New appliations will appear for 8-bitters now. For how long can you run a 32-bit ARM MCU on a watch battery? I can imagine 0.9V computers running on watch batteries for days, think of the old handheld nintendo games with LCD screens, imagine them in creditcard size and running for months. Try that with 32-bit chips.
I've seen TCPIP being run on 8-bit chips and USB controllers on 8-bit MCUs with huge flash and sram space. So bit size isnt an indication of the complexity of a chip.
Consider the amount of time and effort required to get a doctorate versus a properly earned CCIE. Theyre about the same.
Sure, this being IT, youll find 20 year olds with the CCIE, just as youll find 14 year olds with the MCSE, but the PhD needs you to go through the course of time. Youre right about the dumb PhDs and smart cisco guys too.
The thing is, cisco has really been jacking up the difficulty of their certs increasing their value, and in the market, geeks truly obsessed in their own fields head more for certs and a portfolio of programmed applications than a masters and a doctorate, which also increases the worth of CCIE for instance; their holders are smarter for OTHER reasons.
The one reason why they cant be compared is the doctorate is supposed to cover multiple subjects and is a general term, while the CCIE is very specific, vendor specific even.
I saw a thread of this name and most people recommended the CCIE. Now I dont know if you are talking about IT or not, but I also dont know if you love research.
I love research. I could play with hilbert spaces and QED all day, even if that requires putting up with the odd lecture. But I know for more $$$ I'd aim for the CCIE if heading for IT, or EE if heading out in Physics.
I can think of many places where a CS PhD will be useful but those markets are small. Think of the data scientists at CERN, raking in the data using rooms and rooms of server farms, obtaining data at terabytes per second, and processing it in real time. For that stuff, you need CCIEs, CS PhDs and Math PhDs. Also at places like Google I'd imaging.
Not at your run of the mill IT house, or corp that needs an IT dept though.
Someone decided to take his new Audi out for a spin, and just hated the speed limits over a wide clear straight highway. Solution? "Help my cars speeding on its own".
Even if it was, he really couldnt hit the brakes? Why? Hes got brake-by-wire or something? How strong the engine has to be to beat a fully stepped-on brake anyway? Especially in higher gears.
If I were on a superhighway, and my 300hp car decided to speed, I wouldnt mind letting it have its way for a little while. Until you reach downtown of course.
free from dirt or pollution free from contamination or disease UNADULTERATED, PURE
In some meanings it means original, in others it means without the unwanted 'pollution' or bugs.
So a more thoroughly audited code would be cleaner than 'better designed' which isnt too different between netbsd and openbsd in this case. Theres some very buggy software out there that was designed well, but not implemented properly.
And the most thoroughly washed and cleaned up BSD, is openbsd although really the difference isnt huge, for cleanliness or good design.
I'm working at my first job which is a 100-person mfg company, just one of two IT guys. Plenty of paid-lunches, I get to choose the hardware, develop reports and fool with the erp system. I felt works being appreciated quite alot here, considering its a management-heavy place (show your apprecaition, by the book).
There is also appreciation where you get to know EVERYONE personally. I know the names of most peoples spouses, met their kids and know their habits. Delegating a job to me is as hard as getting your best friend to do your work.
Personally I'd rather work someplace larger, with maybe less personalization and appreciation against more pay and larger-scale work.
No I dont want to work for MS unless the figure on the table is 6 digits.
In countries like those, everyone uses a pirated version of XP, everyone is used to it, and expects it at work. Kids develop software for it, and most people cant work with anything except Windows. It is sufficient for their needs.
With these microsoft initiatives. Windows becomes either crap in features or too expensive. It sure does kill piracy and thats the best thing that can happen to OSS OSes. Most people wouldnt buy anything but the starter edition, and quickly get sick of the limitations. If piracy isnt pervasive enough, they'll install Linux.
