Release synchronization is an issue that I deal with on a daily basis a work. We have multiple huge telecom products that share common code. It's a tough problem.
Currently, each Linux distribution has a difficult enough time coordinating the contents of their own release. They expend much effort attempting to avoid applying custom patches. They want to be as "stock" as possible and as current as possible with-out incurring some new dependency that will break another package. Meanwhile, code owners are invariably trying to be as bleeding edge as possible.
The proposal to synchronize distribution releases ignores the fact that the real problem is the independence of their constituent packages.
At the end of the day, the proposal will add another dependency and a big one at that. You will wind up with each distribution being asked to "hold on and wait" while the others try to bring their own packages up to the most current release - and that's not necessarily a good thing.
Some releases will want to be more bleeding edge while others will insist on sticking with the well-tested versions of their packages.
In the telephony world, uninterupted service is a basic requirement. Much of that is accomplished through redundant hardware where upgrades take place on the standby side first, the service switches over, and then the other side upgrades. This is typically done at night during a maintenance window due to the temporary loss of redundancy.
However, hot patching has been done for decades.
In the case of Nortel's DMS, this is a trivial operation thanks to the clever design of the language and the operating system. A designer can code and build a patch in minutes.
Systems running C/C++ can accomplish the same thing by having a loader which recognizes "patch vectors" and updates the symbol table on the fly.
There are limitations but there is nothing magical about "Ksplice" and I'm sure that Microsoft's "patent" adds nothing new either.
We have been in this post-apocolyptic dark age for 1000 years now. Everything we need to bootstrap civilization mk II is stored on this "Aard Reeve".
However, the only "Comm Pewter" capable of reading this information was stolen by the evil Mordacs and hidden deep in their underground lair.
Return the Comm Pewter and we can once again wield the mighty "Loy Yer" to enslave the lowly "City Zens" and bend them to our will. We will restore "Celeb Riti" to her "Shaw Ping Mall" throne.
All the greatest powers and virtues of the golden age will return.
Well said! You make such a compelling argument. If you thought before you replied, you'd realize that I did *not* say that we should let China continue opressing their populace; I merely stated that this proposed approach by the EU could backfire and have unintended consequences.
Next time, I suggest you pretend that you are responding in person; I doubt you'd be so childish and crass.
This could come back to haunt the EU. Their argument isn't very different from the arguments that the Americans use to try to ram their entertainment industry down the throats of other countries while the others argue that they need to protect their culture. The Chinese want to protect their culture (and, they would argue, their social stability) while the West wants more open access to what they perceive as nothing more than a huge consumer market.
France, for example, could wind up with a lot worse than old Jerry Lewis movies if the US is able to to turn this argument against the EU.
No, the should never have let China into the WTO until there were *real* advances made in China's human rights record.
Look to Singapore for prior art. An article at http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/2239 suggests that *many* places have done this. I'm sure that IBM has added some "non-obvious" twist to an obvious idea.
During an open house in the Physics Department at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, I was given the chance to play "Lunar Lander" on a PDP 8. The input device was a light-pen and the display was a small raster display. The light pen was used to adjust thrust and attitude so that you could control your descent onto the lunar surface. It was bloody tough.
However, the first *real* game I played was Adventur (truncated to 8 characters due to filesystem limitations) on a PDP-11/V03 running RT-11. This was in 1978. Mind you the game was already old at that point because it had, I believe, been originally written on a US Navy Burroughs. [You have to drop the magazines in Witt's End to get the final 350th point.]
The CPU and I/O loads on the typical home network server are minimal. Since most servers are a geek's second or third string computer, the typical horsepower for an affordable home server is something like a three or four year old althon. Within a year or two, or if you can afford it now, a Core 2 Duo is perfectly affordable. This opens up the possibility of using its virtualization support for segmentation.
Here's my recommendation:
RAID-1 2-disk mirroring for user files, music collection, photo collection, and other valuables. Export these file systems. If you can afford it, then definitely raid 5 with a spare. Use mdmadm and configure it to notify you via email when it detects and swaps out a bad disk. This has saved me twice. It's free and marvellously simple. Yes, it's software only and there is some overhead but it is more than fast enough for streaming video; your network will still be the bottleneck.
dom0 (using XEN terminology) provides bare bones and runs without X
domU1 provides basic services such as:
DNS
NTP
SAMBA
CUPS
HTTPD
domU2 dedicated to mail running:
postfix or qmail
courier-imap
spam-assassin
clamd
If you run your own mail server, this is a critical service that you will want to be able to update infrequently and independently of any "hacking" that you might do on the other user domains.
domU3 dedicated to mythtv
A home server's most demanding function is serving up files over the network. Performance over 100T is more than adequate for the vast majority of cases. gigE is nice if you're moving video files around a lot but isn't necessary for streaming.
