I was thinking abou thtis a few days ago. Would it be SO HARD for Palm to make an ARM or ColdFire-based PDA molded into a single piece of plastic? The peroblem I have with Palms is that they often don't fully recover from a simple dropping; or they get pocket-kibble in them. If they built something that was rugged as all-hell they'd have something to sell.
Most folks I know, and virtually ALL corporate accounts would PREFER an ultra-rugged ultra-cheap black-and-white or lowcolor device with AAA or button batteries, running PalmOS 4.1. These stupid color devices are weak and disposable, they're good for the 'consumers' but bad for businesses that just need to arm folks with simple data.
The real key is going to be the design process, because the ruggedness and price will be affected by it. If they took a hot rubbery-plastic base, dropped the assembled palm logic on it and then sealed it permanently with a hot rubbery-plastic faceplate they'd have the ultimate disposable PDA.
Here in Rhode Island there was legislation called:
"A woman's right-to-know act"
It would have required women seeking abortions to be handed stacks of pro-life propaganda and wait with them for 24 hours before they were cleared for the abortion. How is that 'right to know?'
And I suppose you could run Mac OS X under Mac-On-Linux on them, but Apple's OS license specifically prevents you from running Mac OS on non-apple hardware, so you couldn't use it in production. It would make a nice 'virtualized' server platform for OS X though.
It's not advertised because the PHBs don't know what a PowerPC is, all they know is 'Intel' and 'Xeon' so that's all they say on TV. TV time is too expensive to advertise all the options.
You can run Mac OS under MOL and even natively on several IBM machines. I recall hearing that OS 8.1 booted on IBM PREP boxes, and I've taken apart RS-6000s that I'm sure could run Mac OS under MOL.
Well the 'G5' is used in IBM's blade servers, so this part of the market has already been filled by a somewhat more reputable vendor in the field.
I'd like to see Apple do that stuff, but I think it might be best to leave the 'big metal' to IBM so they feel like more of a 'partner' than a part supplier.
I just found that the 'tremor' vorbis player for integer-only CPUs (like the ARM used in the iPods) is playing-back media at 80% of realtime on uCLinux iPods, and that's a non-assembler, non-optimized player running on a general-purpose Linux kernel. If you think that a currently neglected OSS player could net a 25% performance boost from being reimplemented in assembler, being tailored for the ARM CPU, and/or running on Apples proprietary iPod OS, raise you hand!::raises hand enthusiastically::
I'm not just a Maccie troll, I've been reading about the iPod CPU because I'd like to hack with it a bit.
I can't see any reason why the dual ARM7 CPUs Apple fitted the beast with wouldn't be able to play vorbis files. If something has the CPU beefiness to encode MP3s (which the iPod CPU can, there's just no software for the feature) I'm confident that it's good enough to decode vorbis files.
I've played and encoded MP3s on my Quadra 660AV, which ran at a whopping 25MHz (encoding was slow); I'm pretty sure a dualie-ARM made a decade later can handle the vorbis codec, especially when the vendor of the chip Apple uses designed the chip to be a highly extensible media platform.
Yeah, this guy seems full of shit, the iPod can ENCODE MP3 in realtime if it has to, it's got a nice beefy ARM CPU, I'm sure it can play Vorbis files if it had a codec.
And as for memory, the thing has 32MB last I heard, it usually buffers the next two or three entire tracks, so it's got plenty for decoding Vorbis formats.
Often these devices don't let you just play music stored as regular FAT files. Even the iPod forces you to only play files that are placed there by iTunes in a hidden sparse disk-image. You can copy your MP3s to your player in disk-mode, but then you can't play them on the player, or you can use the tools to put them into the player and no longer have them as files.
IIRC you'd have to authenticate via sudo (or the GUI equivalent) to open a port under 1000, and the malware would be limited to only when that particular user was logged in, as it wouldn't have the privileges to make itself executable to anyone else.
Well I would assume that the code would be written in java, but compiled into native machine-code by GCJ or something and run at native speed.
From what I understand, you don't need a JVM to run java apps that have been compiled into machine code, just for java apps that were compiled into Java bytecode.