If microsoft were smart, they'd lower the price of XP professional in those markets. That way they'd sell at least something. Right now they're pushing the whole market away.
will probably support the USB standard will probably use the USB standard will probably replace the USB standard will probably destroy the USB standard will probably add to the USB standard will probably complement the USB standard will probably advance the USB standard
Its like that thriller movie where you missed the critial scene.
We've been using 3com switches and theyre rock solid. I was rooting for cisco a while ago because I'm studying for some certs, but the price difference is huge.
3Com comes with stackable switches, upto 8 of 48 ports which should be enough. The stacking bus is something like 10gbit or 32gbit for all-gigabit switches.
The switch market is really (1) Cisco (2) 3Com and (3) HP for market share, and I recommend you go with these. Cisco is more than 100% expensive than anyone else for the same stuff, and I've never been impressed with HP, so look at 3Com. Take a look at all those confusing nortel switches too, the number 4 of the market. You'll most likely find your switch between 3com and cisco, unless you want to give up reliability.
I've been looking at ways to automatically deploy it using MSI files, and switch the default browser to it across the company network.
Even though I limit peoples permissions they still get spyware. When things get bad especially for people who need admin access to their machines for legacy apps, I have to reinstall Windows2k. Not fun.
Wait till we get version 1.2 or something, and people can confidently install it in the corporate.
And IBM is the rich strong hubby. However Sun is the geek thats in love with this girl..
So Sun and IBM can hate each other, but Linux measures IBM's sincerity against his $$$
However Linux is no simple girl and really shes planning to have a kid from both, and to take both IBM and Sun away from their children from previous marriage, AIX and Solaris. This way Linux's children will inherit the fortunes from both companies.
In the end Linux is a tramp. Shes already had SGI's XFS in her, toyed with HP, and now just badmouths him like an exboyfriend, and now hates the potentially newer and younger girl on the block... BSD. BSD is the good girl whose keeping to herself for the moment... and to her marriage with Mr Apple.
You never know what she'll do in the future.
Microsoft on the other hand is beginning to feel he needs a girl...
We had a common issue at our company where the IBM motherboards would have their capacitors pop. i.e. the top plate would bulge, and the system would randomly freeze. IBM replaced something like 12 motherboards at our company, various models with the same issue. So I dont think the noname vendors are the only ones.
The few nonames (Athlon/Duron) motherboards that I do have at home work relatively fine, with the problem of badly implemented BIOS. Funny how almost all Pentium 1 machines still work and are pretty robust while the newer class machines crash out more and more frequently. And I checked the single unit price of those electrolytic capacitors are in cents. (I'd love to pay $10 more for stability).
I wonder if VRMs can be standardized so people would start using those the way they'd use cache modules on Pentium1 boards. That'd call for highed quality VRM modules.
Solaris' threading is supposed to be super-scalable. They can use 64way CPUs with great efficiency using the same kernel, whereas Linux upto recently wasnt so good. BSD is still not good at higher scalability.
As soon as Linus and co lay their eyes on the Solaris threading code, part of its capability is going into Linux, but I doubt that'll break Linux's embedded or desktop capabilities. They would probably either make options during compile for the threading and memory models, or make it all dynamic for the kernel to choose how threading is done. After all that work, when Linux will be the best uncontested OS out there for servers, Sun will sell Linux servers and make $$$..
Time to invest in Linux-over-cheap-servers companies.
If they hold the license tight, people will be copying code ideas and algorithms from it into Linux, all the better for Linux. For that reason alone I think sun just wants to be another redhat, only using Solaris. Just giving out the source code is like promoting Linux even more, which Sun never had a control over, and whose Redhat Sun can never be.
Either way, I'd definitely try it out, and will especially be interested in Solaris vs BSD speed and stability. Solaris does win in scalability, so for better platforms, it might become the preferred OS, centralized or not.
I've used unsupported ATM, SCSI and video cards in sun and rs/6000 workstations, and some driver in there made things work. Was also impressed when my SuSE install detected and setup a tokenring card that wasnt listed anywhere in Linux docs as supported.