With at least some of our elections, there is no "manipulation of paper ballots" unless there is a recount or an audit. The ballots are read by computers. No, they are not punch cards. It seems like a fair, fast, and safe system to me.
So I've got a spanky new 1080p Panasonic Plasma and I'm pretty impressed with widescreen DVDs. Since the display is 1080p, it follows that the TV itself is upconverting. Is there a marked improvement when I let the DVD player do the upconverting instead?
As a followup question, do I need a HDMI connector to take advantage of an up-converting DVD player? Currently, I'm using composite cables.
I just don't get it. In Canada, we use computers to tabulate paper ballots. The results are available in time for the 10pm news. Why do jurisdictions in the United States insist on presenting the voter with a computer screen?
Tcl's only redeeming features are Tk, Expect, and the ease with which it can be incorporated as a scripting language for applications. Perl and Python both provide all three along with a richer available library.
[It's been a *very* long time since I reviewed Osterhout's original draft text for Tcl. The minimalist approach to Tcl appealed strongly to the mathematician in me. A few years later, I tried Perl despite the fact that I was appalled by its philosophy of doing what it thinks I mean. However, after many years of practical use, I've come to appreciate Perl and loath Tcl. CPAN makes my life easier just about every month. I'll give Python a try when there I have a reason not to use Perl.]
These have already been in Canada for a year or so and judging by the number on the road, they've been selling well. I've spoken to a couple of owners and they love them. Apparently they cope well in the snow (not that we had much in Ottawa this past winter) so they should be perfectly viable in the northern States. Mind you there is something ludicrous-looking about them, especially when you see them next to the ubiquitous SUVs. People thought the same thing about the Morris Minor and the Mini Cooper 40+ years ago. Now, the Cooper is trendy!
"It's fabulous -- the technology is something else. It went over my head. It only takes about 10 seconds to go beyond me when you're talking about technology. I can't say I understand it all, but it's going to be quite a ballpark."
He didn't understand it so the default answer was sure go ahead. What an irresponsible idiot. He committed to spending a bazillion tax dollars (and likely forcing people to spend another bazillion) in order to let Cisco and others abuse his citizens' privacy and turn the "game" into a three-hour commercial.
Successful dispute resolution requires a modicum of empathy and courtesy. It is to easy to miss both when communicating via email or through a faceless intermediary and time delays.
Far and away, the best approach is to meet in person. If that is not possible, it should be possible to talk it over on the phone. Hearing the person's voice immediately has a calming influence. With cross-cultural confusion and general illiteracy making written communication prone to misunderstandings, it is important to revert to more personal modes of communication before tempers flare.
Additionally, the problem should not be publicly discussed until private avenues have been exhausted.
Let those who care customize their machines. But first make it simple and reliable so that the great unwashed can use it too. I don't tell my mom to buy a Mac because it is pretty. I recommend it because it is easy to use and least likely to cause her grielf and frustratration.
Skins and themes and eye-candy are for those care. Those who care will be more than happy to spend time customizing.
...but the way the information is used. In broad terms, there are two major problems:
First, advertisers collect information about me so that they can target advertising at me. Advertising is all about getting me to buy something that I wouldn't otherwise buy. It has nothing to do with providing me with better service - it's using me. In other words, it aggravates the consumerism that is destroying our financial and environmental health.
And, more seriously, the errors in the collected data lead to some very serious threats to our personal safety. Problems with identity theft and wrongful accusation are only going to get worse as more and more information is collected and traded between unaccountable law-enforcement and business interests.
Unfortunately, because law-enforcement (and intelligence) find this consumer-provided data so useful, they will not support any stiffening of privacy legislation.
And the reason is DRM. Computers are much less unattractive to the general consumer without their ability to manage music and video. When MS and Apple manage to lock down all media at the hardware layer, you can be sure that Linux will be left out in the cold.