I also remember hearing something about how when this is done the speed difference is negligible compared to other languages.
That might actually help it penetrate the corporate and academic markets.
Seriously though, the names of some OSS projects totally preclude their penetration in some markets. I asked my boss if we could put 'the GIMP' on the image for the summer, and only purchase a Photoshop seat when requested; she laughed at me and said 'no', then asked what the GIMP was.
Well 'booting' XFree86 would be a bit too drastic to get what we want from it. XFree86 is wicked fast and quite extensible, but it does have a lot of cruft in it, and it seems as if the authors are now bending over backwards to not break previous implemtations. I think a better solution would be to fork XFree86, integrate a boatload of the extensions that have evolved over the years, standardize and modernize the font management, build in alpha-blending stuff, add a 'toolkit layer' so Qt and GTK could be reimplemented as 'plugins', etc.
The new release would break backward compatibility, but I'm of the mind that at some point it's needed to move forward. We wouldn't have to break compatibility again for a long time if it was done right.
Overall though, there's so much good driver code and input stuff in XFree that building a new system from scratch would never happen. Fresco and friends have been making snail-progress for years on this, and it's not for lack of interest, it's for lack of need.
I'm sorry, but if you put Osama Bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein in a room together, Osama would rip Saddam's throat out in under two minutes.
These two entities, Al-Qaeda and the B'ath Party, were as far from each other on the spectrum as Timothy Leary and John Ashcroft. Hussein was a secular aristocratic illegitimate leader, while Osama is a fundamentalist populist exile.
In Osama's dreams Saddam gets deposed right after the US stops funding Israel and the House of Saud. We just gave him his wish early.
Are there 'links?' between the B'ath Party and Al-Qaeda? Not NEARLY as credible or numerous as there are 'links' between the current administration and Osama, or the current administration and the B'ath party. Who do you think gave intelligence to Saddam for his 'ruthless murder of innocents with WMDs'? Who do you think trained and armed the first incarnations of Al-Qaeda?
I'll tell you: the USA did, because our leaders' vision is limited to a MAXIMUM of eight years. I and all Americans have to take the full responsibility for the sins of our previous leaders. We could reduce terrorism a whole lot better if we stopped using our economic and millitary power to foist up terrible governments around the world and developed reasonable long-term foreign policy.
Actually when I did try it, it was a sugar-free candy (she was diabetic, they were handy). I did get in quite a bit of trouble though when we napped without taking it out, we both ended up covered in viscous candy-scented sex-slime. The candy oozings also irritated us both a little.
Ice is great, as are vinyl-coated beads-on-a-string, available at a sex shop near you!
Staying with a bad relationship makes you a "darwin target" and trying to find another relationship makes you a "cheating bitch"?
OK, I guess I have to flesh it out a bit. The girl crawled back to a man who sent her to the hospital multiple times until he went overboard one night and took a baseball bat to her skull. The other gun violence I've seen is a result of unstable and violent men being abused (yes, cheating is abusive) by their SOs.
Staying in a bad relationship is mildly stupid, but staying in an abusive one is suicide. And there are better ways of leaving someone (especially someone who has a propensity for violence) than sleeping with their friends.
In both of those last two cases, I think it's clearly the gunholder's fault, and they should be held responsible, but I consider it the equivalent of walking out into a crosswalk in front of a speeding truck, you're an idiot for it even though they're the ones breaking the law.
Re:Linux User's Perspective
on
The 3Com Saga
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· Score: 1
Well, from what I can see, the 3Com and Intel drivers in Linux are still much cleaner than most of the others. Wheneever I build systems or replace NICs I use Intel PRO 100 or 3Com 9xx cards, because I KNOW they'll work without having to hack around. In my business, having to fiddle with non-included or flaky drivers negates the $40 price difference in the card itself.
Also, I've NEVER had any trouble with Intel or 3Com cards, while I've had boatloads with D-Link, NetGear, and Farallon (though I hear the NG cards are better these days).