Heres how it goes. Acme the semiconductor company as an ethernet design in its IP, and sells the design, or wafers to other places which integrate it into their own chips and boards. They name it different. They sell their stuff, make specific drivers, sometimes change PCI IDs, and hope everyone depends on THEIR drivers. Some hacker realizes the two chips are the same, and adds the PCI IDs of one in the other to make a unified driver in Linux/BSD/whatever.
Joe Schmoe plugs card it, is impressed and posts a slashdot story.
Really makes me wanna post a slashdot story on how I ran Windows 2000 on a 21164 CPU.
That happened in Ojri Camp, in Rawalpindi Pakistan when I was little... ~1989. Smack in the middle of the city, in an army ammo depot. Thousands died. There was definitely a mushroom cloud and missles and bombs were sprinkled all over the city. It wasnt pretty.
The shocked threw me off my chair in grade 3, on the other side of the city. Everyone thought India had attacked.
But the media kept a strong hush on it uptil today, for some messed up reason. Ask anyone from Islamabad or Rawalpindi who was there at that time.
I've been building computers for family without the floppy drive for over 5 years now. Since CDROM and CD-R, the floppy has been unneeded, especially since USB keys.
But for some reason, OS installers always require a floppy or two, even though youre installing from a harddisk to a harddisk, and programs like loadlin do the job well (for linux), other OSes havent taken this lead.
I couldnt install minix, or elks, or plan9 on my non-floppy machine. They should learn lessons from BeOS and Knoppix. BSD are notorious too, and they dont have a loadlin equivalent, even though they do (finally) have bootable CDs. Things get worse when you move away from the x86 platform, most of which do not easily have bootable CDs. I have an old pile of disks and two drives at home just for the purpose.
For many places there are more than one version of the history.
Afghanistan is a nice example. Ask different ethnic groups about afghanistan, the answers are radically diverse. who will you believe? Theyll just keep deleting their articles forever.
For really conflicting facts, there should be a way to enter two different versions. Readers could then either choose or read both, knowing that thats conflicting information. That way the Wikipedia can be a source of information from BOTH sides. I'd take such an encyclopaedia over Britannica anyday.
I think the tricks included say, you take a pizza-cut section of the universe, and just duplicate the results to make a complete universe.
If theres a certain type and amount of gravitational interaction in one half of the universe, its safe to assume the sames happening in the other half. Because the universe started from such a tiny point, its very much rotationally symmetrical on a larger scale.
Secondly, random quantum events early during the boom caused the varied stars, galaxies, black holes etc. So the software takes one section, runs random numbers and stores the results, and moves to the next section of the universe. If a certain number of random interactions create the same type of results, the calculations are redundant.
And then each section or "cube" sample of the universe would also be rotationally symmetrical depending on the random initial conditions. For example, if you imaging a sample cube of space, early fluctuations in one corner of that cube would produce a galaxy there. Now if the exact same fluctuation happens in another corner instead, it might produce the same galaxy.
Such redundant calculations can be omitted with the proper algorithms. Dont spend your money on server farms, spend it on math consultants.
Thats more than possible. The worlds weightlifting champion woman can life twice her weight, the camp man can lift more than 2.5 times his weight.
Anyone who can do chin-ups can lift their own weight..
There are other physical reasons why you cant lift yourself by the bootstraps, including the fact that you really have to push the earth downwards somehow.
Slashdot Mirror
if all the horsetraders called it a problem when Ford rolled out the model T.
Either way I think artists will make more money with online $0.99 music sales, the very people who form the base of this market.
Exactly.
New appliations will appear for 8-bitters now. For how long can you run a 32-bit ARM MCU on a watch battery? I can imagine 0.9V computers running on watch batteries for days, think of the old handheld nintendo games with LCD screens, imagine them in creditcard size and running for months. Try that with 32-bit chips.
