All this is worthless without a single standard like the original CD is. The fragmentation of the DVD standard caused a lot of pain, and future DVD technologies seem like they'll continue the trend. So we'll end up buying a recorder that records those 6 different standards but not the standard that my video player can play. Add DRM to it all and its dirtier still.
But then, the companies in question cannot sell their special recorders, players and media if the market is flooded with generic recorders and players from China. Since the consumers will be the winner in that case, companies have it in their interest to divide and conquer, and we cannot expect as simple a technology as is portrayed in articles like these.
I've never considered myself a hard-core of the slack crowd. But slack was my first distro and has always been the favorite. It has not been the most frequently used for various reasons.
We tried installing redhat, slackware and debian the first time we received the CDs. I tried redhat first, failed. Then debian, and failed too. I knew nothing about linux, and the slackware install went fine. Since then everything in slackware just made sense. The dselect in debian was a pain, and apt-getting was too slow, while it took me years to understand how to work rpm. The tgz files of slackware made as much sense as getting the.tar.gz files off the internet, and I could just manually install everything. Out of the box slackware worked beautifully (except some painful gcc issues), while redhat tried to me too smart too early (linuxconf), especially for first time learners.
Since then I've used redhat more often. Many commercial packages are made just for redhat, and detailed instructions are available for installing commercial stuff on redhat (like oracle), while doing the same on any default distro is more painful. More recently I've been using knoppix and ubuntu. Nothing comes close to slackware, and when I have to get a quick small distro for a virtual machine or something, its slackware. For the longest time, I installed zipslack on every windows machine I had. Easy to recover the space back when you need it. Since then that function has moved to knoppix, and now trying to put slackware (or slax) onto my usb key....
I cant wait to see it in BSD. Linux would be cool too, but it already has XFS, ReiserFS and other advanced filesystems. I'm not even sure if theyre in the same class of filesystems. I just feel like in a corner with BSD's currently limited selection.
Sometime in the future we'll have one kernel, where we can swap in and out any driver, scheduler, filesystem, device etc from Linux, BSD or Solaris, and compile it as a monolith or micro kernel.
I agree. And bravo to Linksys if they replaced Linux just to have a more efficient router.
I've seen people use Linux for crazy things, just because they wanted to use Linux. Plenty of small RTOSes require tiny amounts of ram and flash, less than what already comes on MCUs. For Linux, you need to add ram, flash, all the routes on the circuit board and the design and manufacturing costs.
Linux is awesome, but for some things eCos fits better. For other things freeRTOS or micrium fits even better. Its crazy to use Linux 2.6.10 on a $10 watch, making it a $50 watch, just so you can advertise that its a $50 watch.
If I wanted to run linux on my firewall, I'll just use an old machine (which I do), and NOT BUY linksys at all. I'll buy linksys for a very simple and cheap router (which theyre trying to be).
Now theres a difference between our concepts of 'won'. You expect the winner to win absolutely. Win all conflicts. But you can win some conflicts and lose others. That still means youre the winner in the conflict that you won.
Now the human and the bacteria's conflicts have started, but the conflict between that human and everything else has ended. He has won those.
Say the bacteria wins and theres no human. Just one bacteria in the world.
Still has to compete against the elements. But this is a new conflict.
That bacteria and that person have won. Now they compete with each other. You also compete with your own species, so that person has won while everyone that doesnt exist, have lost out now havent they?
Say youre hungry, in a war zone, and your girl/wife is being kidnapped by some soldiers. What do you do and why?
You look for food. You try to get back your girl/wife You try to get out of a war zone.
Notice youre trying to survive/reproduce. All organisms work very hard to do that. Why? To (1) survive (2) beat the others.
Granted if only one person has survived, hes still lost since theres no reproductive partner. In that case the bacteria has won.
The presence of losers define the winners. The presence of the night defines the day. The presence of the 0 defines the 1. The presence of poor define the rich. The presence of Microsoft defines the free software community. The presence of redundant posts define the insightful mods.
Think of Solaris in this regard. One window system with one window manager (2 recently).
You make an app, you know it'll work on all the workstations and servers out there. The paths are the same, the tools are the same, API, interfaces you name it. The kernel is the same one everywhere and nothing needs recompiling because of the uniformity.