I recently bought a VIA EPIA board for fiddling and testing, and I had to disable the ondoard VIA RHINE ethernet for an Intel PRO 100 card because the stupid RHINE was hosing the CPU. What good is saving $40 on a NIC if it eats half of your $200 CPU when you're using it?
LOL, last time I called the police to protect myself I ended up in jail, the time before that they searched me over and over and over even though I approached them, the time before THAT they took an hour to show up.
Now I know kids who've been murdered, and I've known kids who've killed other kids, and I can say that there's always a REASON. People generally don't get killed for no reason. From my observation, the leading reasons are:
1. Stole from drug dealers. (stupid!) 2. Stayed with convicted abuser after several hospital visits. (victim was 'darwined out' in my opinion) 3. Cheating bitches.
Generally, if you stay out of braindead situations and are aware that you aren't superman, you can bet you won't get hurt.
The anti-gun lobby makes it hard to carry in my state, and I think it's pretty fscked-up. Especially the new law that requires those ACCUSED of domestic violence to hand their guns over. I know more guys who've been accused wrongly because of crummy cops. I don't think there's been a case recently of a person ACCUSED (not convicted) of a DV crime shooting anyone in this state.
I've been in cities my whole life, mostly on bicycle and on foot, and I can say that I've never been scared or mugged. I've been put at more risk out in suburbia when hick cops pull guns on me than I have in ghetto neighborhoods full of junkies and hookers.
Also, since you folks moved out of the city into those out-there-connected-by-main-street areas, there's been a lot less traffic in the city. I know that in Providence there's virtually no local traffic compared to getting out of Barrington or Bristol (affluent suburbs). I work in Milton, MA and the traffic there is worse than it is in Boston proper, excepting downtown.
I live in a city today, not a particularly 'urban' area, but it's 'the city' and I leave my door unlocked some days, my bike has been out on the porch for almost a year sans-lock, and I leave my car windows unrolled wherever I go (it helps if they think you've got nothing worth taking).
Re:Use a swapfile instead of a partition
on
Is Swap Necessary?
·
· Score: 1
My guesses for answers to your questions:
How are read/write permissions handled with such a swapfile?
Howerver you want, mine is root:root/700, but since the system itself is manipulating the file directly, I bet you could run it root:root/000 and it would work.
What happens if the root user does 'echo "I love swap space" >/var/swap' while that swapfile is mounted? Does the kernel allow this?
It would overwrite the file with a tiny file and would probably end up corrupting the filesystem of the drive, as the system would end up paging out to space that is marked as 'free'. That's why you use good permissions on the file. There are other files in/proc that are sensitive to such fiddling.
Does 'cat/var/swap' dump a memory map of what's currently swapped out?
My guess would be 'yes'.
I've never known that Linux could utilize a swap file rather than a swap partition.
Most folks don't, a lot of people run their 'desktop' systems like old servers, with multiple partitions and swap spaces. I figure that it saves me time and trouble by using ONE partition and a swapfile, I never have to repartition for space or deal with different/dev/hd?? entries. I've always had better luck by keeping the system as SIMPLE as possible, and part of getting Linux onto JoeUser's desktop will be doing the same thing.
BTW, I have a quick-n-dirty guide for building a Gentoo system like this, it's still in-progress, but it makes setting up a desktop-oriented Gentoo system nice and easy. I intend to make a script out of it for my monthly 'hmm, I feel like rebuilding against some crazy experimental masked stuff again' moods.
That's actually probably how nanoprocessors will operate, getting electricity to stay where you want it on the scale is a lot harder than using nanotubes with rods suspended in them. Of course, there will be actuators at the 'leads' that are electrical or light-actuated.
Slashdot Mirror
...in Soviet Russia, the Sony overlords welcome YOU!
I was thinking abou thtis a few days ago. Would it be SO HARD for Palm to make an ARM or ColdFire-based PDA molded into a single piece of plastic? The peroblem I have with Palms is that they often don't fully recover from a simple dropping; or they get pocket-kibble in them. If they built something that was rugged as all-hell they'd have something to sell.
