When the article talks about Intel's new VLIW chip using one of its many cores to translate x86 instructions into the VLIW ISA, I didn't understand why Intel wouldn't just put the x86 translation code in hardware. The reason Transmeta had to do it in software is because they're not licensed to do that (only AMD is) and they needed to be able update it as they improved their understanding of the x86 instruction set. But Intel could have the chip do it. However, I thought that's already what the modern P4's do, isn't it? It's just a big, fast chip with a different ISA that has hardware to translate x86. I would think Intel would just continue what they're already doing in this regard.
Yeah, but one of the problems here is that the developers were promised certain things, regarding the say they would have over the software, and the corporation stabbed them in the back and didn't give them the things they were promised. So the developers took the GPL code they wrote and left.
How would this happen in a closed source situation? The corporation could have done the same thing, and the developers could have all walked, but the corporation would be the one with the code and wouldn't have anyone to maintain it. This way, at least the product will still be actively developed.
That's pretty spurious. First, I didn't imply that stable drivers weren't important to the overall stability of the system. In fact, I believe that was one of my core premises.
Second, what I was actually talking about was not that drivers should be removed from the kernel or made (somehow) so that they cannot affect the system's stability. I was saying that there is very little to absolutely no documentation on how to write a good, stable device driver. So people who wish to write one have to use books like this, and the techniques in it, which are designed not for stable device drivers, but for exploiting bugs in the operating system and executing possibly malicious code. Clearly, it is not an optimal situation for drivers.
And third, the current device driver situation, when applied to your transportation engineer metaphor, is more like: the transportation engineers aren't allowed to learn how to build a road except by studying the machines meant to destroy roads, and they absolutely won't communicate with other transportation engineers to pass on the trade. Wouldn't it be nice if transportation engineers tried to improve the quality of their roads and communicated with each other so that roads don't randomly intersect without stoplights or proper merging lanes? What, they already do that? Well, why can't device driver developers do the same thing? Wouldn't that be worth it??!?
I think the fact that a book about rootkits is considered good documentation by a driver developer is demonstrative of the sorry state of affairs of drivers these days. Most exploits and crashes are due to bugs in drivers... perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if driver developers didn't have to code their driver as if it were hijacking the OS.
(No offense to the parent post, of course. I'd like better driver documentation too.)
If you look, most BSD's have a "lite" version, and a pro version, and you get the lite for free, and the pro version requires money.
What. Mind pointing out evidence of that? Because I've used FreeBSD and OpenBSD and there's absolutely no mention of free and pro versions of it. Well, I've heard of a free version, and a pro version, but since they're the same thing, I don't think you can really call them versions. You want a BSD? You go download it. You want to support the developers? Buy the CDs, but remember that you're getting exactly the same OS as you would if you'd just downloaded it.
Free and Pro versions of "most BSD's"??? Have you even gone to their websites, much less used them?
Is there a record of how much Google has actually contributed back to the Linux kernel? I've heard they don't send patches upstream. They wouldn't have to, after all, since they're not redistributing it (though I suppose those servers they sell to companies for internal searches must count as redistribution).
Also, the vanilla kernel probably has little use for Google's additions, since few Linux users have much use for the ability to run a cluster of hundreds of thousands of machines with the entire OS and data in RAM.
Anyhow, does anyone know if/what Google has contributed?
Then who is to say who is of average competence? I would guess that a lot of people in this country (and others) would assert that the current administration in the US is completely incompetent. Are they therefore not allowed to judge whether the threats are dangerous or not? And if this is the legal case, why can't their decisions be questioned without gaining an accusation of terrorism or incompetence themselves? (Note the high profile slander of public enemies of the administration, such as Richard Clarke.)
The founding fathers were the very influential intellectuals who led the American Revolution, wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Most Consititutional scholars and judges base their decisions on the intent of the founders. Several of the founders went on to be elected president, including Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, etc. Other notable founders include Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Paine, and others. Read up here.
They were only powerful once they led the American people to freedom and created a place for their own power. They are renowned for their public mindedness and remarkable foresight into political issues.
In my opinion, the world, and America especially, could use a few more people of their caliber.
You have to bear in mind that it isn't the governments of foreign countries that are writing, hosting, or sponsoring these websites. If you're going to treat them that way, then they deserve treatment according the the Geneva Convention (which they do not currently receive). If you are going to assume they are funded by a foreign government, then you'll have to prove it. If not, then they don't really apply to our laws, since they're not US citizens and are not breaking US laws. I hope you don't think disagreeing with and/or hating the US government is against the law... otherwise 49.1% of US citizens are criminals.
They wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and are the basis for every decision the Supreme Court makes (or are supposed to be, anyway). Therefore, what the Founders had in mind is supposed to be very important in the minds of US citizens and lawmakers.
I would think that that's the point of his post. It's not okay for us to encourage violence, but if we want to prevent them from doing it, then we should probably stop as well.
It's okay for someone to tell someone to stop doing something that they don't do themselves, but it is hypocritical to say that someone shouldn't or can't do something that they do themselves.
Are people in the US really not allowed to talk about the murder of other people? That seems like an abridgement of free speech that the founders wouldn't have been okay with (condsidering the fact that dueling was still an acceptable practice back then. I would think that talking about killing someone should be okay until someone actually does it. In which case said person should be prosecuted for the actual killing. And calling everyone a terrorist does not make everyone a murderer.
So the computer just has to check through both of those cases to see which is more likely. If one teammate has just said something, then "gotcha" probably means that they understand. If a person has just made a target lock (done through the computer) then it doesn't mean "they understand" it means they've locked onto someone. The key is giving the computer as much information as possible and programming it to respond correctly.
What would be interesting is if the software agent could be programmed/adapted for each individual team. The team uses those single word/syllable communication methods, and the computer is made to understand them (during training exercises). Then, in high-stress situations, when that word/syllable is uttered by one of the teammates, the communication is put into the software system. The computer knows what all the team members collectively knows. Then it is able to make recommendations on course of action that the individual team members might not be able to make, due to the way humans are affected by stress.
The way I see this, it doesn't replace good people, good training, and good exercises, it merely assists the people when they need it. I think it could be interesing. It would only work, however, if it were completely transparent. No little application running outside of their normal software suite that pops up and asks for confirmation. Instead, it should be built into the software they normally use and should alert the user only when it has a recommendation. All users are notified simultaneously, or it could be given only to the team leader, who could have final say over whether the computer recommendation is valid or not.
I can even see this kind of system reducing the stress for teams in these situations.
But some things are just exciting, regardless of whether one is a baseball fan or not. The game is tied, two outs, two strikes on the batter... the batter has a history against the pitcher, either successful or unsuccessful... the delivery... it's a breaking ball... the batter swings, it's a more powerful swing than normal... if he misses, it's a strikeout and the inning ends (exciting)... if he hits it, it goes a long way... if it goes over the fence, it's a home run and the tie is broken (exciting)... if it doesn't go over the fence, it's still in the air and there's a brief gasp from the stands and a hush as it comes down, inning ends (exciting)... if it's right at the wall, there might be a home run robbing catch, as made popular by Torii Hunter of the Twins a few years ago and now is quite common among good outfielders (very exciting).
What is non-trivial about this is identifying the various situations where basically every outcome is exciting and recording the following play. It's not all based on crowd noise (note that fans cheer wildly for no reason, and there are also eery hushes that precede the most exciting plays).
I think what he was referring to was that some "pattern zealots" will go through the list of patterns and try to fit as many as possible into their program. They're operating under the same assumption that you made, that more patterns is better. However, if you are using them just to use them, you run the risk of misusing some of them. And cramming a design pattern into a place where it doesn't quite fit is what leads to bloated, bad code.
JEdit has a plugin that list all the open tabs in a pane on the right side of the screen. Using that, you can view like 30 filenames at once, compared to only like 8. I use it for all my coding. I just wish it were a bit snappier on OS X, but it flies on Linux.
Not necessarily. J2EE is certainly easier to get working on Linux (I haven't tried getting.Net working through Mono recently, but it used to be pretty darned close to impossible). However, on Windows, deploying an ASP.NET app is basically a click and a drag away.
I'm not getting into which is easier to actually code the app in, but my guess is that they're both pretty good. I've heard that ASP.NET creates XHTML 1.0 Strict code, which is good, and in my experience of programming in C# and Java, I personally find C# to be the better, more powerful, and easier to use language.
But since ASP.NET pretty much requires that you're running Windows on your server, I'd stay away from it.
I can't help but wonder why they would do what the author of the article thinks they should do. There's no reason they would have to fork Linux and open their own code, if they wanted to do something like this. They would simply have to take the Linux kernel, port their own window manager and development tools and desktop environment to it (you know, the one everyone's used to and is the reason they can't switch), and get programs running. They could do that without too much trouble. Run Apple-style emulation layers if you have to. Fat binaries, perhaps, that run on Window with NT kernel and Windows with Linux kernel?
