Is the idea of splitting kernel releases into two branches -- one stable, one development. This gives the benefit of allowing bugfixes to be applied to an otherwise stable tree while creating an experimental environment for new ideas, mirroring the "parallel deployment" methodology system analysts prefer for stability during upgrades (where you continue running an old system for a while after the new system is deployed so you have something to fall back on.)
This seems to work successfully for a number of open source projects, which use a version numbering system that allows users to tell at a glance whether they're using a development version.
Think of the irony that the resources we spend on trying to find new places to explore or colonize hundreds or thousands of years down the road would greatly increase the standard of living for the world's poor today?
Suppose that by making the world a better place and encouraging education, intellectual development and tolerance we create the sort of environment in which open research can flourish... would we end up ahead in the long run when we discover more efficient means of exploring space instead of expending all these resources today for minimal gains?
Since this "tough on media violence/obscenity" rhetoric has been stepped up again, I've noticed at two stores a new policy of asking for a birthdate or age before selling both games and movies with an ESRB M/MPAA R rating. No carding yet, although I bet it happens if you look younger than 17 or the checkout staff is in a bad mood.
It's annoying enough that I'm just buying my media online now.
What bothers me is that irregardless of the fact that this game is effectively a murder/obscenity simulator that should never fall into the hands of children forcing Rockstar to recall/modify their game or be relabeled AO is effectively censorship, albeit one that takes advantage of economics rather than legal force to effect the views of the minority over the majority. Most stores refuse to carry AO titles and therefore artificially decrease the audience for the game, putting severe pressure on the manufacturer to cater to the distribution chain by watering down their content or simply shelve products that would have been successes but for the fact that they are offered only through adult-only resellers (a chilling effect on customers who simply want to enjoy a game released as the developer intended without having porn businesses appear on their credit card statements.)
Company names in most English-dialect countries are treated as if they are plural. Hence, "Microsoft charge" is correct, even if it doesn't seem to fit normal English rules.
One of those things you don't realize until someone points it out, like the whole Z is pronounced Zed thing. To my interest, someone explained to me the other day that chopsticks originated not in Asia as most suspect but were invented by immigrants to American mining communities in the early 1800s as a means of differentiating their fare from that of other restaurants and pubs.
So-called "common knowledge" takes a while to learn, I suppose...
Well, part of what they're paying for is the support.
And as it is Linux on the desktop we're talking about, they'll be using that a great deal.
This is a little more advanced
on
Humanoid Robot HR-2
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Than the one I saw at a Japanese facility, which had no adaptive neural network. However, it was capable of voice- and image-recognition, which helped it perform the following tasks:
Dispense coffee, refilling when empty
Pick up and deliver print job from the company printer
Write simple routines, such as C++ class templates, and fix broken HTML pages
Greet visitors and direct them to the appropriate department if expected
Allowed customers to choose from a number of top music artists, expelling a shrink-wrapped disc and playing the most popular song off the album as it danced around
Stack and unstack a series of boxes by color
Empty garbage, albeit into a pile that was then shovelled into a dumpster
In a way, I think the 'intelligence' behind these robots is more than enough; now it's time to find practical uses for them.
When one thinks of the ongoing struggles of the free music proponents vs. the commercial music proponents one might picture an argument between King Arthur and Robin Hood (fictional example obviously, as King Arthur was not a real person, but it has to be fiction to be an analogy.)
The thing to realize is that both sides not only believe they are working towards the greater good but are objectively doing so even with radically different and diametrically opposed 'solutions' to the problem.
It really puts things in perspective to realize not only that each side is right but that there is more to be gained for each to sit down and figure out what to do with the deer in the forest rather than constantly fighting over territory and methodology.
As a thought exercise, if you asked the average user of Free Software or Open Source why they used it, which would be the most likely answer?
I choose to support a culture that fosters and encourages the open development of software and hardware, allowing me to profit from the shared wisdom and ability of like-minded people towards the end of commercial lock-in and discouragement of fully enjoying my creative impulses with regards to computing.
I like not having to pay for software when I don't have to.
The ideals are all well and good, but I wouldn't bet that they are the prime motivation for people to switch. There's very little to be upset about; who cares what the initial reasons are if the end result is more users developing a personal interest and stake in the rationale for open development methods and willingly sharing what they create?
Advocates would do better to recognize this than go after this guy for not quite getting the message right -- the users themselves would be quite turned off if they had to understand and adopt the full ideology (never create closed software, try to earn a living off providing support or alternatively as a waiter, never use closed solutions if open solutions exist) before using the software. Carrot before stick and all that.
As we've heard all along, the law can never catch up with technology. Which is why I feel safe in predicting that the next tracker site in development will actually be hosted on the Moon.
