Many people have critiqued the manner in which Andre choose to respond. I found it eccentric and amusing. He didn't seem overly sparse on technical considerations of the hardware in question, although admitedly I know nothing in detail of the ATA spec. He was writing for specialist audience.
What really intrigued me though, [and which I have not yet read any comments in regard to] is what exactly did he mean by
Ths proposal has more uses
than what it is listed. It also used this
stuff that is already in the market that
you do not know about but use,
SURPRISE!!!! (I was also surprised).
in regards to unique serial numbers on media? Hmm. Makes me wonder about that registration card I sent in for my CDR, as well as all that cheap [with rebates] CDR media out there.
The pen is mighter then the sword. The sword is mighter then the court. The court is mighter then the pen.
...molotov cocktails, or destroying the obligatory local McDonalds resteraunt franchiser's property. This was at least only intellectual violence and vandalism, somewhat of a step up compared to the average vitriolic thuggishness embraced by the modern anti-capitalists, anarchists, and the like.
Still, the later continuation of the prank with the, ahem, joke about the 'pieing' of the man turning out to have been a method for the delivery of botulism toxin... Biological warfare; of course, they are only joking, right? Still, as real-world pies in the face have become a popular mechanism for delivery of some subversive shaming dissent [or, to be more honest, of symbolic violence. Of demonstrating to someone that you can get to them physically, and that your ilk might not always be only packing a meringue to assult them with].
Linux is absolutely amazing for typical workstation class systems, but the one place that it seriously lacks in comparision to the other serious [and propriatary] unix'es [unices?] is in support for really big systems.
What, you say? Isn't linux used on many supercomputer class systems, and heck, IBM even ported it to the S390! Well, yes... and no.
On clusters, linux is an excellent choice, due to it's efficiency and perhaps especially due to it's lack of licensing costs/hassels. But the key thing with clusters is that they are just that, clusters of workstation class machines. The `big'ness of them comes from the parallelism of many small machines working together, which it turns out is quite usefull for certain classes of a problems.
The S390 linux port is the same sort of thing. A massive big iron system, running hundreds of different simultanious copies of linux, each in it's own virtualized address space. Linux couldn't manage the resources and power of the entire machine, but as a 'process' in it, it does just fine; and this too is usefull, for say, consolidating what would otherwise have required rooms of rackmounts, with their own upkeep hassle, into one box [plus, cluster type applications can take advantage of the much faster [then ethernet] internal system bus for message passing, thus achieving comparatively much better performance then `real' clusters.
So, to make a long story short, what does linux really need? Big iron stuff: quality NUMA integrated into the memory management code [as a compile-time option, of course]. True support for high order SMP [say, 64 or 256 processors] and all that that requires [such as distributed kernel threads across multiple CPU's].
One of the problems, of course, is that adding this extra architecture into the kernel would slow it down on good old fashioned workstations, which is where linux is [currently] almost exclusively used [although that S390 thing rocks!]....Now, if only this could all somehow be a compile time option, that would be spectacular. The problem, though, is that we are talking about significant differences in basic architecture and of what the kernel has to worry about, these are significant design decisions. I don't think it's as easy as putting a few #ifdefs in the source.
In the case you mention, IBM acquired the company. They bought it, they owned it, it became a part of IBM; although claiming that the original innovations of that company had come from IBM is a bit of a semantic stretch by implying that the research resources of IBM had been capable of achieving those results, when in fact IBM had simply bought it, it is not precisely technically inacurate.
As linux is GPL'd, IBM could never do such a thing with it. I hope that IBM's motives are sincere, and I have no reason to think they neccesarily aren't... The comoditization of OS's may well be in their strateig favor, if they want to focus on being a hardware, and software, and services, provider.
The real results will speak for themselves. Either IBM will actually commit significant coding resources/assets to linux [necessarily under the GPL], or they won't. I of course hope for the latter.
I have noticed several posts which have expressed some concern with the idea of NSA produced/approved code getting into the kernel, and therefore concievably providing a covert insurgence of back doors.
...Uhm, have you ever read the source for the D. Beckers networking drivers [and derived code]?
Go to/usr/src/linux/drivers/net and run
"grep "National Security Agency" *"
Oh NO! All of those unaudited strcpy's in kernel space! IEEE! And I thought linux was safe! hehe.
When I was a senior in high school, I happened to be taking AP U.S. government [one of several AP classes]. I had this little habit, though; I generally refused to do excess homework or busywork, instead demonstrating my knowledge via do excellently on tests.
Well, this particular teacher very heavily weighted the [massive!] quantity of busy-work she assigned. Thus, I ended up making an F in the course...
However, I happened to make a 5 [a perfect score] on the AP exam. And, even though this qualified me as having two semesters worth of college credit on the subject, and I was one of only three students to make a 5... I was required to take remedial US gov in summer school to earn my diploma.
At the time, it almost seemed like something out of Gilliam's Brazil. Ah well, memories...
Huh? It would appear that linux-gnu systems have contributed an infinite ammount of computation to the project!
6) linux-gnu 12672647 NaN years 2147483647 hr 2147483647 min 0NaN sec
Weird! heh.
here
I'm not a big fan of anime, [perhaps only as a result of underexposure... but, I don't tend to watch movies at all in the first place... Given free time, I would rather read]
...but I must say, from briefly visiting the website of the film, it does appear to be heavily political. Quite pro-environmentalist, anti technologist [the evil poluters]. Is this accurate?
Installation of a new sshd shouldn't change it. The host key is stored in it's own file [generally in/etc/ssh_host_key*]. Upgrading, changing, rebooting... Unless the backup of/etc is changed, or the system is compromised [thus necessitating a new key], then there is no reason for it to ever be changed!
Buying a linux game is not only a sweet gift to someone who really deserves one [for running linux in the first place], but also an oppurtunity to support linux applications in the marketplace.