Most folks I know, and virtually ALL corporate accounts would PREFER an ultra-rugged ultra-cheap black-and-white or lowcolor device with AAA or button batteries, running PalmOS 4.1. These stupid color devices are weak and disposable, they're good for the 'consumers' but bad for businesses that just need to arm folks with simple data.
The real key is going to be the design process, because the ruggedness and price will be affected by it. If they took a hot rubbery-plastic base, dropped the assembled palm logic on it and then sealed it permanently with a hot rubbery-plastic faceplate they'd have the ultimate disposable PDA.
Here in Rhode Island there was legislation called:
"A woman's right-to-know act"
It would have required women seeking abortions to be handed stacks of pro-life propaganda and wait with them for 24 hours before they were cleared for the abortion. How is that 'right to know?'
Yes, I don't know if you're serious, but Gentoo Linux is a build-from-source Linux distro that has a ports system called 'portage'
I myself use Gentoo because I prefer Linux over the *BSDs I've tried, but Gentoo lets me build from source VERY easily.
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet /CategoryDisplay?categoryId=2586156&storeId=1&cata logId=-840&langId=-1
And I suppose you could run Mac OS X under Mac-On-Linux on them, but Apple's OS license specifically prevents you from running Mac OS on non-apple hardware, so you couldn't use it in production. It would make a nice 'virtualized' server platform for OS X though.
It's not advertised because the PHBs don't know what a PowerPC is, all they know is 'Intel' and 'Xeon' so that's all they say on TV. TV time is too expensive to advertise all the options.
You can run Mac OS under MOL and even natively on several IBM machines. I recall hearing that OS 8.1 booted on IBM PREP boxes, and I've taken apart RS-6000s that I'm sure could run Mac OS under MOL.
Well the 'G5' is used in IBM's blade servers, so this part of the market has already been filled by a somewhat more reputable vendor in the field.
I'd like to see Apple do that stuff, but I think it might be best to leave the 'big metal' to IBM so they feel like more of a 'partner' than a part supplier.
I just found that the 'tremor' vorbis player for integer-only CPUs (like the ARM used in the iPods) is playing-back media at 80% of realtime on uCLinux iPods, and that's a non-assembler, non-optimized player running on a general-purpose Linux kernel. If you think that a currently neglected OSS player could net a 25% performance boost from being reimplemented in assembler, being tailored for the ARM CPU, and/or running on Apples proprietary iPod OS, raise you hand! ::raises hand enthusiastically::
I'm not just a Maccie troll, I've been reading about the iPod CPU because I'd like to hack with it a bit.
I can't see any reason why the dual ARM7 CPUs Apple fitted the beast with wouldn't be able to play vorbis files. If something has the CPU beefiness to encode MP3s (which the iPod CPU can, there's just no software for the feature) I'm confident that it's good enough to decode vorbis files.
I've played and encoded MP3s on my Quadra 660AV, which ran at a whopping 25MHz (encoding was slow); I'm pretty sure a dualie-ARM made a decade later can handle the vorbis codec, especially when the vendor of the chip Apple uses designed the chip to be a highly extensible media platform.
Yeah, this guy seems full of shit, the iPod can ENCODE MP3 in realtime if it has to, it's got a nice beefy ARM CPU, I'm sure it can play Vorbis files if it had a codec.
And as for memory, the thing has 32MB last I heard, it usually buffers the next two or three entire tracks, so it's got plenty for decoding Vorbis formats.
Often these devices don't let you just play music stored as regular FAT files. Even the iPod forces you to only play files that are placed there by iTunes in a hidden sparse disk-image. You can copy your MP3s to your player in disk-mode, but then you can't play them on the player, or you can use the tools to put them into the player and no longer have them as files.
We're here discussing and complaining about users with malware and you're asking people to download and run a binary off a P2P network?
I'd rather lick my CPU through the fan grate.
Clients open up ports too!
IIRC you'd have to authenticate via sudo (or the GUI equivalent) to open a port under 1000, and the malware would be limited to only when that particular user was logged in, as it wouldn't have the privileges to make itself executable to anyone else.
Java VM is just too slow
Well I would assume that the code would be written in java, but compiled into native machine-code by GCJ or something and run at native speed.