I'll second that. The latest trend of spamming (if you don't count buying relays from spam-friendly ISPs in foreign countries that ignore their abuse e-mail addresses) involved liberally spreading virii that would turn the systems of unsuspecting users into open e-mail relays, then sending a great deal of spam through those relays on the dime of said users. I've even read that in some cases the IP addresses of compromised machines are sold to the people to exploit them, creating an interesting sort of B2B relationship between criminals.
The ISPs are currently cleaning this up by further restricting the level of service offered to home users, but all the legal structures have been in place for a while if the problems were considered to have reasonable priority by the government. But the P2P problem is arguably worse as far as bandwidth and "losses" and that seems to be where the focus is being put for now.
I've read about some research into microwire-based sublithographic programmable gate arrays.
This has some potential for the computer industry in the way of getting us closer to Moore's Law but also paves the way for increasing the amount of malleable logic in what was previously fixed silicon applications.
Of course, nanowire is pretty expensive to produce. Or it used to be...
One thing I'm a bit confused about...
on
Kernel 2.6.12 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
When and why did they stop the system of releasing stable versions on the even minor releases (2.4.x, 2.6.x, etc.) and unstable/development versions on the odd minor releases (2.5.x, 2.7.x, etc.)?
I've worked with IBM products for a long time, and I think of all the computer companies their adoption of open source techniques for software development surprises me least.
Traditionally IBM's methodologies have been very close to (and predate) that of open source, which derived much of its culture and programming mindset from that of IBM or Bell Labs. Their documentation as compared to other hardware/software developers has always encouraged the user to learn about and extend the environment in which they work rather than supporting only a superficial "click here, then there" mentality.
IBM has always been good for open source. It makes sense that open source can be good for IBM as well.
There's a certain amount an optimizing compiler could do to take advantage of multithreading technology without requiring anything from the developer (although I don't know which do).
Writing decent multithreaded programs is as much a discipline as writing decent object-oriented code (although the two go together well). Basically you break a program into a set of independently-operating 'threads'. Thread safety becomes a concern -- if multiple threads access the same global variable you need a way to lock and unlock access to that variable before changing it. If one thread is beginning to change a string as the other decides to read the string, the second might see the string in a half-written state.
There is also the matter of figuring out how to distribute the load across threads in an efficient manner -- optimally each of two threads would have 50% load, each of three would have 33% load, etc. It's never optimal, of course, and you want to make sure display routines take priority over background routines so the display remains crisp.
I don't think there will be a way to transfer single-threaded programs to hyperthreaded technology and gain full advantage from the latter. As has been said even if you run only single-threaded programs nobody's system runs only one process anymore, but to fully unlock the potential of this technology will require developers to become more familiar and comfortable with multithreaded programming techniques.
Agreed, but (as mentioned elsewhere) there is no ready protection from uses of Tor or other anonymizing systems to irritate or worse. This uneasy reaction to dealing with anonymity goes back at least to anonymous remailers being used to flood USENET with crap.
Somebody mentioned in an earlier post schemes that could be used to limit the posting ability of an anonymous client without further reducing the anonymity of the client -- captchas discriminate against the blind, but 'hashcash' or having the client system perform a computationally-expensive operation that can be trivially checked at the server seems a practical way to limit flooding at least. But a larger problem cannot be solved by technical means: anonymous posts that create legal problems for public servers.
Avoiding issues with censorship is best left to a closed system where mechanisms for posting. hosting, and reading are all anonymous. Tor, at present, is better for not leaving an easy to follow trail of everything you read online or bypassing webfilters than anything else -- but it offers no protection to the servers one visits with it, and if this wasn't a problem there wouldn't be a demand for anonymizing protocols to start with.
Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
It would be antitrust if they forced another company to do this. Why isn't it antitrust if they're forced to do it by an immensely powerful entity?
It's not like Samba could be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions. They're giving away their product for free! If anything (and I'm not saying this makes sense either) big business should be protected from open source because it wipes out their profits without any commercial gain and impacts taxable income!
As far as I can tell, Xen doesn't run on anything but hardware. Whereas something like QEMU or Bochs would have a host operating system (the OS it's running on) and a guest operating system (the OS it's emulating/virtualizing), Xen runs at the lowest level and you throw supported guest operating systems on top of it.
What I find a little wierd about the process is that it uses the first instantiated guest OS (running in Domain 0) to handle most of the hardware support. So the first OS is privileged and the rest that are started up are managed by Xen's task-switching and the drivers from the first OS. I don't know for sure that their level of support for Windows XP went as far as permitting it to be that first privileged OS, but I suspect it did.
I thought Xen supported Windows XP quite well, but that support couldn't be released because of licensing issues -- Xen's technique requires the rewriting of portions of the guest operating systems. Wasn't Microsoft Research actually participating on the Xen project as well?
I'd suggest Xen is less competition to this new initiative and more a learning opportunity for all involved parties to determine ways to integrate virtualized operating systems.