It's pretty rare when buying a gift for someone you care about can have a significant external benefit!
Seriously, if people don't buy for-linux games, they are going to dissapear. I myself have been guilty of this, and I am going to rectify this.
Hm. You know, when I was a teenager, I used to covertly berate my friends and somewhat lose respect for them over the quantity of their lives they spent on what I could argue as a significant underutilization of their free time via obsessively playing console games. [It saddened me, I knew someone who would play super mario brothers for over two hours a day, but never got around to reading].
Anyway, I never really understood gaming obsession, although I had [as a youngster] quite enjoyed some infocom offerings, such as starcrossed, infidel [and of -course- zork].
...until one day I had the foolishness to install quake. Oh my.
I became completely immersed in the game; my psyche simplified down to an exclusive focus on the reward and happiness of getting the hard to find ammo units, the special armour, the medi-packs. Nothing else mattered. I would sit in the dark, face up against the screen, all of my emotional energy and self focused entirely into the world of the game. And it intellectually challenging at all. I'm kind of ashamed of myself in retrospect.;)
I was no better then those I had once used to berate for becoming obsessed with super mario [Which, BTW, has some -strange- symbolism. I did always like the fact that you had to slam your head into brick walls constantly to earn happy money coins. I'm not even going to go into a freudian intrepetation of the mushrooms you had to squash...]
That's more then just a little hyperbole, don't you think? When one considers the ammount of time that people watch television, I doubt very much that gaming comes anywhere near.
There is some excellent reporting on the whole FCC micro-radio topic
here, and also
here
These were written a few monthes back, and don't apply to the recent stupidity of congress. They are, however, an excellent review of issue of the FCC and their recent positions on micro-radio.
A port scan is not necessarily an attempt to subvert a system. It can be a sympton of mere curiousity, wanting to get a fingerprint to satisfy ones wonder as to what OS a particular system is running. In that sense, it's not really that different then running a traceroute.
Perhaps it's just the accuracy of the response rates [for internet ad's] that's upsetting the advertisers. Unlike magazine ads or commercial television, they actually have an accurate indication of how many people showed an interest in response to the ad... And these numbers are very unpleasantly low, in their books.
But, to be honest, I don't think I have ever bought anything as a result of a television or magazine advertisement in my life! I may have visited a store because of an advertised 'extreme sale' or somesuch, but only to browse and usually only to buy a loss-leader item and leave thereafter. [I am an extremely conscienctious consumer, dedicated to buying the best products at minimal cost.]
If you use emacs or gnus for your email, you can add M-x spook to email
(add-hook 'mail-setup-hook 'spook)
easily enough, which does this automatically for you.
I just find it annoying in letters to coworkers, my grandmother, etc.
Plus, that means that my unencrypted traffic is all the more likely to be scrutinized.
If everyone did it, sure. But it's not very frequent.
Mortality is an evil bitch goddess. When I was four years something happened that would forever change me, and profoundly impact my life. I realized that I was going to die. Not believeing particularly in an afterlife, this was a monumentally horrifying thing for my young mind to grasp. Even now, thinking of it fills me with a sense of vast melancholy.
I have been unable to discover any proof whatsoever as to the existance of an afterlife, indeed, all available data seems to strongly indicate that the spark of self and sentience that I treasure within me is a mecahnical product of
gene competition, and that when I die, all that I have thought and felt, all that I am, all the rich textures of experience and being encoded in the neuralogical circuitry of my brain will dissapate and rot, fading into entropy and erasure.
Anyway, enough with the mawkish sentiments! I haven't slept in too long. Sure, that's it. Just need to get the day going right, read the morning paper and be about my meary way. heh
Seriously, though. I have been looking into life extension via caloric reduction for a good while now. From what I understand, it has shown to be remarkably effective in creatures as minor as flanaria [mircoscopic flatworms], all the way up to mice, shrews, small mammels. IF started in the human equivilent of the mid-twenties, the projections are that a human being may have a life expectancy of around 120, maybe more [maybe far less, experimental results are hard with people, we're going to have to wait a long while, obviousl].
And it's by no means certain that you would spend that time senile. Animals actually seem quite noticably and verifiably to age more slowly. Thus, you would have the physical form of a 40 year old when you were around 55, etc.
In experiments with rheuses monkeys that have been going on for a several years now, the calorie-restricted one's actually had the hormonal balances of much younger ones, and no grey hairs like the control group has begun to develop.
Anyway, take it all with a grain of salt. [Oh wait, that's too much salt, sorry, half a grain!]
The major secret to the technique is to ensure that you recieve wholly adequate nutrition, r.e. vitamins, protein, proper trace minerals, but a lot less calories they your body thinks it needs. This seems to cause the body to slow down.
There is a good source of more information here
Be carefull, this can be dangerous if not done rihgt. I've thought of doing it myself, but I just like food so much! Heh. Actually, my greatest concern is in possibly neurological consequences, I don't want to risk subtly damaging or slowing down my brain in any way. Perhaps this new years resolution will be to flirt with trying it?
--- man sig
Scanning email takes no human intervention, unlike
on
The Encryption Wars
·
· Score: 2
Your comparision is flawed in comparing the lack of privacy in unshredded trash to a communication that is already in an easily machine readable form on a public network. Sure, someone could go through your trash, but the government or other entity can install a few small extremely cheap boxes at each city dump and have them automatically categorize and sort through everyones trash, and map it all back to the household of origin.
You're point on credit cards is valid, however. Credit card transactions can say a lot about a person, leaving an audit trail of their economic interactions [at least when using them]. Of course, this is unlikely to come near the level of personal exposure that one's writings, one's supposedly private communications with friends, collegues, family, potential buisness partners, etc, would have.