From what I understand, you don't need a JVM to run java apps that have been compiled into machine code, just for java apps that were compiled into Java bytecode.
I also remember hearing something about how when this is done the speed difference is negligible compared to other languages.
When you think mediocrity, think ClamAV
That might actually help it penetrate the corporate and academic markets.
Seriously though, the names of some OSS projects totally preclude their penetration in some markets. I asked my boss if we could put 'the GIMP' on the image for the summer, and only purchase a Photoshop seat when requested; she laughed at me and said 'no', then asked what the GIMP was.
Well 'booting' XFree86 would be a bit too drastic to get what we want from it. XFree86 is wicked fast and quite extensible, but it does have a lot of cruft in it, and it seems as if the authors are now bending over backwards to not break previous implemtations. I think a better solution would be to fork XFree86, integrate a boatload of the extensions that have evolved over the years, standardize and modernize the font management, build in alpha-blending stuff, add a 'toolkit layer' so Qt and GTK could be reimplemented as 'plugins', etc.
The new release would break backward compatibility, but I'm of the mind that at some point it's needed to move forward. We wouldn't have to break compatibility again for a long time if it was done right.
Overall though, there's so much good driver code and input stuff in XFree that building a new system from scratch would never happen. Fresco and friends have been making snail-progress for years on this, and it's not for lack of interest, it's for lack of need.
Haven't you ever seen 'Labyrinth'? In some alternate fantasy worlds plastic, or 'plaz-tech' as they call it is quite desireable.
Of course, in the same world David Bowie is a king and god, wears tight spandex pants and eyeshadow.
Maybe they don't have their value systems clearly defined as they should.
I'm sorry, but if you put Osama Bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein in a room together, Osama would rip Saddam's throat out in under two minutes.
These two entities, Al-Qaeda and the B'ath Party, were as far from each other on the spectrum as Timothy Leary and John Ashcroft. Hussein was a secular aristocratic illegitimate leader, while Osama is a fundamentalist populist exile.
In Osama's dreams Saddam gets deposed right after the US stops funding Israel and the House of Saud. We just gave him his wish early.
Are there 'links?' between the B'ath Party and Al-Qaeda? Not NEARLY as credible or numerous as there are 'links' between the current administration and Osama, or the current administration and the B'ath party. Who do you think gave intelligence to Saddam for his 'ruthless murder of innocents with WMDs'? Who do you think trained and armed the first incarnations of Al-Qaeda?
I'll tell you: the USA did, because our leaders' vision is limited to a MAXIMUM of eight years. I and all Americans have to take the full responsibility for the sins of our previous leaders. We could reduce terrorism a whole lot better if we stopped using our economic and millitary power to foist up terrible governments around the world and developed reasonable long-term foreign policy.
Actually when I did try it, it was a sugar-free candy (she was diabetic, they were handy). I did get in quite a bit of trouble though when we napped without taking it out, we both ended up covered in viscous candy-scented sex-slime. The candy oozings also irritated us both a little.
Ice is great, as are vinyl-coated beads-on-a-string, available at a sex shop near you!
Staying with a bad relationship makes you a "darwin target" and trying to find another relationship makes you a "cheating bitch"?
OK, I guess I have to flesh it out a bit. The girl crawled back to a man who sent her to the hospital multiple times until he went overboard one night and took a baseball bat to her skull. The other gun violence I've seen is a result of unstable and violent men being abused (yes, cheating is abusive) by their SOs.
Staying in a bad relationship is mildly stupid, but staying in an abusive one is suicide. And there are better ways of leaving someone (especially someone who has a propensity for violence) than sleeping with their friends.
In both of those last two cases, I think it's clearly the gunholder's fault, and they should be held responsible, but I consider it the equivalent of walking out into a crosswalk in front of a speeding truck, you're an idiot for it even though they're the ones breaking the law.
Well, from what I can see, the 3Com and Intel drivers in Linux are still much cleaner than most of the others. Wheneever I build systems or replace NICs I use Intel PRO 100 or 3Com 9xx cards, because I KNOW they'll work without having to hack around. In my business, having to fiddle with non-included or flaky drivers negates the $40 price difference in the card itself.