Now think of Linux. "Linux" has lost its meaning apart from the kernel because the distros are so disparate. Will it run on slackware? Will it show in a window manager in knoppix? Will it just take the nice fonts from ubuntu? And what about uClinux on ARM, Linux on MIPS, Yellowdog linux, or whatevers installed on linksys routers.
New developers have this reason to choose DOS/Windows as their base platform for projects with low risk tolerance.
Its hard to argue Linux is better than Solaris at everything. We now have the Linux, Solaris and BSD kernels to choose from. Solaris is probably the highest scaling free OS available.
Solaris was built for the enterprise. Most Oracle installations are run on Solaris. It is also the most popular UNIX as such (so we can now run a free UNIX rather than unix-clone (not that it matters)).
It has been well designed and has features that are years ahead, while it lacks some of Linux's features.
I cant wait for dtrace/zones for Linux, or the Linuxization of Solaris. In this regard, I'd prefer Solaris' libraries and tools over Linux's for the most part. I wonder when will they release their compilers as free, to compete with gcc on sparc and i386.
Hopefully this will not confuse the market, and developers will release Solaris, Linux and BSD versions of their applications for each major architecture (i386, x64, PPC)...
My own server is a machine from work that dies on the HLT instruction. So it cant run Windows.
It only has a cdrom drive (no hdd) and I use knoppix (knoppix 2 no-hlt). I download the script (from my site) that has all the config and there I have a firewall, dhcp server, webserver, print server and a couple o other things. My actual file server is another machine that runs windows xp and P2P software accessible by RDP so I dont need harddrives in my firewall.
Both machines have no fans on the CPU, and the power supplies are quite.
Replacing the boot drive with CDROM/USB also reduces power and makes it far more reliable.
Just tighten their QoS pipe in the switch. Also remember to exec antivirus on their machines while theyre working. Nothing is more frustrating than a SLOW computer.
Of course switch it back to fast as soon as you get a call on that. Having the problem disappear when the IT guy is around is even more frustrating!
Of course I'm assuming youre talking about getting frustrated at the person, not the problem.
A difficult problem is not frustrating, its challenging. When I run into a problem that must be solved, that hasnt been solved before and whose solution will fill you with pride.... well.. I live for those days.
Visual studio 2000, windows 2000, sql 2000, office 2000....
Most of microsoft's 2000-version products were the epitome of their abilities. Everything since have been polish+constricting rights. There isnt really a lot that runs on XP and not 2000 (except for things that microsoft actually blocked support for, to sell more of XP like directx). Somewhere along the line in 2000, they figured they already had 95% of the market, why try to innovate at all? Better just squeeze out more cash and spend development funds on marketing. We've been seeing more of user rights restricted since 2000 while the TV has been showing nicer ads for the past 5 years.
Someone oughtta really steal windows 2000 source code and distribute it on P2P networks. Projects like ReactOS can really benefit, and will overall force Microsoft to get back on the innovation track.
Otherwise we'll have to wait till Linux is better for the desktop (or OSX runs on commodity intel hardware) to see microsoft get straightened up.
My biggest beef with microsoft was their dev tools were not free. It is in their interest to increase their software base, and therefore to give away dev tools with good documentation. A few years ago you couldnt be a developer without having to spend hundereds of dollars, or steal software. Needless to say if you were a kid in a garage willing to develop programs, Microsoft would say to you 'buzz off'.
Years later those kids-in-a-garage now belong to a different community. Microsoft sees the loss. Other companies will give away the sticks and sell the razors. Microsoft will charge you for both. Gates himself admitted around 2000 that they had failed Marketing 101.
I am selling a huge amount of land for anyone to buy, build families on and be prosperous. It is a huge island across the Atlantic. Lets call it America.
I'll take $50,000 per square km of land there. Heck there are even millions of houses already built that can go between $50,000 to 5000,000. Our teams of lawyers will issue the deed and all necessary paperwork.
Please direct the funds to Account # 5928375, bank transit # 4930283, Adis Ababa, Nigeria.
That much money and 40kg payload are hardly microsats in my book. A while ago there was an article on REALLY small satellites, 5kg or less costing $10,000 to be placed in low earth orbit.
I'd rather have a smaller satellite shot further high so it lasts years longer.
Is it possible to have your satellite bolted onto the ISS for a monthly fee? The ISS is frequently pushed back into orbit, so it doesnt fall down.