I have no particular emotional attachment to Pluto and really don't care what the professionals decide - it's their bailiwick. But, according to my English, the term "dwarf planet" simply qualifies planet and therefore Pluto is still a planet - specifically, of the dwarf variety.
This naming convention seems much more problematic than whether or not Pluto meets the criteria of a "true" planet.
I didn't say I was surprised smartass. I said that I was frustrated. And I'm not asking them to adopt the format - just support it. The codec is free and nothing prevents them from supporting it *in addition to* MP3 and WAV. iRiver managed to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Release synchronization is an issue that I deal with on a daily basis a work. We have multiple huge telecom products that share common code. It's a tough problem.
Currently, each Linux distribution has a difficult enough time coordinating the contents of their own release. They expend much effort attempting to avoid applying custom patches. They want to be as "stock" as possible and as current as possible with-out incurring some new dependency that will break another package. Meanwhile, code owners are invariably trying to be as bleeding edge as possible.
The proposal to synchronize distribution releases ignores the fact that the real problem is the independence of their constituent packages.
At the end of the day, the proposal will add another dependency and a big one at that. You will wind up with each distribution being asked to "hold on and wait" while the others try to bring their own packages up to the most current release - and that's not necessarily a good thing.
Some releases will want to be more bleeding edge while others will insist on sticking with the well-tested versions of their packages.
All-in-all, it's a nice but impractical idea.
It may seem heartless but the estate is perfectly capable of paying the bill.
Keep in mind that he neglected to file a flight plan. That wasn't very wise given where he was flying.
In the telephony world, uninterupted service is a basic requirement. Much of that is accomplished through redundant hardware where upgrades take place on the standby side first, the service switches over, and then the other side upgrades. This is typically done at night during a maintenance window due to the temporary loss of redundancy.
However, hot patching has been done for decades.
In the case of Nortel's DMS, this is a trivial operation thanks to the clever design of the language and the operating system. A designer can code and build a patch in minutes.
Systems running C/C++ can accomplish the same thing by having a loader which recognizes "patch vectors" and updates the symbol table on the fly.
There are limitations but there is nothing magical about "Ksplice" and I'm sure that Microsoft's "patent" adds nothing new either.
We have been in this post-apocolyptic dark age for 1000 years now. Everything we need to bootstrap civilization mk II is stored on this "Aard Reeve".
However, the only "Comm Pewter" capable of reading this information was stolen by the evil Mordacs and hidden deep in their underground lair.
Return the Comm Pewter and we can once again wield the mighty "Loy Yer" to enslave the lowly "City Zens" and bend them to our will. We will restore "Celeb Riti" to her "Shaw Ping Mall" throne.
All the greatest powers and virtues of the golden age will return.
Who among you will undertake this holy quest?
Well said! You make such a compelling argument. If you thought before you replied, you'd realize that I did *not* say that we should let China continue opressing their populace; I merely stated that this proposed approach by the EU could backfire and have unintended consequences.
Next time, I suggest you pretend that you are responding in person; I doubt you'd be so childish and crass.
This could come back to haunt the EU. Their argument isn't very different from the arguments that the Americans use to try to ram their entertainment industry down the throats of other countries while the others argue that they need to protect their culture. The Chinese want to protect their culture (and, they would argue, their social stability) while the West wants more open access to what they perceive as nothing more than a huge consumer market.
France, for example, could wind up with a lot worse than old Jerry Lewis movies if the US is able to to turn this argument against the EU.
No, the should never have let China into the WTO until there were *real* advances made in China's human rights record.
Look to Singapore for prior art. An article at http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/2239 suggests that *many* places have done this. I'm sure that IBM has added some "non-obvious" twist to an obvious idea.
During an open house in the Physics Department at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, I was given the chance to play "Lunar Lander" on a PDP 8. The input device was a light-pen and the display was a small raster display. The light pen was used to adjust thrust and attitude so that you could control your descent onto the lunar surface. It was bloody tough.
However, the first *real* game I played was Adventur (truncated to 8 characters due to filesystem limitations) on a PDP-11/V03 running RT-11. This was in 1978. Mind you the game was already old at that point because it had, I believe, been originally written on a US Navy Burroughs. [You have to drop the magazines in Witt's End to get the final 350th point.]
If you run your own mail server, this is a critical service that you will want to be able to update infrequently and independently of any "hacking" that you might do on the other user domains.