Also, I've NEVER had any trouble with Intel or 3Com cards, while I've had boatloads with D-Link, NetGear, and Farallon (though I hear the NG cards are better these days).
I recently bought a VIA EPIA board for fiddling and testing, and I had to disable the ondoard VIA RHINE ethernet for an Intel PRO 100 card because the stupid RHINE was hosing the CPU. What good is saving $40 on a NIC if it eats half of your $200 CPU when you're using it?
LOL, last time I called the police to protect myself I ended up in jail, the time before that they searched me over and over and over even though I approached them, the time before THAT they took an hour to show up.
Now I know kids who've been murdered, and I've known kids who've killed other kids, and I can say that there's always a REASON. People generally don't get killed for no reason. From my observation, the leading reasons are:
1. Stole from drug dealers. (stupid!)
2. Stayed with convicted abuser after several hospital visits. (victim was 'darwined out' in my opinion)
3. Cheating bitches.
Generally, if you stay out of braindead situations and are aware that you aren't superman, you can bet you won't get hurt.
The anti-gun lobby makes it hard to carry in my state, and I think it's pretty fscked-up. Especially the new law that requires those ACCUSED of domestic violence to hand their guns over. I know more guys who've been accused wrongly because of crummy cops. I don't think there's been a case recently of a person ACCUSED (not convicted) of a DV crime shooting anyone in this state.
...they don't treat relationships like games...
Damn straight, I treat mine like SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS.
I wonder how she'll react if I eat the spider instead of smiting it?
Today I'll find out why she doesn't put some clothing items into the dryer.
I wonder what happens if I slip a Jolly Rancher in there while I'm eating her out, will she even notice?
I've been in cities my whole life, mostly on bicycle and on foot, and I can say that I've never been scared or mugged. I've been put at more risk out in suburbia when hick cops pull guns on me than I have in ghetto neighborhoods full of junkies and hookers.
Also, since you folks moved out of the city into those out-there-connected-by-main-street areas, there's been a lot less traffic in the city. I know that in Providence there's virtually no local traffic compared to getting out of Barrington or Bristol (affluent suburbs). I work in Milton, MA and the traffic there is worse than it is in Boston proper, excepting downtown.
I live in a city today, not a particularly 'urban' area, but it's 'the city' and I leave my door unlocked some days, my bike has been out on the porch for almost a year sans-lock, and I leave my car windows unrolled wherever I go (it helps if they think you've got nothing worth taking).
My guesses for answers to your questions:
/var/swap' while that swapfile is mounted? Does the kernel allow this?
/proc that are sensitive to such fiddling.
/var/swap' dump a memory map of what's currently swapped out?
/dev/hd?? entries. I've always had better luck by keeping the system as SIMPLE as possible, and part of getting Linux onto JoeUser's desktop will be doing the same thing.
How are read/write permissions handled with such a swapfile?
Howerver you want, mine is root:root/700, but since the system itself is manipulating the file directly, I bet you could run it root:root/000 and it would work.
What happens if the root user does 'echo "I love swap space" >
It would overwrite the file with a tiny file and would probably end up corrupting the filesystem of the drive, as the system would end up paging out to space that is marked as 'free'. That's why you use good permissions on the file. There are other files in
Does 'cat
My guess would be 'yes'.
I've never known that Linux could utilize a swap file rather than a swap partition.
Most folks don't, a lot of people run their 'desktop' systems like old servers, with multiple partitions and swap spaces. I figure that it saves me time and trouble by using ONE partition and a swapfile, I never have to repartition for space or deal with different
BTW, I have a quick-n-dirty guide for building a Gentoo system like this, it's still in-progress, but it makes setting up a desktop-oriented Gentoo system nice and easy. I intend to make a script out of it for my monthly 'hmm, I feel like rebuilding against some crazy experimental masked stuff again' moods.
That's actually probably how nanoprocessors will operate, getting electricity to stay where you want it on the scale is a lot harder than using nanotubes with rods suspended in them. Of course, there will be actuators at the 'leads' that are electrical or light-actuated.