--- man sig
Use encryption needlessly, constantly! [MUCH MORE]
on
The Encryption Wars
·
· Score: 5
If there is one most singularly important lesson to learn from this, it is USE ENCRYPTION CONSTANTLY, WHENEVER YOU CAN, AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE (Pardon the theatrics)
To be honest, if you are the sort who has been reading slashdot for a while, you already know this arguement well, and I see no need to hash it out as if I have anything brilliant to add to it, except for this little nugget of nike-ism. Just DO it. It's one thing to sit around on your buttocks [face it, you generally are when you are at a terminal] and do nothing about it, reveling in the possibilities of this marvelous new [well, sort of;) ] networked media demense we inhabit, knowing full and well that privacy and anonymity are extremely important issues as society as a whole continues to evolve in it's relation with and reaction to the possibilities of abbundant internetworked end to end communications between private citizens [and don't forget to throw in the presence of rapidly increasing affordable bandwidth].
It's easy for many of us to say, yes, encryption is important certainly, not enough people are using it such that resources could concievably be targetted at those few who actually bother, but it's someone elses problem.
It's too much of an inconvienience to use PGP or GPG with any regularly, and besides, what's the point when most people you dialog with in email don't use it? There is a point, and an important one. Either the citizinry will manage to somehow wake up and start taking it's privacy and security into it's own hands, or personal privacy will continue to wither away. Too many other people have some feeling that their interactions
on the net are anonymous, when this is so far from the truth.
If the U.S. postal system were to work as the internet, where every letter sent can be readily and [at virtually no cost in human labor] inspected thoruoughly by the government or other bodies, people would be outraged. But they feel that these sorts of things just don't happen, that it won't happen to them. And, frankly, many people are hopelessly confused about how computers or networks work at all. To them a computer is often just a fancy typewriter and info kiosk.
People like us need to start to devote some time to serious personal, grass roots activism, to widen the pool of people using encryption.
Becuase it's only at the grass roots level that their is any liklihood of it actually happening. Perhaps something could be established vaguely [in spirit, certainly not implementation, I'm talking in sweeping generalities about the possible social dynamic] like the RBL. I don't mean a central server or list of people who do/don't use encryption, I mean instead a system whereby people would feel some penalty or disinsintive if they are not using encryption themselves.
...Perhaps some sort of extension to sendmail and friends, whereby a simple script configuration could activate a mode wherein outgoing emails [probably only of willing participants, I wouldn't want to be overbearing or myself lessen anyones freedom to use the network as I choose, no matter how foolishly]
...wherin outgoing emails would initially be automatically encrypted [say, as a mime attachment to another, autogenerated email, whose body would inform the recipient that they have recieved an email from so-and-so, but that this person values their privacy and dosen't want anyone with good network or social/political real-estate to be able to read their personal communication to them. It could include perhaps a link to an advocacy site, explaining the whole purpose and ideas behind encryption being a Good Thing, as well as simple and transparent to use backend clients to download for all the major platforms, that could just as transparently decrypt and deliver the message as if it had never been encrypted.
For those who chose [probably most, for I probably wouldn't want all of my email to be completely unreadable by those who didn't agree to run software I liked, even if it was free and open], there could be additional details in the email message to allow for the recipient to respond in a certain way and recieve the unencrypted version. Something akin to the process of confirmation from a mail server, for instance.
The inconvinience would be a key aspect, for it would turn the tables; wheras now it is more inconvienient for someone to bother with setting up encryption.
Now I know this is asking a lot, and I don't imagine very many of you have bothered to read this far, but it's something to think about.
lesson to be learned from this, it is a l
I don't know. You certainly may be right as far as moronic buisness strategy, but a good while ago I used to get a lot of work done in Corel Draw [years ago, back when I was still dual-booting]. I hated having to shut down my system just to fiddle with graphics, so I largely stopped, and then came to enjoy the gimp.
But I have still always missed the vector-drawing / layout aspect of the Draw program. I did some neat zines, did layout for a local weekly, it was really pretty powerfull [and cheap] when you got the hang of it.
I was very seriously tempted to buy the Corel Draw for linux package, until a friend of mine was foolish enough to buy the wordperfect office suite. Not only did it have the indignity of insisting on installing itself all over the bloody filesystem, [as opposed to in one or two directories or usr/local like any proper unix package should [or can at least be coaxed to with a bit of bash scullduggery]]. Not only did it insist on installing init some unstable init font server...
But it also had this little problem of not running at all whatsoever. Yes, that's right. He paid 90$ for a nice shiny coaster in a big box. The software would immediately go into an infinite look of forked processes dumping core constantly whenever he would try to start it. He stripped out his version of wine, no good. He installed the samba off of the "Corel Linux" CD, no good. He finally gave up.
A real shame, as I would have been happy to give then 200$ for CorelDraw, if it actually worked at all.
BTW, does anyone know if this was just an issue with wordperfect office, or of anyway around it short of ditching your own installation and dual booting into "Corel Linux"?
Yes, this isn't a particularly insightfull post. I'm tired. Must get back to work. Haven't slept in 40 hours.
Sorry I don't have more time to respond to your thoughtfull comment in depth right not. I will try to get back to it this weekend in more depth.
...
There is a critical difference between a monopoly of supply [which can often lead to a very inelastic supply curve], and a glut or oversupply of unwanted labor. It amuses me somewhat that so many people decry capitalism as evil, when in a truly competitive market there will only ever be an oppurtunity for most to make a 'normal', or break even profit [a return on their investments as good as they could get from anywhere else available to them].
A perfect example of nearly pure competition is would be in the agricultural markets [yes, I know much of it is subsidized by the government] and in any industry that possesses a large amount of small players who sell identical nondiferentiated products. [Say, gravel, or hogs].
At this point, the central competitive question comes down to one of efficiency and meritocracy of the producers, but even then, this will tend to lower possible profit over time, as the skills and innovations developed by one are gradually adopted or improved upon by others.