They would be able to keep their own code closed, since they wouldn't have to alter the Linux kernel, and they would be able to update the OS with Linux kernel upgrades as they happen. Whenever they make a fix to the kernel, it goes back to the community, yes. But they do it because it benefits them to make the fix. The fact that everyone else benefits from their fix should be a good thing for them. When they make a patch that improves security or stability for everyone, well, you just can't buy that kind of good PR.
It might work better in a legal sense if they did this with FreeBSD, just as Apple did. And that's how they can beat Apple. Do the same thing, with the same kernel baseline, but rely on their massive resources and programming ability to outpace them on the UI and applications front, meanwhile benefiting from every addition Apple contributes to BSD.
Then Windows is UNIX, and there would be no reason not to use it. They would win the desktop, the server, the handheld... everything.
I have a counter theory, which I explain at some length here. To sum it up, Comcast and the mobile phone companies won't want to buy Skype any more than the telecoms. It will be either Intel or Microsoft.
I'm the system administrator where I work, and this is an actual conversation I just had with the girl who sits closest to me:
Me: Hey, did you know today is System Administrator Appreciation Day? Her: No. Me: Well, it is. So get appreciating. Her: Do you know why you're not appreciated? Me: Why? Her: Because you never do anything. Me:...
I thought that was the point. To quote Futurama (and give us all a God complex): "If you're doing it right, no one will know you did anything at all."
I came across a very strange problem with Firefox for Windows the other day. A friend of mine brought me her laptop, saying it was broken. Everything seemed to work, except that Firefox had stopped opening. When she double clicked her desktop shortcut, selected it from the Start menu, or tried to open it directly, it simply wouldn't start up. The process list shows firefox.exe running and taking up about 10MB of RAM, but the window doesn't open.
Reinstalling Firefox and even trying to downgrade and upgrade doesn't fix it. Does anybody know what this problem might be?
Why would they use the same browser on the PS3? The PS3 will run Linux, so they'll probably use a browser that runs on Linux. Like Firefox. The PSP doesn't run Linux, nor does it have enough hardware to run Firefox, but the PS3 has neither of those limitations. So why would they limit themselves by using a portable browser when they could use a real one?
2.5) Meanwhile, produce most of the world's general purpose processors and sell them to manufacturers by the boatload. 4.5) (See 2.5) Profit a lot more!
I don't think it's a scheme to collect insurance, considering how much more money they'd make if the plants don't get blown up.
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When the article talks about Intel's new VLIW chip using one of its many cores to translate x86 instructions into the VLIW ISA, I didn't understand why Intel wouldn't just put the x86 translation code in hardware. The reason Transmeta had to do it in software is because they're not licensed to do that (only AMD is) and they needed to be able update it as they improved their understanding of the x86 instruction set. But Intel could have the chip do it. However, I thought that's already what the modern P4's do, isn't it? It's just a big, fast chip with a different ISA that has hardware to translate x86. I would think Intel would just continue what they're already doing in this regard.
Yeah, but one of the problems here is that the developers were promised certain things, regarding the say they would have over the software, and the corporation stabbed them in the back and didn't give them the things they were promised. So the developers took the GPL code they wrote and left.
How would this happen in a closed source situation? The corporation could have done the same thing, and the developers could have all walked, but the corporation would be the one with the code and wouldn't have anyone to maintain it. This way, at least the product will still be actively developed.
That's pretty spurious. First, I didn't imply that stable drivers weren't important to the overall stability of the system. In fact, I believe that was one of my core premises.
Second, what I was actually talking about was not that drivers should be removed from the kernel or made (somehow) so that they cannot affect the system's stability. I was saying that there is very little to absolutely no documentation on how to write a good, stable device driver. So people who wish to write one have to use books like this, and the techniques in it, which are designed not for stable device drivers, but for exploiting bugs in the operating system and executing possibly malicious code. Clearly, it is not an optimal situation for drivers.
And third, the current device driver situation, when applied to your transportation engineer metaphor, is more like: the transportation engineers aren't allowed to learn how to build a road except by studying the machines meant to destroy roads, and they absolutely won't communicate with other transportation engineers to pass on the trade. Wouldn't it be nice if transportation engineers tried to improve the quality of their roads and communicated with each other so that roads don't randomly intersect without stoplights or proper merging lanes? What, they already do that? Well, why can't device driver developers do the same thing? Wouldn't that be worth it??!?
I think the fact that a book about rootkits is considered good documentation by a driver developer is demonstrative of the sorry state of affairs of drivers these days. Most exploits and crashes are due to bugs in drivers ... perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if driver developers didn't have to code their driver as if it were hijacking the OS.
(No offense to the parent post, of course. I'd like better driver documentation too.)
If you look, most BSD's have a "lite" version, and a pro version, and you get the lite for free, and the pro version requires money.