I've seen TCPIP being run on 8-bit chips and USB controllers on 8-bit MCUs with huge flash and sram space. So bit size isnt an indication of the complexity of a chip.
Consider the amount of time and effort required to get a doctorate versus a properly earned CCIE. Theyre about the same.
Sure, this being IT, youll find 20 year olds with the CCIE, just as youll find 14 year olds with the MCSE, but the PhD needs you to go through the course of time. Youre right about the dumb PhDs and smart cisco guys too.
The thing is, cisco has really been jacking up the difficulty of their certs increasing their value, and in the market, geeks truly obsessed in their own fields head more for certs and a portfolio of programmed applications than a masters and a doctorate, which also increases the worth of CCIE for instance; their holders are smarter for OTHER reasons.
The one reason why they cant be compared is the doctorate is supposed to cover multiple subjects and is a general term, while the CCIE is very specific, vendor specific even.
I saw a thread of this name and most people recommended the CCIE. Now I dont know if you are talking about IT or not, but I also dont know if you love research.
I love research. I could play with hilbert spaces and QED all day, even if that requires putting up with the odd lecture. But I know for more $$$ I'd aim for the CCIE if heading for IT, or EE if heading out in Physics.
I can think of many places where a CS PhD will be useful but those markets are small. Think of the data scientists at CERN, raking in the data using rooms and rooms of server farms, obtaining data at terabytes per second, and processing it in real time. For that stuff, you need CCIEs, CS PhDs and Math PhDs. Also at places like Google I'd imaging.
Not at your run of the mill IT house, or corp that needs an IT dept though.
Someone decided to take his new Audi out for a spin, and just hated the speed limits over a wide clear straight highway. Solution? "Help my cars speeding on its own".
Even if it was, he really couldnt hit the brakes? Why? Hes got brake-by-wire or something? How strong the engine has to be to beat a fully stepped-on brake anyway? Especially in higher gears.
If I were on a superhighway, and my 300hp car decided to speed, I wouldnt mind letting it have its way for a little while. Until you reach downtown of course.
From online Merriam Webster:
free from dirt or pollution
free from contamination or disease
UNADULTERATED, PURE
In some meanings it means original, in others it means without the unwanted 'pollution' or bugs.
So a more thoroughly audited code would be cleaner than 'better designed' which isnt too different between netbsd and openbsd in this case. Theres some very buggy software out there that was designed well, but not implemented properly.
And the most thoroughly washed and cleaned up BSD, is openbsd although really the difference isnt huge, for cleanliness or good design.
I've always considered OpenBSD to be the cleanest. It has resisted major change but has been code-audited much more than NetBSD.
I dont know about portability but OpenBSD was forked from NetBSD, and has been changed less since and audited more.
But if you mean 'original' by clean, the earlier versions of either would be cleaner.
I feel for you.
I'm working at my first job which is a 100-person mfg company, just one of two IT guys. Plenty of paid-lunches, I get to choose the hardware, develop reports and fool with the erp system. I felt works being appreciated quite alot here, considering its a management-heavy place (show your apprecaition, by the book).
There is also appreciation where you get to know EVERYONE personally. I know the names of most peoples spouses, met their kids and know their habits. Delegating a job to me is as hard as getting your best friend to do your work.
Personally I'd rather work someplace larger, with maybe less personalization and appreciation against more pay and larger-scale work.
No I dont want to work for MS unless the figure on the table is 6 digits.
In countries like those, everyone uses a pirated version of XP, everyone is used to it, and expects it at work. Kids develop software for it, and most people cant work with anything except Windows. It is sufficient for their needs.
With these microsoft initiatives. Windows becomes either crap in features or too expensive. It sure does kill piracy and thats the best thing that can happen to OSS OSes. Most people wouldnt buy anything but the starter edition, and quickly get sick of the limitations. If piracy isnt pervasive enough, they'll install Linux.