At which point, goods become cheaper, and the overal wealth of society as a whole increases, as their is more productivity. [Which of course translates into lower costs for consumers as well, as it no longer requires as much of someone else's time or effort to produce something].
The problem is, in america [although less so then the rest of the world, frighteningly enough], the market really isn't all that free.
Damn. I'm beggining to ramble. I need to get back to work. [Software due on a deadline, fast approaching, I haven't slept in 40 hours!]
The american people. You are forgeting that these companies are publicly held. I, like most of the middle class, have had a lot of money in the stock market. [I took most of it out about a year ago, due to realization of the bubble, and am glad I did; I do, however, intend to put most of my a good percentage of assets back in it again at some point]
When companies profit, and the stock market goes up, the american public profits enormously. Ever heard of the wealth effect?
P.S. Huge layoffs are good. They generally indicate that the company was losing money or performing less efficiently then other firms in the marketplace. The labor that would otherwise have remained at the firm would have been producing less real wealth per unit of effort then they will once they find another job in a better managed or more modern firm that is more equiped to the ever changing demands of the marketplace.
What do you think the huge problem has been in japan and germany, of late? The notion of entitlement to a job for life. The idea that one should somehow own the job one is employed at and have an expecation, nay, a right to it, regardless that it is not a worthwhile utilization of your labor compared to other oppurtunities. This leads to stagnation and inefficency, and less real wealth generation [and therefore greater poverty] for society as a whole.
Ask most any contractor who has been involved in 'temp' labor, and they will tell you that their pay scale is significantly higher then that of full time workers for the same job.
There have been several posts to that effect just in this discussion. I personally know someone who was offered full time employment on two occasions before he accepted it, because it involved a significant reduction in his pay.
You are failing to think about basic economics here. We don't live in some simplistic populist jingoism pipe-nightmare [vs. pipe-dream] of evil corperations opressing poor workers. Workers, myself included, voluntarily sell our labor to firms that desire it to our mutual benefit.
If anything, forced state regulation and forced benefit packages, by changing the underlieing economic situation and forcing coorperations to pay for many things that I don't necessarily want them to pay for, or even use or find advantage from are actually evil, not the corperations who want to purchase my labor. Any contractor, [indeed, ideally, any laborer] is a buisness, a minitaure firm in and of themselves, looking to negotiate the best profit that they can from what price the market will bear for their services.
State regulation and forced 'benefits' are of no benefit, they merely
A: reduce the salary the company can afford to pay me [thus locking a good part of the money I earn into the 'benefits' the state thinks are appropriate for my interests, vs. my own conception and determination of my interests]
B: Put me in a situation [r.e. the results of this lawsuit and similar ones, to the degree that it sets a precedent] where the company will fear being liable if it actually keeps me on as a worker, thus you hear about intel preventing anyone from -ever- working for them for more then 2 years total in their lives, and microsoft having to fire competant temps who enjoyed willingly working there [and getting paid more then the forced 'benefit'ed official full timers] after a fixed period, [6 months, if I recall, and they have to wait at least 100 days before they can reapply].
The only person who is having his freedom lessened is the temp worker, in the name of the nanny-state knowing what is really good for him.
The real irony is that the forced benefits laws are enacted in the sincere belief that they will better the state of the worker, but this is naive and flies in the face of any economic reality. The 'benefits' are a big piece of the total dollar figure that the firm considers you to be worth and thus are willing to pay.
I mean, aside from the fact that we all despise microsoft per se, is this necessarily a good thing? Temp agencies have done much to contribute to flexibility both for the companies who hire [they have the option of contracting for labor when needed], and for workers [whose skills are commodified, allowing them to move from assignment to assignment with a great deal of flexibility and variety].
Most importantly, though, is that temp work allows the circumvention of what some would say can be rather rigid state-mandated benefits packages, which significantly increase the cost of labor, and more importantly decrease the freedom of a worker required to recieve those benefits to concievably use those resources to some other better purpose or utility of their own choosing.
Face it, the marginal decision as to whether or not to hire a worker is based two primary factors, the benefit of the work recieved, and the cost of paying for it. In traditional regulated full time labor large companies are required to offer all sorts of benefits, [many of which are of no use to some workers, i.e. paid family leave is required, but some workers are single and never have any oppurtunity to take advantage of it, nonetheless, it is factored into the cost of their employment and the determination of their salary].
If rigid benefits packages weren't required, workers would have higher salaries as a result, and be able to utilize that money however they wanted, being it taking a vacation, purchasing quality health coverage [or passing over health coverage for the less risk-averse].
Temp agencies have come to allow a circumvention of these rigid requirements, to the benefit of both the workers and the employer. Now that this 'loophole' is being closed up, do you think there will be nearly as many temp jobs available at microsoft [or other companies]? Nope. They will have to make sure that the workers really are temporary; people will be let go when they would otherwise have been kept on [and been wholly willing to do so as well] because, although their positions are justifiable without benefits [and obviously desirable by the workers, or they wouldn't be working there in the first place], they won't be with them.
It is a true shame that some people some an oppurtunity to exploit the system and argue that they had a right to the traditional entitlements, even though that hadn't been part of the deal, and thus ruin it for future temp workers who liked the idea of contractual integrity.
As I understand it, a virtualized OS has any attempt it should make to access hardware intercepted and replaced with some appropriate emulated equivilent. I assume that Plex86 therefore simulates vga or vesa video (so that the simulated OS can think it is talking to a video card), and then represents what would have been the resulting image on a real screen, if it was talking to a real card, as a data structure that can be displayed, say, under X-windows.
What I would like to know is: what do you see in the somewhat immediate [that is, forseeable and not imaginary] horizon r.e. virtualization of other windows hardware access? A sound card certainly comes to mind, but of even more use would be, say, parallel port access [for printer drivers [or my nifty Dazzle DVC mpeg1 encoder]:) ]. Can't we slackers ever get enough?!