Customer information has never really been safeguarded in the past. Not only was it considered open for telemarketing or junk mail purposes, but I seem to recall a patch there where some companies were actually using prison industries to fill these jobs.
Consequently, I'd say the reporting has gotten better rather than that the companies have gotten worse. Ten years ago privacy wasn't even a concern for customers because few were abusing this information.
I'm sure the data's still there. Maybe someone else has access to it, but that doesn't affect the original.
I never really understood why they called it identity theft. Much like I can't understand why they call it "stealing" music. Nothing's actually gone -- it's really more of an identity infringement.
You can do some really neat things with Windows Servers that aren't possible with Unix:
Microsoft Access
Remote Desktop (graphical -- like sitting at the server console)
Frontpage
I think a lot of the Unix share is from traditionalists and people who are interested in leveraging proven solutions, but there are a lot of exciting technologies coming from Windows that offer a different way of doing things. It's a little strange using a GUI to administrate a server, but it makes installation and maintenance a lot easier when you have the features built in rather than having to grab or build a script for everything.
Yes. I don't know who says that, but I have yet to see a Windows system running a single process.
A game that is not multithreaded or otherwise multiprocessor aware won't, by itself, run any faster. But the virus scanner, instant messenger, firewall, and seven pieces of spyware running in the background of the average Windows system will cause less processing interference with said game if the operating system does its job.
As these things become more ubiquitous, game programmers will take advantage of their features much as they have graphics and sound. The advantage isn't worth the $500-$1000 premium, but there will be benefits to this technology down the road for even the average user as developers become acquainted with optimizing towards the design.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems to work successfully for a number of open source projects, which use a version numbering system that allows users to tell at a glance whether they're using a development version.
Applying your example to Mars, that only strengthens my thoughts that it would be better to be the second colony to land than the first.
Suppose that by making the world a better place and encouraging education, intellectual development and tolerance we create the sort of environment in which open research can flourish... would we end up ahead in the long run when we discover more efficient means of exploring space instead of expending all these resources today for minimal gains?
It's annoying enough that I'm just buying my media online now.
What bothers me is that irregardless of the fact that this game is effectively a murder/obscenity simulator that should never fall into the hands of children forcing Rockstar to recall/modify their game or be relabeled AO is effectively censorship, albeit one that takes advantage of economics rather than legal force to effect the views of the minority over the majority. Most stores refuse to carry AO titles and therefore artificially decrease the audience for the game, putting severe pressure on the manufacturer to cater to the distribution chain by watering down their content or simply shelve products that would have been successes but for the fact that they are offered only through adult-only resellers (a chilling effect on customers who simply want to enjoy a game released as the developer intended without having porn businesses appear on their credit card statements.)
One of those things you don't realize until someone points it out, like the whole Z is pronounced Zed thing. To my interest, someone explained to me the other day that chopsticks originated not in Asia as most suspect but were invented by immigrants to American mining communities in the early 1800s as a means of differentiating their fare from that of other restaurants and pubs.
So-called "common knowledge" takes a while to learn, I suppose...
And as it is Linux on the desktop we're talking about, they'll be using that a great deal.
- Dispense coffee, refilling when empty
- Pick up and deliver print job from the company printer
- Write simple routines, such as C++ class templates, and fix broken HTML pages
- Greet visitors and direct them to the appropriate department if expected
- Allowed customers to choose from a number of top music artists, expelling a shrink-wrapped disc and playing the most popular song off the album as it danced around
- Stack and unstack a series of boxes by color
- Empty garbage, albeit into a pile that was then shovelled into a dumpster
In a way, I think the 'intelligence' behind these robots is more than enough; now it's time to find practical uses for them.The thing to realize is that both sides not only believe they are working towards the greater good but are objectively doing so even with radically different and diametrically opposed 'solutions' to the problem.
It really puts things in perspective to realize not only that each side is right but that there is more to be gained for each to sit down and figure out what to do with the deer in the forest rather than constantly fighting over territory and methodology.
- I choose to support a culture that fosters and encourages the open development of software and hardware, allowing me to profit from the shared wisdom and ability of like-minded people towards the end of commercial lock-in and discouragement of fully enjoying my creative impulses with regards to computing.
- I like not having to pay for software when I don't have to.
The ideals are all well and good, but I wouldn't bet that they are the prime motivation for people to switch. There's very little to be upset about; who cares what the initial reasons are if the end result is more users developing a personal interest and stake in the rationale for open development methods and willingly sharing what they create?Advocates would do better to recognize this than go after this guy for not quite getting the message right -- the users themselves would be quite turned off if they had to understand and adopt the full ideology (never create closed software, try to earn a living off providing support or alternatively as a waiter, never use closed solutions if open solutions exist) before using the software. Carrot before stick and all that.