I have seen PIC microchips connected to something like an RL8139AS or cs8900, PHY and jack. The pic16xxx is the simplest device that can do the ICMP/IP and have enough pins to talk to the ethernet chip. The atmel devices are alternatives, like the attiny maybe. These chips are sub-$1, but remember the ethernet chip is at LEAST $10. Under $20 devices are possible where they have dedicated IP addresses and can send/receive UDP, raw IP and simple ICMP like ping. TCP will require more complexity and ram. Linux is way too big if youre talking about the simplest devices... other RTOSes fill that niche if you intend to have full TCPIP. In that case, look at micrium ucos, ecos, freertos and other similar devices.
Will be interesting to see if someone can use a fast 8-bit chip to act as an ethernet chip too (bitbanging ethernet). Will have to be well over 10MHz and should be able to do ARP first. In that case, sub-$5 devices are possible with chips with fewer pins, with the BOM quite possibly under $2 (jacks, chip, board, phy in qty). But these will be far less reliable.
The atmosphere lets through a very wide range of electromagnetic frequencies. Most solar panels use only a small part of this frequency range, and even in that range, its less efficient around the edges. If they make a cell that is 25% efficient, yet covers twice the bandwidth, they'd have the same energy output.
Now getting closer to 100% is harder. The amount of effort spent on making something efficient for a given frequency may be better spent trying to make it cover multiple frequencies (or layering cells that cover different frequencies). A solar cell that is 50% efficient sounds like it uses 50% of the suns energy output that that area, but might well be below 1% efficient.
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All this is worthless without a single standard like the original CD is. The fragmentation of the DVD standard caused a lot of pain, and future DVD technologies seem like they'll continue the trend. So we'll end up buying a recorder that records those 6 different standards but not the standard that my video player can play. Add DRM to it all and its dirtier still.
But then, the companies in question cannot sell their special recorders, players and media if the market is flooded with generic recorders and players from China. Since the consumers will be the winner in that case, companies have it in their interest to divide and conquer, and we cannot expect as simple a technology as is portrayed in articles like these.
I've never considered myself a hard-core of the slack crowd. But slack was my first distro and has always been the favorite. It has not been the most frequently used for various reasons.
.tar.gz files off the internet, and I could just manually install everything. Out of the box slackware worked beautifully (except some painful gcc issues), while redhat tried to me too smart too early (linuxconf), especially for first time learners.
We tried installing redhat, slackware and debian the first time we received the CDs. I tried redhat first, failed. Then debian, and failed too. I knew nothing about linux, and the slackware install went fine. Since then everything in slackware just made sense. The dselect in debian was a pain, and apt-getting was too slow, while it took me years to understand how to work rpm. The tgz files of slackware made as much sense as getting the
Since then I've used redhat more often. Many commercial packages are made just for redhat, and detailed instructions are available for installing commercial stuff on redhat (like oracle), while doing the same on any default distro is more painful. More recently I've been using knoppix and ubuntu. Nothing comes close to slackware, and when I have to get a quick small distro for a virtual machine or something, its slackware. For the longest time, I installed zipslack on every windows machine I had. Easy to recover the space back when you need it. Since then that function has moved to knoppix, and now trying to put slackware (or slax) onto my usb key....
I cant wait to see it in BSD. Linux would be cool too, but it already has XFS, ReiserFS and other advanced filesystems. I'm not even sure if theyre in the same class of filesystems. I just feel like in a corner with BSD's currently limited selection.
Sometime in the future we'll have one kernel, where we can swap in and out any driver, scheduler, filesystem, device etc from Linux, BSD or Solaris, and compile it as a monolith or micro kernel.
They have 8 cores!
You cant build an enterprise machine without Ultrasparc (or Power4 or PA_RISC) CPUs.
I agree. And bravo to Linksys if they replaced Linux just to have a more efficient router.
I've seen people use Linux for crazy things, just because they wanted to use Linux. Plenty of small RTOSes require tiny amounts of ram and flash, less than what already comes on MCUs. For Linux, you need to add ram, flash, all the routes on the circuit board and the design and manufacturing costs.
Linux is awesome, but for some things eCos fits better. For other things freeRTOS or micrium fits even better. Its crazy to use Linux 2.6.10 on a $10 watch, making it a $50 watch, just so you can advertise that its a $50 watch.