Seriously, though, you've done an amazing job, and I can't help but proffer my enormous respect for the fact that you struggled on for so long on Bochs without -any- support. You are an ideal incarnation of the true hacker ethic; my kudos.
Slashdot Mirror
What really intrigued me though, [and which I have not yet read any comments in regard to] is what exactly did he mean by
in regards to unique serial numbers on media? Hmm. Makes me wonder about that registration card I sent in for my CDR, as well as all that cheap [with rebates] CDR media out there.
The pen is mighter then the sword. The sword is mighter then the court. The court is mighter then the pen.
---
...molotov cocktails, or destroying the obligatory local McDonalds resteraunt franchiser's property. This was at least only intellectual violence and vandalism, somewhat of a step up compared to the average vitriolic thuggishness embraced by the modern anti-capitalists, anarchists, and the like.
Still, the later continuation of the prank with the, ahem, joke about the 'pieing' of the man turning out to have been a method for the delivery of botulism toxin... Biological warfare; of course, they are only joking, right? Still, as real-world pies in the face have become a popular mechanism for delivery of some subversive shaming dissent [or, to be more honest, of symbolic violence. Of demonstrating to someone that you can get to them physically, and that your ilk might not always be only packing a meringue to assult them with].
---
man sig
---
Linux is absolutely amazing for typical workstation class systems, but the one place that it seriously lacks in comparision to the other serious [and propriatary] unix'es [unices?] is in support for really big systems.
...Now, if only this could all somehow be a compile time option, that would be spectacular. The problem, though, is that we are talking about significant differences in basic architecture and of what the kernel has to worry about, these are significant design decisions. I don't think it's as easy as putting a few #ifdefs in the source.
What, you say? Isn't linux used on many supercomputer class systems, and heck, IBM even ported it to the S390! Well, yes... and no.
On clusters, linux is an excellent choice, due to it's efficiency and perhaps especially due to it's lack of licensing costs/hassels. But the key thing with clusters is that they are just that, clusters of workstation class machines. The `big'ness of them comes from the parallelism of many small machines working together, which it turns out is quite usefull for certain classes of a problems.
The S390 linux port is the same sort of thing. A massive big iron system, running hundreds of different simultanious copies of linux, each in it's own virtualized address space. Linux couldn't manage the resources and power of the entire machine, but as a 'process' in it, it does just fine; and this too is usefull, for say, consolidating what would otherwise have required rooms of rackmounts, with their own upkeep hassle, into one box [plus, cluster type applications can take advantage of the much faster [then ethernet] internal system bus for message passing, thus achieving comparatively much better performance then `real' clusters.
So, to make a long story short, what does linux really need? Big iron stuff: quality NUMA integrated into the memory management code [as a compile-time option, of course]. True support for high order SMP [say, 64 or 256 processors] and all that that requires [such as distributed kernel threads across multiple CPU's].
One of the problems, of course, is that adding this extra architecture into the kernel would slow it down on good old fashioned workstations, which is where linux is [currently] almost exclusively used [although that S390 thing rocks!].
---
man sig
In the case you mention, IBM acquired the company. They bought it, they owned it, it became a part of IBM; although claiming that the original innovations of that company had come from IBM is a bit of a semantic stretch by implying that the research resources of IBM had been capable of achieving those results, when in fact IBM had simply bought it, it is not precisely technically inacurate.
As linux is GPL'd, IBM could never do such a thing with it. I hope that IBM's motives are sincere, and I have no reason to think they neccesarily aren't... The comoditization of OS's may well be in their strateig favor, if they want to focus on being a hardware, and software, and services, provider.
The real results will speak for themselves. Either IBM will actually commit significant coding resources/assets to linux [necessarily under the GPL], or they won't. I of course hope for the latter.
---
man sig
I have noticed several posts which have expressed some concern with the idea of NSA produced/approved code getting into the kernel, and therefore concievably providing a covert insurgence of back doors.
...Uhm, have you ever read the source for the D. Beckers networking drivers [and derived code]?
/usr/src/linux/drivers/net and run
"grep "National Security Agency" *"
Go to
Oh NO! All of those unaudited strcpy's in kernel space! IEEE! And I thought linux was safe! hehe.
Moderators::Note(humor)
---
man sig
When I was a senior in high school, I happened to be taking AP U.S. government [one of several AP classes]. I had this little habit, though; I generally refused to do excess homework or busywork, instead demonstrating my knowledge via do excellently on tests.
Well, this particular teacher very heavily weighted the [massive!] quantity of busy-work she assigned. Thus, I ended up making an F in the course...
However, I happened to make a 5 [a perfect score] on the AP exam. And, even though this qualified me as having two semesters worth of college credit on the subject, and I was one of only three students to make a 5... I was required to take remedial US gov in summer school to earn my diploma.
At the time, it almost seemed like something out of Gilliam's Brazil. Ah well, memories...
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Huh? It would appear that linux-gnu systems have contributed an infinite ammount of computation to the project! 6) linux-gnu 12672647 NaN years 2147483647 hr 2147483647 min 0NaN sec Weird! heh. here
I'm not a big fan of anime, [perhaps only as a result of underexposure... but, I don't tend to watch movies at all in the first place... Given free time, I would rather read]
...but I must say, from briefly visiting the website of the film, it does appear to be heavily political. Quite pro-environmentalist, anti technologist [the evil poluters]. Is this accurate?
Installation of a new sshd shouldn't change it. The host key is stored in it's own file [generally in /etc/ssh_host_key*]. Upgrading, changing, rebooting... Unless the backup of /etc is changed, or the system is compromised [thus necessitating a new key], then there is no reason for it to ever be changed!
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Buying a linux game is not only a sweet gift to someone who really deserves one [for running linux in the first place], but also an oppurtunity to support linux applications in the marketplace.
It's pretty rare when buying a gift for someone you care about can have a significant external benefit!