Databases are a pain to maintain.
As we've heard all along, the law can never catch up with technology. Which is why I feel safe in predicting that the next tracker site in development will actually be hosted on the Moon.
The ISPs are currently cleaning this up by further restricting the level of service offered to home users, but all the legal structures have been in place for a while if the problems were considered to have reasonable priority by the government. But the P2P problem is arguably worse as far as bandwidth and "losses" and that seems to be where the focus is being put for now.
This has some potential for the computer industry in the way of getting us closer to Moore's Law but also paves the way for increasing the amount of malleable logic in what was previously fixed silicon applications.
Of course, nanowire is pretty expensive to produce. Or it used to be...
When and why did they stop the system of releasing stable versions on the even minor releases (2.4.x, 2.6.x, etc.) and unstable/development versions on the odd minor releases (2.5.x, 2.7.x, etc.)?
Traditionally IBM's methodologies have been very close to (and predate) that of open source, which derived much of its culture and programming mindset from that of IBM or Bell Labs. Their documentation as compared to other hardware/software developers has always encouraged the user to learn about and extend the environment in which they work rather than supporting only a superficial "click here, then there" mentality.
IBM has always been good for open source. It makes sense that open source can be good for IBM as well.
Writing decent multithreaded programs is as much a discipline as writing decent object-oriented code (although the two go together well). Basically you break a program into a set of independently-operating 'threads'. Thread safety becomes a concern -- if multiple threads access the same global variable you need a way to lock and unlock access to that variable before changing it. If one thread is beginning to change a string as the other decides to read the string, the second might see the string in a half-written state.
There is also the matter of figuring out how to distribute the load across threads in an efficient manner -- optimally each of two threads would have 50% load, each of three would have 33% load, etc. It's never optimal, of course, and you want to make sure display routines take priority over background routines so the display remains crisp.
I don't think there will be a way to transfer single-threaded programs to hyperthreaded technology and gain full advantage from the latter. As has been said even if you run only single-threaded programs nobody's system runs only one process anymore, but to fully unlock the potential of this technology will require developers to become more familiar and comfortable with multithreaded programming techniques.
Somebody mentioned in an earlier post schemes that could be used to limit the posting ability of an anonymous client without further reducing the anonymity of the client -- captchas discriminate against the blind, but 'hashcash' or having the client system perform a computationally-expensive operation that can be trivially checked at the server seems a practical way to limit flooding at least. But a larger problem cannot be solved by technical means: anonymous posts that create legal problems for public servers.
Avoiding issues with censorship is best left to a closed system where mechanisms for posting. hosting, and reading are all anonymous. Tor, at present, is better for not leaving an easy to follow trail of everything you read online or bypassing webfilters than anything else -- but it offers no protection to the servers one visits with it, and if this wasn't a problem there wouldn't be a demand for anonymizing protocols to start with.
It would be antitrust if they forced another company to do this. Why isn't it antitrust if they're forced to do it by an immensely powerful entity?
It's not like Samba could be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions. They're giving away their product for free! If anything (and I'm not saying this makes sense either) big business should be protected from open source because it wipes out their profits without any commercial gain and impacts taxable income!
What I find a little wierd about the process is that it uses the first instantiated guest OS (running in Domain 0) to handle most of the hardware support. So the first OS is privileged and the rest that are started up are managed by Xen's task-switching and the drivers from the first OS. I don't know for sure that their level of support for Windows XP went as far as permitting it to be that first privileged OS, but I suspect it did.
I'd suggest Xen is less competition to this new initiative and more a learning opportunity for all involved parties to determine ways to integrate virtualized operating systems.
Consequently, I'd say the reporting has gotten better rather than that the companies have gotten worse. Ten years ago privacy wasn't even a concern for customers because few were abusing this information.
I never really understood why they called it identity theft. Much like I can't understand why they call it "stealing" music. Nothing's actually gone -- it's really more of an identity infringement.
- Microsoft Access
- Remote Desktop (graphical -- like sitting at the server console)
- Frontpage
I think a lot of the Unix share is from traditionalists and people who are interested in leveraging proven solutions, but there are a lot of exciting technologies coming from Windows that offer a different way of doing things. It's a little strange using a GUI to administrate a server, but it makes installation and maintenance a lot easier when you have the features built in rather than having to grab or build a script for everything.A game that is not multithreaded or otherwise multiprocessor aware won't, by itself, run any faster. But the virus scanner, instant messenger, firewall, and seven pieces of spyware running in the background of the average Windows system will cause less processing interference with said game if the operating system does its job.
As these things become more ubiquitous, game programmers will take advantage of their features much as they have graphics and sound. The advantage isn't worth the $500-$1000 premium, but there will be benefits to this technology down the road for even the average user as developers become acquainted with optimizing towards the design.
Google returns a lot of results.