If I wanted to run linux on my firewall, I'll just use an old machine (which I do), and NOT BUY linksys at all. I'll buy linksys for a very simple and cheap router (which theyre trying to be).
Now theres a difference between our concepts of 'won'. You expect the winner to win absolutely. Win all conflicts. But you can win some conflicts and lose others. That still means youre the winner in the conflict that you won.
Now the human and the bacteria's conflicts have started, but the conflict between that human and everything else has ended. He has won those.
Say the bacteria wins and theres no human. Just one bacteria in the world.
Still has to compete against the elements. But this is a new conflict.
That bacteria and that person have won. Now they compete with each other.
You also compete with your own species, so that person has won while everyone that doesnt exist, have lost out now havent they?
Say youre hungry, in a war zone, and your girl/wife is being kidnapped by some soldiers. What do you do and why?
You look for food.
You try to get back your girl/wife
You try to get out of a war zone.
Notice youre trying to survive/reproduce. All organisms work very hard to do that. Why? To (1) survive (2) beat the others.
Granted if only one person has survived, hes still lost since theres no reproductive partner. In that case the bacteria has won.
The presence of losers define the winners. The presence of the night defines the day. The presence of the 0 defines the 1. The presence of poor define the rich. The presence of Microsoft defines the free software community. The presence of redundant posts define the insightful mods.
I'm tired.
This only fixes smaller asteroids, which would burn in the atmosphere anyway.
What about the city size asteroids? All those cold war nuke stockpiles have to go somewhere.
Youre right.
Think of Solaris in this regard. One window system with one window manager (2 recently).
You make an app, you know it'll work on all the workstations and servers out there. The paths are the same, the tools are the same, API, interfaces you name it. The kernel is the same one everywhere and nothing needs recompiling because of the uniformity.
Now think of Linux. "Linux" has lost its meaning apart from the kernel because the distros are so disparate. Will it run on slackware? Will it show in a window manager in knoppix? Will it just take the nice fonts from ubuntu? And what about uClinux on ARM, Linux on MIPS, Yellowdog linux, or whatevers installed on linksys routers.
New developers have this reason to choose DOS/Windows as their base platform for projects with low risk tolerance.
Sure there is.
The one still standing is the winner.
Do I see Tru64, System V, Ultrix, Xenix, IRIX around?
Its hard to argue Linux is better than Solaris at everything. We now have the Linux, Solaris and BSD kernels to choose from. Solaris is probably the highest scaling free OS available.
Solaris was built for the enterprise. Most Oracle installations are run on Solaris. It is also the most popular UNIX as such (so we can now run a free UNIX rather than unix-clone (not that it matters)).
It has been well designed and has features that are years ahead, while it lacks some of Linux's features.
I cant wait for dtrace/zones for Linux, or the Linuxization of Solaris. In this regard, I'd prefer Solaris' libraries and tools over Linux's for the most part. I wonder when will they release their compilers as free, to compete with gcc on sparc and i386.
Hopefully this will not confuse the market, and developers will release Solaris, Linux and BSD versions of their applications for each major architecture (i386, x64, PPC)...
Yup. Too many people in the boat.
Its similar to a contest of the most ugly women.
Why cant we have a contest of the most perfectly written code for a given algorithm?
Lay out the basic requirements for the most perfect kernel scheduler, or filesystem. Let them code the best code.
My own server is a machine from work that dies on the HLT instruction. So it cant run Windows.
It only has a cdrom drive (no hdd) and I use knoppix (knoppix 2 no-hlt). I download the script (from my site) that has all the config and there I have a firewall, dhcp server, webserver, print server and a couple o other things. My actual file server is another machine that runs windows xp and P2P software accessible by RDP so I dont need harddrives in my firewall.
Both machines have no fans on the CPU, and the power supplies are quite.
Replacing the boot drive with CDROM/USB also reduces power and makes it far more reliable.
There are 3 broad types of 'free software' licenses.
(1) You HAVE to release source code to the changes you make
(2) You dont really have to release source code.
(3) Software thats free but no source code provided.
Take your pick. If youre worried about further intricacies, just write your own.
Throwing things is childish..
Just tighten their QoS pipe in the switch. Also remember to exec antivirus on their machines while theyre working. Nothing is more frustrating than a SLOW computer.
Of course switch it back to fast as soon as you get a call on that. Having the problem disappear when the IT guy is around is even more frustrating!