Seriously, if people don't buy for-linux games, they are going to dissapear. I myself have been guilty of this, and I am going to rectify this.
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Hm. You know, when I was a teenager, I used to covertly berate my friends and somewhat lose respect for them over the quantity of their lives they spent on what I could argue as a significant underutilization of their free time via obsessively playing console games. [It saddened me, I knew someone who would play super mario brothers for over two hours a day, but never got around to reading].
...until one day I had the foolishness to install quake. Oh my.
;)
Anyway, I never really understood gaming obsession, although I had [as a youngster] quite enjoyed some infocom offerings, such as starcrossed, infidel [and of -course- zork].
I became completely immersed in the game; my psyche simplified down to an exclusive focus on the reward and happiness of getting the hard to find ammo units, the special armour, the medi-packs. Nothing else mattered. I would sit in the dark, face up against the screen, all of my emotional energy and self focused entirely into the world of the game. And it intellectually challenging at all. I'm kind of ashamed of myself in retrospect.
I was no better then those I had once used to berate for becoming obsessed with super mario [Which, BTW, has some -strange- symbolism. I did always like the fact that you had to slam your head into brick walls constantly to earn happy money coins. I'm not even going to go into a freudian intrepetation of the mushrooms you had to squash...]
Moderators::Note(humor)
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That's more then just a little hyperbole, don't you think? When one considers the ammount of time that people watch television, I doubt very much that gaming comes anywhere near.
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There is some excellent reporting on the whole FCC micro-radio topic here, and also here
These were written a few monthes back, and don't apply to the recent stupidity of congress. They are, however, an excellent review of issue of the FCC and their recent positions on micro-radio.
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A port scan is not necessarily an attempt to subvert a system. It can be a sympton of mere curiousity, wanting to get a fingerprint to satisfy ones wonder as to what OS a particular system is running. In that sense, it's not really that different then running a traceroute.
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Perhaps it's just the accuracy of the response rates [for internet ad's] that's upsetting the advertisers. Unlike magazine ads or commercial television, they actually have an accurate indication of how many people showed an interest in response to the ad... And these numbers are very unpleasantly low, in their books.
But, to be honest, I don't think I have ever bought anything as a result of a television or magazine advertisement in my life! I may have visited a store because of an advertised 'extreme sale' or somesuch, but only to browse and usually only to buy a loss-leader item and leave thereafter. [I am an extremely conscienctious consumer, dedicated to buying the best products at minimal cost.]
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If you use emacs or gnus for your email, you can add M-x spook to email
(add-hook 'mail-setup-hook 'spook)
easily enough, which does this automatically for you.
I just find it annoying in letters to coworkers, my grandmother, etc.
Plus, that means that my unencrypted traffic is all the more likely to be scrutinized. If everyone did it, sure. But it's not very frequent.
Mortality is an evil bitch goddess. When I was four years something happened that would forever change me, and profoundly impact my life. I realized that I was going to die. Not believeing particularly in an afterlife, this was a monumentally horrifying thing for my young mind to grasp. Even now, thinking of it fills me with a sense of vast melancholy.
I have been unable to discover any proof whatsoever as to the existance of an afterlife, indeed, all available data seems to strongly indicate that the spark of self and sentience that I treasure within me is a mecahnical product of gene competition, and that when I die, all that I have thought and felt, all that I am, all the rich textures of experience and being encoded in the neuralogical circuitry of my brain will dissapate and rot, fading into entropy and erasure.
Anyway, enough with the mawkish sentiments! I haven't slept in too long. Sure, that's it. Just need to get the day going right, read the morning paper and be about my meary way. heh
Seriously, though. I have been looking into life extension via caloric reduction for a good while now. From what I understand, it has shown to be remarkably effective in creatures as minor as flanaria [mircoscopic flatworms], all the way up to mice, shrews, small mammels. IF started in the human equivilent of the mid-twenties, the projections are that a human being may have a life expectancy of around 120, maybe more [maybe far less, experimental results are hard with people, we're going to have to wait a long while, obviousl].
And it's by no means certain that you would spend that time senile. Animals actually seem quite noticably and verifiably to age more slowly. Thus, you would have the physical form of a 40 year old when you were around 55, etc. In experiments with rheuses monkeys that have been going on for a several years now, the calorie-restricted one's actually had the hormonal balances of much younger ones, and no grey hairs like the control group has begun to develop.
Anyway, take it all with a grain of salt. [Oh wait, that's too much salt, sorry, half a grain!]
The major secret to the technique is to ensure that you recieve wholly adequate nutrition, r.e. vitamins, protein, proper trace minerals, but a lot less calories they your body thinks it needs. This seems to cause the body to slow down.
There is a good source of more information here
Be carefull, this can be dangerous if not done rihgt. I've thought of doing it myself, but I just like food so much! Heh. Actually, my greatest concern is in possibly neurological consequences, I don't want to risk subtly damaging or slowing down my brain in any way. Perhaps this new years resolution will be to flirt with trying it?
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Your comparision is flawed in comparing the lack of privacy in unshredded trash to a communication that is already in an easily machine readable form on a public network. Sure, someone could go through your trash, but the government or other entity can install a few small extremely cheap boxes at each city dump and have them automatically categorize and sort through everyones trash, and map it all back to the household of origin.
You're point on credit cards is valid, however. Credit card transactions can say a lot about a person, leaving an audit trail of their economic interactions [at least when using them]. Of course, this is unlikely to come near the level of personal exposure that one's writings, one's supposedly private communications with friends, collegues, family, potential buisness partners, etc, would have.
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If there is one most singularly important lesson to learn from this, it is USE ENCRYPTION CONSTANTLY, WHENEVER YOU CAN, AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE (Pardon the theatrics)
;) ] networked media demense we inhabit, knowing full and well that privacy and anonymity are extremely important issues as society as a whole continues to evolve in it's relation with and reaction to the possibilities of abbundant internetworked end to end communications between private citizens [and don't forget to throw in the presence of rapidly increasing affordable bandwidth].