What. Mind pointing out evidence of that? Because I've used FreeBSD and OpenBSD and there's absolutely no mention of free and pro versions of it. Well, I've heard of a free version, and a pro version, but since they're the same thing, I don't think you can really call them versions. You want a BSD? You go download it. You want to support the developers? Buy the CDs, but remember that you're getting exactly the same OS as you would if you'd just downloaded it.
Free and Pro versions of "most BSD's"??? Have you even gone to their websites, much less used them?
Is there a record of how much Google has actually contributed back to the Linux kernel? I've heard they don't send patches upstream. They wouldn't have to, after all, since they're not redistributing it (though I suppose those servers they sell to companies for internal searches must count as redistribution).
Also, the vanilla kernel probably has little use for Google's additions, since few Linux users have much use for the ability to run a cluster of hundreds of thousands of machines with the entire OS and data in RAM.
Anyhow, does anyone know if/what Google has contributed?
Then who is to say who is of average competence? I would guess that a lot of people in this country (and others) would assert that the current administration in the US is completely incompetent. Are they therefore not allowed to judge whether the threats are dangerous or not? And if this is the legal case, why can't their decisions be questioned without gaining an accusation of terrorism or incompetence themselves? (Note the high profile slander of public enemies of the administration, such as Richard Clarke.)
The founding fathers were the very influential intellectuals who led the American Revolution, wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Most Consititutional scholars and judges base their decisions on the intent of the founders. Several of the founders went on to be elected president, including Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, etc. Other notable founders include Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Paine, and others. Read up here.
They were only powerful once they led the American people to freedom and created a place for their own power. They are renowned for their public mindedness and remarkable foresight into political issues.
In my opinion, the world, and America especially, could use a few more people of their caliber.
You have to bear in mind that it isn't the governments of foreign countries that are writing, hosting, or sponsoring these websites. If you're going to treat them that way, then they deserve treatment according the the Geneva Convention (which they do not currently receive). If you are going to assume they are funded by a foreign government, then you'll have to prove it. If not, then they don't really apply to our laws, since they're not US citizens and are not breaking US laws. I hope you don't think disagreeing with and/or hating the US government is against the law ... otherwise 49.1% of US citizens are criminals.
They wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and are the basis for every decision the Supreme Court makes (or are supposed to be, anyway). Therefore, what the Founders had in mind is supposed to be very important in the minds of US citizens and lawmakers.
I would think that that's the point of his post. It's not okay for us to encourage violence, but if we want to prevent them from doing it, then we should probably stop as well.
It's okay for someone to tell someone to stop doing something that they don't do themselves, but it is hypocritical to say that someone shouldn't or can't do something that they do themselves.
Are people in the US really not allowed to talk about the murder of other people? That seems like an abridgement of free speech that the founders wouldn't have been okay with (condsidering the fact that dueling was still an acceptable practice back then. I would think that talking about killing someone should be okay until someone actually does it. In which case said person should be prosecuted for the actual killing. And calling everyone a terrorist does not make everyone a murderer.
So the computer just has to check through both of those cases to see which is more likely. If one teammate has just said something, then "gotcha" probably means that they understand. If a person has just made a target lock (done through the computer) then it doesn't mean "they understand" it means they've locked onto someone. The key is giving the computer as much information as possible and programming it to respond correctly.
What would be interesting is if the software agent could be programmed/adapted for each individual team. The team uses those single word/syllable communication methods, and the computer is made to understand them (during training exercises). Then, in high-stress situations, when that word/syllable is uttered by one of the teammates, the communication is put into the software system. The computer knows what all the team members collectively knows. Then it is able to make recommendations on course of action that the individual team members might not be able to make, due to the way humans are affected by stress.
The way I see this, it doesn't replace good people, good training, and good exercises, it merely assists the people when they need it. I think it could be interesing. It would only work, however, if it were completely transparent. No little application running outside of their normal software suite that pops up and asks for confirmation. Instead, it should be built into the software they normally use and should alert the user only when it has a recommendation. All users are notified simultaneously, or it could be given only to the team leader, who could have final say over whether the computer recommendation is valid or not.
I can even see this kind of system reducing the stress for teams in these situations.
But some things are just exciting, regardless of whether one is a baseball fan or not. The game is tied, two outs, two strikes on the batter ... the batter has a history against the pitcher, either successful or unsuccessful ... the delivery ... it's a breaking ball ... the batter swings, it's a more powerful swing than normal ... if he misses, it's a strikeout and the inning ends (exciting) ... if he hits it, it goes a long way ... if it goes over the fence, it's a home run and the tie is broken (exciting) ... if it doesn't go over the fence, it's still in the air and there's a brief gasp from the stands and a hush as it comes down, inning ends (exciting) ... if it's right at the wall, there might be a home run robbing catch, as made popular by Torii Hunter of the Twins a few years ago and now is quite common among good outfielders (very exciting).