Of course I'm assuming youre talking about getting frustrated at the person, not the problem.
A difficult problem is not frustrating, its challenging. When I run into a problem that must be solved, that hasnt been solved before and whose solution will fill you with pride.... well.. I live for those days.
Look behind you, a three-headed Somalian monkey!
Now I can test my theory that Caribbean pirates actually had Caribbean accents.
YA MAAAN! ARRR...
You must be from Pakistan
Visual studio 2000, windows 2000, sql 2000, office 2000....
Most of microsoft's 2000-version products were the epitome of their abilities. Everything since have been polish+constricting rights. There isnt really a lot that runs on XP and not 2000 (except for things that microsoft actually blocked support for, to sell more of XP like directx). Somewhere along the line in 2000, they figured they already had 95% of the market, why try to innovate at all? Better just squeeze out more cash and spend development funds on marketing. We've been seeing more of user rights restricted since 2000 while the TV has been showing nicer ads for the past 5 years.
Someone oughtta really steal windows 2000 source code and distribute it on P2P networks. Projects like ReactOS can really benefit, and will overall force Microsoft to get back on the innovation track.
Otherwise we'll have to wait till Linux is better for the desktop (or OSX runs on commodity intel hardware) to see microsoft get straightened up.
My biggest beef with microsoft was their dev tools were not free. It is in their interest to increase their software base, and therefore to give away dev tools with good documentation. A few years ago you couldnt be a developer without having to spend hundereds of dollars, or steal software. Needless to say if you were a kid in a garage willing to develop programs, Microsoft would say to you 'buzz off'.
Years later those kids-in-a-garage now belong to a different community. Microsoft sees the loss. Other companies will give away the sticks and sell the razors. Microsoft will charge you for both. Gates himself admitted around 2000 that they had failed Marketing 101.
I am selling a huge amount of land for anyone to buy, build families on and be prosperous. It is a huge island across the Atlantic. Lets call it America.
I'll take $50,000 per square km of land there. Heck there are even millions of houses already built that can go between $50,000 to 5000,000. Our teams of lawyers will issue the deed and all necessary paperwork.
Please direct the funds to Account # 5928375, bank transit # 4930283, Adis Ababa, Nigeria.
Get some before its all taken!!!
That much money and 40kg payload are hardly microsats in my book. A while ago there was an article on REALLY small satellites, 5kg or less costing $10,000 to be placed in low earth orbit.
I'd rather have a smaller satellite shot further high so it lasts years longer.
Is it possible to have your satellite bolted onto the ISS for a monthly fee? The ISS is frequently pushed back into orbit, so it doesnt fall down.
ARM devices can be almost as low end as 8-bitters. The LPC2101 or the LPC2131 or at91sam7s32, especially in thumb mode are similar to 8-bitters.
Linux however is way overkill.
I have seen PIC microchips connected to something like an RL8139AS or cs8900, PHY and jack. The pic16xxx is the simplest device that can do the ICMP/IP and have enough pins to talk to the ethernet chip. The atmel devices are alternatives, like the attiny maybe. These chips are sub-$1, but remember the ethernet chip is at LEAST $10. Under $20 devices are possible where they have dedicated IP addresses and can send/receive UDP, raw IP and simple ICMP like ping. TCP will require more complexity and ram. Linux is way too big if youre talking about the simplest devices... other RTOSes fill that niche if you intend to have full TCPIP. In that case, look at micrium ucos, ecos, freertos and other similar devices.
Will be interesting to see if someone can use a fast 8-bit chip to act as an ethernet chip too (bitbanging ethernet). Will have to be well over 10MHz and should be able to do ARP first. In that case, sub-$5 devices are possible with chips with fewer pins, with the BOM quite possibly under $2 (jacks, chip, board, phy in qty). But these will be far less reliable.
The atmosphere lets through a very wide range of electromagnetic frequencies. Most solar panels use only a small part of this frequency range, and even in that range, its less efficient around the edges. If they make a cell that is 25% efficient, yet covers twice the bandwidth, they'd have the same energy output.
Now getting closer to 100% is harder. The amount of effort spent on making something efficient for a given frequency may be better spent trying to make it cover multiple frequencies (or layering cells that cover different frequencies). A solar cell that is 50% efficient sounds like it uses 50% of the suns energy output that that area, but might well be below 1% efficient.