If microsoft were smart, they'd lower the price of XP professional in those markets. That way they'd sell at least something. Right now they're pushing the whole market away.
will probably support the USB standard
will probably use the USB standard
will probably replace the USB standard
will probably destroy the USB standard
will probably add to the USB standard
will probably complement the USB standard
will probably advance the USB standard
Its like that thriller movie where you missed the critial scene.
We've been using 3com switches and theyre rock solid. I was rooting for cisco a while ago because I'm studying for some certs, but the price difference is huge.
3Com comes with stackable switches, upto 8 of 48 ports which should be enough. The stacking bus is something like 10gbit or 32gbit for all-gigabit switches.
The switch market is really (1) Cisco (2) 3Com and (3) HP for market share, and I recommend you go with these. Cisco is more than 100% expensive than anyone else for the same stuff, and I've never been impressed with HP, so look at 3Com. Take a look at all those confusing nortel switches too, the number 4 of the market. You'll most likely find your switch between 3com and cisco, unless you want to give up reliability.
I've been looking at ways to automatically deploy it using MSI files, and switch the default browser to it across the company network.
Even though I limit peoples permissions they still get spyware. When things get bad especially for people who need admin access to their machines for legacy apps, I have to reinstall Windows2k. Not fun.
Wait till we get version 1.2 or something, and people can confidently install it in the corporate.
Then start counting.
And IBM is the rich strong hubby. However Sun is the geek thats in love with this girl..
So Sun and IBM can hate each other, but Linux measures IBM's sincerity against his $$$
However Linux is no simple girl and really shes planning to have a kid from both, and to take both IBM and Sun away from their children from previous marriage, AIX and Solaris. This way Linux's children will inherit the fortunes from both companies.
In the end Linux is a tramp. Shes already had SGI's XFS in her, toyed with HP, and now just badmouths him like an exboyfriend, and now hates the potentially newer and younger girl on the block... BSD. BSD is the good girl whose keeping to herself for the moment... and to her marriage with Mr Apple.
You never know what she'll do in the future.
Microsoft on the other hand is beginning to feel he needs a girl...
We had a common issue at our company where the IBM motherboards would have their capacitors pop. i.e. the top plate would bulge, and the system would randomly freeze. IBM replaced something like 12 motherboards at our company, various models with the same issue. So I dont think the noname vendors are the only ones.
The few nonames (Athlon/Duron) motherboards that I do have at home work relatively fine, with the problem of badly implemented BIOS. Funny how almost all Pentium 1 machines still work and are pretty robust while the newer class machines crash out more and more frequently. And I checked the single unit price of those electrolytic capacitors are in cents. (I'd love to pay $10 more for stability).
I wonder if VRMs can be standardized so people would start using those the way they'd use cache modules on Pentium1 boards. That'd call for highed quality VRM modules.
Solaris' threading is supposed to be super-scalable. They can use 64way CPUs with great efficiency using the same kernel, whereas Linux upto recently wasnt so good. BSD is still not good at higher scalability.
As soon as Linus and co lay their eyes on the Solaris threading code, part of its capability is going into Linux, but I doubt that'll break Linux's embedded or desktop capabilities. They would probably either make options during compile for the threading and memory models, or make it all dynamic for the kernel to choose how threading is done. After all that work, when Linux will be the best uncontested OS out there for servers, Sun will sell Linux servers and make $$$..
Time to invest in Linux-over-cheap-servers companies.
If they hold the license tight, people will be copying code ideas and algorithms from it into Linux, all the better for Linux. For that reason alone I think sun just wants to be another redhat, only using Solaris. Just giving out the source code is like promoting Linux even more, which Sun never had a control over, and whose Redhat Sun can never be.
Either way, I'd definitely try it out, and will especially be interested in Solaris vs BSD speed and stability. Solaris does win in scalability, so for better platforms, it might become the preferred OS, centralized or not.
They all licensed UNIX from Novell, not SCO. I believe SCO themselves licensed it from Novell, and relicensed it out or something.