What is non-trivial about this is identifying the various situations where basically every outcome is exciting and recording the following play. It's not all based on crowd noise (note that fans cheer wildly for no reason, and there are also eery hushes that precede the most exciting plays).
I think what he was referring to was that some "pattern zealots" will go through the list of patterns and try to fit as many as possible into their program. They're operating under the same assumption that you made, that more patterns is better. However, if you are using them just to use them, you run the risk of misusing some of them. And cramming a design pattern into a place where it doesn't quite fit is what leads to bloated, bad code.
JEdit has a plugin that list all the open tabs in a pane on the right side of the screen. Using that, you can view like 30 filenames at once, compared to only like 8. I use it for all my coding. I just wish it were a bit snappier on OS X, but it flies on Linux.
Not necessarily. J2EE is certainly easier to get working on Linux (I haven't tried getting .Net working through Mono recently, but it used to be pretty darned close to impossible). However, on Windows, deploying an ASP.NET app is basically a click and a drag away.
I'm not getting into which is easier to actually code the app in, but my guess is that they're both pretty good. I've heard that ASP.NET creates XHTML 1.0 Strict code, which is good, and in my experience of programming in C# and Java, I personally find C# to be the better, more powerful, and easier to use language.
But since ASP.NET pretty much requires that you're running Windows on your server, I'd stay away from it.
Sure it does. Did anybody buy one?
I can't help but wonder why they would do what the author of the article thinks they should do. There's no reason they would have to fork Linux and open their own code, if they wanted to do something like this. They would simply have to take the Linux kernel, port their own window manager and development tools and desktop environment to it (you know, the one everyone's used to and is the reason they can't switch), and get programs running. They could do that without too much trouble. Run Apple-style emulation layers if you have to. Fat binaries, perhaps, that run on Window with NT kernel and Windows with Linux kernel?
... everything.
They would be able to keep their own code closed, since they wouldn't have to alter the Linux kernel, and they would be able to update the OS with Linux kernel upgrades as they happen. Whenever they make a fix to the kernel, it goes back to the community, yes. But they do it because it benefits them to make the fix. The fact that everyone else benefits from their fix should be a good thing for them. When they make a patch that improves security or stability for everyone, well, you just can't buy that kind of good PR.
It might work better in a legal sense if they did this with FreeBSD, just as Apple did. And that's how they can beat Apple. Do the same thing, with the same kernel baseline, but rely on their massive resources and programming ability to outpace them on the UI and applications front, meanwhile benefiting from every addition Apple contributes to BSD.
Then Windows is UNIX, and there would be no reason not to use it. They would win the desktop, the server, the handheld
Damn it.
I have a counter theory, which I explain at some length here. To sum it up, Comcast and the mobile phone companies won't want to buy Skype any more than the telecoms. It will be either Intel or Microsoft.
Why? Click the link.
I'm the system administrator where I work, and this is an actual conversation I just had with the girl who sits closest to me:
...
Me: Hey, did you know today is System Administrator Appreciation Day?
Her: No.
Me: Well, it is. So get appreciating.
Her: Do you know why you're not appreciated?
Me: Why?
Her: Because you never do anything.
Me:
I thought that was the point. To quote Futurama (and give us all a God complex): "If you're doing it right, no one will know you did anything at all."
I came across a very strange problem with Firefox for Windows the other day. A friend of mine brought me her laptop, saying it was broken. Everything seemed to work, except that Firefox had stopped opening. When she double clicked her desktop shortcut, selected it from the Start menu, or tried to open it directly, it simply wouldn't start up. The process list shows firefox.exe running and taking up about 10MB of RAM, but the window doesn't open.
Reinstalling Firefox and even trying to downgrade and upgrade doesn't fix it. Does anybody know what this problem might be?
Why would they use the same browser on the PS3? The PS3 will run Linux, so they'll probably use a browser that runs on Linux. Like Firefox. The PSP doesn't run Linux, nor does it have enough hardware to run Firefox, but the PS3 has neither of those limitations. So why would they limit themselves by using a portable browser when they could use a real one?
2.5) Meanwhile, produce most of the world's general purpose processors and sell them to manufacturers by the boatload.
4.5) (See 2.5) Profit a lot more!
I don't think it's a scheme to collect insurance, considering how much more money they'd make if the plants don't get blown up.