A home server's most demanding function is serving up files over the network. Performance over 100T is more than adequate for the vast majority of cases. gigE is nice if you're moving video files around a lot but isn't necessary for streaming.
With at least some of our elections, there is no "manipulation of paper ballots" unless there is a recount or an audit. The ballots are read by computers. No, they are not punch cards. It seems like a fair, fast, and safe system to me.
So I've got a spanky new 1080p Panasonic Plasma and I'm pretty impressed with widescreen DVDs. Since the display is 1080p, it follows that the TV itself is upconverting. Is there a marked improvement when I let the DVD player do the upconverting instead?
As a followup question, do I need a HDMI connector to take advantage of an up-converting DVD player? Currently, I'm using composite cables.
Thanks
I just don't get it. In Canada, we use computers to tabulate paper ballots. The results are available in time for the 10pm news. Why do jurisdictions in the United States insist on presenting the voter with a computer screen?
When did marking an X become too difficult?
Tcl's only redeeming features are Tk, Expect, and the ease with which it can be incorporated as a scripting language for applications. Perl and Python both provide all three along with a richer available library.
[It's been a *very* long time since I reviewed Osterhout's original draft text for Tcl. The minimalist approach to Tcl appealed strongly to the mathematician in me. A few years later, I tried Perl despite the fact that I was appalled by its philosophy of doing what it thinks I mean. However, after many years of practical use, I've come to appreciate Perl and loath Tcl. CPAN makes my life easier just about every month. I'll give Python a try when there I have a reason not to use Perl.]
These have already been in Canada for a year or so and judging by the number on the road, they've been selling well. I've spoken to a couple of owners and they love them. Apparently they cope well in the snow (not that we had much in Ottawa this past winter) so they should be perfectly viable in the northern States. Mind you there is something ludicrous-looking about them, especially when you see them next to the ubiquitous SUVs. People thought the same thing about the Morris Minor and the Mini Cooper 40+ years ago. Now, the Cooper is trendy!
...that he is going to ban Internet Explorer (tight grip) and force a replacement for SMTP (innovate).
Well, he's nearly got the clout for it. Good luck Hu. You've got my vote! oh wait...
He didn't understand it so the default answer was sure go ahead. What an irresponsible idiot. He committed to spending a bazillion tax dollars (and likely forcing people to spend another bazillion) in order to let Cisco and others abuse his citizens' privacy and turn the "game" into a three-hour commercial.
Gross.
Successful dispute resolution requires a modicum of empathy and courtesy. It is to easy to miss both when communicating via email or through a faceless intermediary and time delays.
Far and away, the best approach is to meet in person. If that is not possible, it should be possible to talk it over on the phone. Hearing the person's voice immediately has a calming influence. With cross-cultural confusion and general illiteracy making written communication prone to misunderstandings, it is important to revert to more personal modes of communication before tempers flare.
Additionally, the problem should not be publicly discussed until private avenues have been exhausted.
Common courtesy shouldn't be so uncommon.
Let those who care customize their machines. But first make it simple and reliable so that the great unwashed can use it too. I don't tell my mom to buy a Mac because it is pretty. I recommend it because it is easy to use and least likely to cause her grielf and frustratration.
Skins and themes and eye-candy are for those care. Those who care will be more than happy to spend time customizing.
to Dogbert. That damn mutt ruins more cartoons...
Should we start preparing for a new generation of IE-only sites? Lord, I hope not.
Unfortunately, because law-enforcement (and intelligence) find this consumer-provided data so useful, they will not support any stiffening of privacy legislation.
And the reason is DRM. Computers are much less unattractive to the general consumer without their ability to manage music and video. When MS and Apple manage to lock down all media at the hardware layer, you can be sure that Linux will be left out in the cold.
I have no particular emotional attachment to Pluto and really don't care what the professionals decide - it's their bailiwick. But, according to my English, the term "dwarf planet" simply qualifies planet and therefore Pluto is still a planet - specifically, of the dwarf variety.
This naming convention seems much more problematic than whether or not Pluto meets the criteria of a "true" planet.
Would not "planetoid" have been a better choice?
I didn't say I was surprised smartass. I said that I was frustrated. And I'm not asking them to adopt the format - just support it. The codec is free and nothing prevents them from supporting it *in addition to* MP3 and WAV. iRiver managed to do it.