...Perhaps some sort of extension to sendmail and friends, whereby a simple script configuration could activate a mode wherein outgoing emails [probably only of willing participants, I wouldn't want to be overbearing or myself lessen anyones freedom to use the network as I choose, no matter how foolishly]
...wherin outgoing emails would initially be automatically encrypted [say, as a mime attachment to another, autogenerated email, whose body would inform the recipient that they have recieved an email from so-and-so, but that this person values their privacy and dosen't want anyone with good network or social/political real-estate to be able to read their personal communication to them. It could include perhaps a link to an advocacy site, explaining the whole purpose and ideas behind encryption being a Good Thing, as well as simple and transparent to use backend clients to download for all the major platforms, that could just as transparently decrypt and deliver the message as if it had never been encrypted.
To be honest, if you are the sort who has been reading slashdot for a while, you already know this arguement well, and I see no need to hash it out as if I have anything brilliant to add to it, except for this little nugget of nike-ism. Just DO it. It's one thing to sit around on your buttocks [face it, you generally are when you are at a terminal] and do nothing about it, reveling in the possibilities of this marvelous new [well, sort of
It's easy for many of us to say, yes, encryption is important certainly, not enough people are using it such that resources could concievably be targetted at those few who actually bother, but it's someone elses problem.
It's too much of an inconvienience to use PGP or GPG with any regularly, and besides, what's the point when most people you dialog with in email don't use it? There is a point, and an important one. Either the citizinry will manage to somehow wake up and start taking it's privacy and security into it's own hands, or personal privacy will continue to wither away. Too many other people have some feeling that their interactions on the net are anonymous, when this is so far from the truth.
If the U.S. postal system were to work as the internet, where every letter sent can be readily and [at virtually no cost in human labor] inspected thoruoughly by the government or other bodies, people would be outraged. But they feel that these sorts of things just don't happen, that it won't happen to them. And, frankly, many people are hopelessly confused about how computers or networks work at all. To them a computer is often just a fancy typewriter and info kiosk.
People like us need to start to devote some time to serious personal, grass roots activism, to widen the pool of people using encryption.
Becuase it's only at the grass roots level that their is any liklihood of it actually happening. Perhaps something could be established vaguely [in spirit, certainly not implementation, I'm talking in sweeping generalities about the possible social dynamic] like the RBL. I don't mean a central server or list of people who do/don't use encryption, I mean instead a system whereby people would feel some penalty or disinsintive if they are not using encryption themselves.
For those who chose [probably most, for I probably wouldn't want all of my email to be completely unreadable by those who didn't agree to run software I liked, even if it was free and open], there could be additional details in the email message to allow for the recipient to respond in a certain way and recieve the unencrypted version. Something akin to the process of confirmation from a mail server, for instance.
The inconvinience would be a key aspect, for it would turn the tables; wheras now it is more inconvienient for someone to bother with setting up encryption.
Now I know this is asking a lot, and I don't imagine very many of you have bothered to read this far, but it's something to think about. lesson to be learned from this, it is a l
I don't know. You certainly may be right as far as moronic buisness strategy, but a good while ago I used to get a lot of work done in Corel Draw [years ago, back when I was still dual-booting]. I hated having to shut down my system just to fiddle with graphics, so I largely stopped, and then came to enjoy the gimp.
But I have still always missed the vector-drawing / layout aspect of the Draw program. I did some neat zines, did layout for a local weekly, it was really pretty powerfull [and cheap] when you got the hang of it.
I was very seriously tempted to buy the Corel Draw for linux package, until a friend of mine was foolish enough to buy the wordperfect office suite. Not only did it have the indignity of insisting on installing itself all over the bloody filesystem, [as opposed to in one or two directories or usr/local like any proper unix package should [or can at least be coaxed to with a bit of bash scullduggery]]. Not only did it insist on installing init some unstable init font server...
But it also had this little problem of not running at all whatsoever. Yes, that's right. He paid 90$ for a nice shiny coaster in a big box. The software would immediately go into an infinite look of forked processes dumping core constantly whenever he would try to start it. He stripped out his version of wine, no good. He installed the samba off of the "Corel Linux" CD, no good. He finally gave up.
A real shame, as I would have been happy to give then 200$ for CorelDraw, if it actually worked at all.
BTW, does anyone know if this was just an issue with wordperfect office, or of anyway around it short of ditching your own installation and dual booting into "Corel Linux"?
Yes, this isn't a particularly insightfull post. I'm tired. Must get back to work. Haven't slept in 40 hours.
Sorry I don't have more time to respond to your thoughtfull comment in depth right not. I will try to get back to it this weekend in more depth.
...
There is a critical difference between a monopoly of supply [which can often lead to a very inelastic supply curve], and a glut or oversupply of unwanted labor. It amuses me somewhat that so many people decry capitalism as evil, when in a truly competitive market there will only ever be an oppurtunity for most to make a 'normal', or break even profit [a return on their investments as good as they could get from anywhere else available to them].
A perfect example of nearly pure competition is would be in the agricultural markets [yes, I know much of it is subsidized by the government] and in any industry that possesses a large amount of small players who sell identical nondiferentiated products. [Say, gravel, or hogs].
At this point, the central competitive question comes down to one of efficiency and meritocracy of the producers, but even then, this will tend to lower possible profit over time, as the skills and innovations developed by one are gradually adopted or improved upon by others.
At which point, goods become cheaper, and the overal wealth of society as a whole increases, as their is more productivity. [Which of course translates into lower costs for consumers as well, as it no longer requires as much of someone else's time or effort to produce something].
The problem is, in america [although less so then the rest of the world, frighteningly enough], the market really isn't all that free.