I've used unsupported ATM, SCSI and video cards in sun and rs/6000 workstations, and some driver in there made things work. Was also impressed when my SuSE install detected and setup a tokenring card that wasnt listed anywhere in Linux docs as supported.
Heres how it goes. Acme the semiconductor company as an ethernet design in its IP, and sells the design, or wafers to other places which integrate it into their own chips and boards. They name it different. They sell their stuff, make specific drivers, sometimes change PCI IDs, and hope everyone depends on THEIR drivers. Some hacker realizes the two chips are the same, and adds the PCI IDs of one in the other to make a unified driver in Linux/BSD/whatever.
Joe Schmoe plugs card it, is impressed and posts a slashdot story.
Really makes me wanna post a slashdot story on how I ran Windows 2000 on a 21164 CPU.
That happened in Ojri Camp, in Rawalpindi Pakistan when I was little... ~1989. Smack in the middle of the city, in an army ammo depot. Thousands died. There was definitely a mushroom cloud and missles and bombs were sprinkled all over the city. It wasnt pretty.
The shocked threw me off my chair in grade 3, on the other side of the city. Everyone thought India had attacked.
But the media kept a strong hush on it uptil today, for some messed up reason. Ask anyone from Islamabad or Rawalpindi who was there at that time.
I've been building computers for family without the floppy drive for over 5 years now. Since CDROM and CD-R, the floppy has been unneeded, especially since USB keys.
But for some reason, OS installers always require a floppy or two, even though youre installing from a harddisk to a harddisk, and programs like loadlin do the job well (for linux), other OSes havent taken this lead.
I couldnt install minix, or elks, or plan9 on my non-floppy machine. They should learn lessons from BeOS and Knoppix. BSD are notorious too, and they dont have a loadlin equivalent, even though they do (finally) have bootable CDs. Things get worse when you move away from the x86 platform, most of which do not easily have bootable CDs. I have an old pile of disks and two drives at home just for the purpose.
I was looking for Xenix on eBay a while ago and found a Xenix for the PDP-11. Also came across it reading the history of Unix.
I think this was before Xenix belonged to Microsoft or something like that, I believe MS bought it from SCO.
Still looking for a x86 Xenix at low cost...
For many places there are more than one version of the history.
Afghanistan is a nice example. Ask different ethnic groups about afghanistan, the answers are radically diverse. who will you believe? Theyll just keep deleting their articles forever.
For really conflicting facts, there should be a way to enter two different versions. Readers could then either choose or read both, knowing that thats conflicting information. That way the Wikipedia can be a source of information from BOTH sides. I'd take such an encyclopaedia over Britannica anyday.
I think the tricks included say, you take a pizza-cut section of the universe, and just duplicate the results to make a complete universe.
If theres a certain type and amount of gravitational interaction in one half of the universe, its safe to assume the sames happening in the other half. Because the universe started from such a tiny point, its very much rotationally symmetrical on a larger scale.
Secondly, random quantum events early during the boom caused the varied stars, galaxies, black holes etc. So the software takes one section, runs random numbers and stores the results, and moves to the next section of the universe. If a certain number of random interactions create the same type of results, the calculations are redundant.
And then each section or "cube" sample of the universe would also be rotationally symmetrical depending on the random initial conditions. For example, if you imaging a sample cube of space, early fluctuations in one corner of that cube would produce a galaxy there. Now if the exact same fluctuation happens in another corner instead, it might produce the same galaxy.
Such redundant calculations can be omitted with the proper algorithms. Dont spend your money on server farms, spend it on math consultants.
Thats more than possible. The worlds weightlifting champion woman can life twice her weight, the camp man can lift more than 2.5 times his weight.
Anyone who can do chin-ups can lift their own weight..
There are other physical reasons why you cant lift yourself by the bootstraps, including the fact that you really have to push the earth downwards somehow.
Beside that, your points taken.
I thought there were tortoises on elephants back, or the other way round...
Damn, now we have to send someone to check.