institute gave us the mouse. Sutherland gave us the GUI with Sketchpad. Improvements on GUI ideas came from countless researchers, undergrads, postgrads, professors, enthusiasts, and research institutes over nearly a decade before PARC was even formed. Xerox PARC just put all the latest ideas together in a convenient technology demo.
So sick of PARC being given the credit for all things GUI. They were good, and they did do some pretty neat things, but they were not responsible for everything. Like all researchers they built upon the knowledge gained by others before them.
This is off-topic, but it's a pet peeve.
Yes, what would you know? I've worked for some pretty damn gigantic companies, and I've worked for the largest government department in the country, and I wouldn't know diddly-squat about how those places operated. You get to understand your little area and perhaps another couple of areas next to you. Apart from that, you're no more educated about the company than the interested lay-person.
The most egregious abuse I've heard was a guy telling me that because his brother worked in a particular department, that he knew more than me about that department.
Working in the place doesn't make you an expert. Telling the other guy their opinion is unimportant just because you "work there" is a copout.
Macs are great. Shame about all the Mac users though.
Seriously, they've always been like this. I'm not sure why, but even in MacOS 7 days they were just as rude and just as sanctimonious. This was back when their operating system used cooperative multitasking, no memory protection, and the most popular third party application was an extension that replaced the god-awful virtual memory that shipped by default. You would have thought they'd have been more humble. I'm not sure if you used Windows 95, but it looked stable by comparison to MacOS 8.
I'm like you in that I don't like MacOS X either. It's not that "I don't understand it", which seems to be the common response from the Mac zealots, but rather that it's simply horrible. It's not really MacOS anyway. It's NEXTSTEP. I used MacOS (I had two Macs before MacOS X) and the MacOS 8 GUI was far superior to this MacOS X monstrosity. I dislike the new finder. I dislike the dock. I don't like how they've screwed up shortcuts. I'm envious of some technical marvels in MacOS X - for example, the windowing system - but the kernel is "ho-hum, 80s tech" as far as I am concerned.
However the Apple hardware is nice. I've not yet found any x86 vendor that can match Apple for style and features at the same price. Fortunately Linux runs beaut on most modern Apple hardware, so it's not like I have to do without :-)
I bought a Powerbook because it was CHEAPER than other laptops. The cheapest brandname x86 laptop I could find was $2200. The PowerBook was $2800. But the x86 didn't have wireless, enough RAM, enough disk, bluetooth, or firewire. After I'd finished upgrading the x86 laptop so it was acceptable, the PowerBook was $50 cheaper. Take into consideration the stylish looks and the slot loading drive, neither of which were offered by the x86 laptop, and my decision was made.
Fortunately I run Linux so I had no allegiance to x86.
Right now you can buy a brand new iBook G4, which basically smokes my PowerBook, for $1599. The cheapest x86 laptop I can find is $1299 and it's a non-brandname without CD burner, without wireless, and without bluetooth, all of which are standard on the iBook G4. Add those features and the iBook comes out cheaper.
Apple's historical reputation of being overly expensive was well deserved. In my time I have owned a Duo and a PowerMac and they both cost far more than their x86 equivalents. But those days are long gone. Apple has reinvented themselves as the cheaper option while still retaining their stylish looks. The Mac mini is another example of Apple taking on the budget market. I tried to build or find an equivalent x86 machine (to be a MythTV frontend) and I couldn't do it for the price.
My own understanding is hazy but basically you can think of Infiniband as a replacement for PCI, SCSI and Ethernet. Imagine having an AMD64 with an nvidia card and a P4 with an ati card, and having the AMD64 communicate with the ati card. That's what Infiniband permits. You can use Infiniband to hook up the internal disks, external disks, video cards, your local LAN, etc. This has important ramifications for clusters. Imagine having 10 computers and a single master computer streaming audio to all 10 audio controllers simultaneously. The master computer uses the 10 audio controllers directly via the Infiniband switched fabric. The operating systems on the other 9 computers don't need to waste their time handling the data. The audio controller is no longer "hidden" behind the CPU, needing the CPUs help to get audio data to and from the network. The audio controller is on the network.
Each Infiniband port is 10Gbps, which is fast for serial. By comparison, Firewire800 is 800Mbps, Ethernet is 1Gbps, and FibreChannel is 2Gbps. But the real kicker is that Infiniband is very low latency. Ethernet would be useless for replacing PCI, but Infiniband is practical.
For devices that need more bandwidth they can use multiple Infiniband ports in parallel. Notice how similar this sounds to PCI Express. With PCI Express the idea was that simple cards (eg, audio controllers) would use a single PCIe channel, but video cards might use 16 channels. PCI Express is switched, just like Infiniband. PCI Express has similar low-latency properties.
The big question now is, will Infiniband or PCI Express win in the marketplace? My money is on PCI Express because efforts have been made to be backwards compatible with PCI. The host interface is identical to PCI; you don't need to change a single line of code in an operating system to use a PCIe motherboard with PCIe peripherals.
The rest of your post said nothing about "tool vs system". You just ranted on about ease-of-use and "good vs bad".
Global warming != ozone layer.
It's a fact that CFC causes ozone depletion. They awarded a Nobel Prize to the 3 guys who figured it out.
Honestly, it's people like you who don't know what they're talking about that make me not believe the "[insert-disaster-here] is a natural phenomenon and isn't caused by humans" spiel. I bet you also believe a single volcano eruption produces more CO2 than humanity has in 100 years.