Damn. I'm beggining to ramble. I need to get back to work. [Software due on a deadline, fast approaching, I haven't slept in 40 hours!]
My break is over.
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The american people. You are forgeting that these companies are publicly held. I, like most of the middle class, have had a lot of money in the stock market. [I took most of it out about a year ago, due to realization of the bubble, and am glad I did; I do, however, intend to put most of my a good percentage of assets back in it again at some point]
When companies profit, and the stock market goes up, the american public profits enormously. Ever heard of the wealth effect?
P.S. Huge layoffs are good. They generally indicate that the company was losing money or performing less efficiently then other firms in the marketplace. The labor that would otherwise have remained at the firm would have been producing less real wealth per unit of effort then they will once they find another job in a better managed or more modern firm that is more equiped to the ever changing demands of the marketplace.
What do you think the huge problem has been in japan and germany, of late? The notion of entitlement to a job for life. The idea that one should somehow own the job one is employed at and have an expecation, nay, a right to it, regardless that it is not a worthwhile utilization of your labor compared to other oppurtunities. This leads to stagnation and inefficency, and less real wealth generation [and therefore greater poverty] for society as a whole.
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Ask most any contractor who has been involved in 'temp' labor, and they will tell you that their pay scale is significantly higher then that of full time workers for the same job.
There have been several posts to that effect just in this discussion. I personally know someone who was offered full time employment on two occasions before he accepted it, because it involved a significant reduction in his pay.
You are failing to think about basic economics here. We don't live in some simplistic populist jingoism pipe-nightmare [vs. pipe-dream] of evil corperations opressing poor workers. Workers, myself included, voluntarily sell our labor to firms that desire it to our mutual benefit.
If anything, forced state regulation and forced benefit packages, by changing the underlieing economic situation and forcing coorperations to pay for many things that I don't necessarily want them to pay for, or even use or find advantage from are actually evil, not the corperations who want to purchase my labor. Any contractor, [indeed, ideally, any laborer] is a buisness, a minitaure firm in and of themselves, looking to negotiate the best profit that they can from what price the market will bear for their services.
State regulation and forced 'benefits' are of no benefit, they merely
A: reduce the salary the company can afford to pay me [thus locking a good part of the money I earn into the 'benefits' the state thinks are appropriate for my interests, vs. my own conception and determination of my interests]
B: Put me in a situation [r.e. the results of this lawsuit and similar ones, to the degree that it sets a precedent] where the company will fear being liable if it actually keeps me on as a worker, thus you hear about intel preventing anyone from -ever- working for them for more then 2 years total in their lives, and microsoft having to fire competant temps who enjoyed willingly working there [and getting paid more then the forced 'benefit'ed official full timers] after a fixed period, [6 months, if I recall, and they have to wait at least 100 days before they can reapply].
The only person who is having his freedom lessened is the temp worker, in the name of the nanny-state knowing what is really good for him.
The real irony is that the forced benefits laws are enacted in the sincere belief that they will better the state of the worker, but this is naive and flies in the face of any economic reality. The 'benefits' are a big piece of the total dollar figure that the firm considers you to be worth and thus are willing to pay.
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I mean, aside from the fact that we all despise microsoft per se, is this necessarily a good thing? Temp agencies have done much to contribute to flexibility both for the companies who hire [they have the option of contracting for labor when needed], and for workers [whose skills are commodified, allowing them to move from assignment to assignment with a great deal of flexibility and variety].
Most importantly, though, is that temp work allows the circumvention of what some would say can be rather rigid state-mandated benefits packages, which significantly increase the cost of labor, and more importantly decrease the freedom of a worker required to recieve those benefits to concievably use those resources to some other better purpose or utility of their own choosing.
Face it, the marginal decision as to whether or not to hire a worker is based two primary factors, the benefit of the work recieved, and the cost of paying for it. In traditional regulated full time labor large companies are required to offer all sorts of benefits, [many of which are of no use to some workers, i.e. paid family leave is required, but some workers are single and never have any oppurtunity to take advantage of it, nonetheless, it is factored into the cost of their employment and the determination of their salary].
If rigid benefits packages weren't required, workers would have higher salaries as a result, and be able to utilize that money however they wanted, being it taking a vacation, purchasing quality health coverage [or passing over health coverage for the less risk-averse].
Temp agencies have come to allow a circumvention of these rigid requirements, to the benefit of both the workers and the employer. Now that this 'loophole' is being closed up, do you think there will be nearly as many temp jobs available at microsoft [or other companies]? Nope. They will have to make sure that the workers really are temporary; people will be let go when they would otherwise have been kept on [and been wholly willing to do so as well] because, although their positions are justifiable without benefits [and obviously desirable by the workers, or they wouldn't be working there in the first place], they won't be with them.
It is a true shame that some people some an oppurtunity to exploit the system and argue that they had a right to the traditional entitlements, even though that hadn't been part of the deal, and thus ruin it for future temp workers who liked the idea of contractual integrity.
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As I understand it, a virtualized OS has any attempt it should make to access hardware intercepted and replaced with some appropriate emulated equivilent. I assume that Plex86 therefore simulates vga or vesa video (so that the simulated OS can think it is talking to a video card), and then represents what would have been the resulting image on a real screen, if it was talking to a real card, as a data structure that can be displayed, say, under X-windows.
:) ]. Can't we slackers ever get enough?!
What I would like to know is: what do you see in the somewhat immediate [that is, forseeable and not imaginary] horizon r.e. virtualization of other windows hardware access? A sound card certainly comes to mind, but of even more use would be, say, parallel port access [for printer drivers [or my nifty Dazzle DVC mpeg1 encoder]
Seriously, though, you've done an amazing job, and I can't help but proffer my enormous respect for the fact that you struggled on for so long on Bochs without -any- support. You are an ideal incarnation of the true hacker ethic; my kudos.