Eyes: 8
Dimensions: 9, making them the wisest beings on the planet.
My plan is to use spiders to predict the future of the stock market, and grow rich off of as of yet unknown bio-medical research groups. The spider tells me that any company that engineers "crop-protecting superbugs," is a good bet. But...perhaps I have said too much...
What would be really cool is if java had a callback mechanism that allowed for a function to be called when data became ready. This is one of the (few) cool things about NT.
This page is obviously a vehicle to deploy some FUD. It is becoming more and more obvious that if a big-name corperation with an internet presence says something, it can be accepted as the, "gospal truth," by the naive public. People who are smart enough (like most of the/. reader-base) will just point and laugh, but for the other people there is an old saying:
"You can't fool all the people, all the time; but you can some of the people, some of the time: and make a damned good living."
This is the exact sort of propaganda Microsoft needs to promote to keep there O/S "ahead" of the game. That is, until the public finds out exactly how full of it they are:)
Yes, I am acutally asking for hard documentation for the Linux APIs. This is not an absurd request.
There is never going to be a definitive guide, because hardwares and low level stuff change at an alarming rate and vary on different systems.
Has the PCI spec changed dramatically in the last 3+ years? Sure it has been revised, but not enough to greatly affect driver code! I am not interested in hacking out a driver, I am interested in coding one, professionally, for my company. Yes, my company (as wrong as it is) decided not to author Linux device drivers becuase of a lack of documentation and a high learning curve. This is changing.
I can imagine a 2000 page book. I have seen simular books on algorithms. I have seen simular books about plants, war, or birds. Size does not matter.
Would you rather have support for a piece of hardware, broadening the support-base and encouraging the poliferation of an O/S, or not?
Currently, there are a lot of companies that ship binary only drivers for other operating systems. In Linux you have more of a choice than you do under other closed-sourced O/Ss. Understand that you could decide between the vendor's that ship open-source and closed-source drivers. Althought I would prefer an open-sourced driver, I certainly would not deny the extra choices presented by a few closed-source ones.
To make another point, there is plenty of code that is used with the Linux kernel that is closed source. Some hardware manufacturers distribute binary-only firmware packages along side their driver. They implement a bare-bones open(), read(), write(), seek(), and a few ioctl() routines that nearly act just as wrappers to some logic down at the board level. Why would manufacturers do this?
To make the O/S level interface as slim as possible, this greatly increasing the number of operating systems they can potentially support easily.
To make an extremely complicated product less complicated on the host O/S, thereby freeing up host CPU time.
To hide from you, "the family jewels."
Who's side am I on? Well, I would have to say mine. I think that Linux is nice and all: but I pick the O/S that pays the bills. If a customer wans NT, Solaris, SCO, or Linux: I will give them what they want. I think of Linux as I think of a screw-driver: just another tool in my toolbox.
I own the "Linux Device Drivers" by Alessandro Rubini. It is a good book for learning the (somewhat) confusing driver interface under Linux. However, I think a new revision of this book is needed to address things like:
Operating within an SMP environment.
Programming to the new APIs, such as:
ISDN4Linux
Video4Linux
I2O
Dare I say, USB
Insert your favorite new API here.
Tuning your device drivers; specific hints for character drivers, block drivers, and net drivers.
A special section devoted to writing and maintaining a kernel version independant, mostly binary, device driver (for more closed companies). This could yield a wider base of companies that support Linux, as they don't want to, "give away the family jewels."
What we need is the definitive guide. A portable, referrable, assemblance of all Linux device driver knowledge to promote the growth and acceptance of Linux as an O/S in the buisness and even the hobbiest communities. Such a book would also raise the bar for performance within the average driver-- something which would help Linux win those benchmark tests. To support this argument, approach your favorite monolithic hardware manufacturer and ask him what tools they are using to support Linux into the future. If they answer with:
Speaking of Linux and high availability: how does one go about implementing a layer 4 switch with a farm of Linux web-servers to load balence connections?
When I submitted this article, I made no claim as to the "scientific" content or accuracy of this article or the magazine it was published in. The article just happend to make me read, and read some more, laugh, feel a little empathy (both for the interviewer and the interviewee), and then I got on with life. Sure I do feel that the author was using the magazine as a platform for his personal dislike of Teller, but that is American media. Accept it, or actively promote to change it.
Besides, on the whole, it was just an entertaining article: worth the read just to be able to quote Teller as saying, "'I am not Dr. Strangelove!'"
I would hope for most people that they don't care if Scientific American is read by, "real scientists," but that they get all the entertainment and content out of it to justify the cover-price or their subscription rate. Why let peer pressure influence your decision? It is your mind: fill it with whatever you want.
Isn't this fantastic? This really is the first time I have seen the "de-centralized" property of the Internet in action.
Back when ARPA-net was designed, important data was mirrored accross the country in the event of an atomic explosion. I wonder if there is a market for such a "Emergancy Mirroring Service." I am suprised the insurance companies aren't all over this one already!
I think it is an excuse to get drunk or something (j/k).
Getting people together face-to-face is a great way in this industry to get people out from behind their x-terms and out into the world. Face-to-face communication is great for creativity (no, I have nothing to base that on).
The drinking part acts only as the carrot on the stick.
I understand the concept of, "Layer 4 switching," or, "server load-balencing," but how does one implement such a solution using current Linux software? Paging Mr. Malda...Mr. Malda to the comment bin please. -AP
Re:The Internet the first in-organic life?
on
Web: 19 Clicks Wide
·
· Score: 1
I also liked the episode with those neat-o little in-organic cube lifeforms that lived on that planet those people were terraforming. You know, the ones that pulsed light and called all huminoid life, "ugly bags of water." But I digress...
A power-law distribution means that the Web doesn't follow the usual mathematical models of random networks, but instead exhibits the type of physical order found in, say, magnetic fields, galaxies and plant growth.
While looking at the mess of tangled wires in our companies engineering patch-room we have often comment on the near organic appearance of the patch cables interconnecting our company. Now, this is just a very small subsection of the entire Internet. Doesn't it seem possible with hundreds of thousands of patch-rooms, protocols, and processors out there that something could evolve?
It would start with a few anomolous packets zipping back and forth reconfiguring routers to interconnect into a giant super-being. It's first triamph as supreme net-being would be to spam us all in every known language, "could you please stop pinging it gives me indigestion...*burb*!"
I wholeheartedly disagree with you! It would be _great_ to have a free port for Windows so more people could learn to use SQL, prototype applications, and increase the "free-market share" of MySQL as the SQL server of choice.
"If you have the money for WinNT, you also have the money for MSSQL."
There are plenty of copies of WinNT or Win9x with student liscenses. Open-source is an avenue for learning (for some), and in-my-not-so-humble-opionion should be distributed like the wind.
A Win9x or NT Port would be fantastic for little projects like this; they don't need a lot of horse power or reliabilty, but provide rapid development under the-other wide-spread O/S.
I have set up a few Beowulf machines for S&G. I used PVM, RH Linux 6.0/5.2, a 10/100 switch, and about 6 boxen. It worked quite well, except that it took a few days to get operating how I wanted. I wrote a couple applications to crunch numbers across the cluster, tested throuput, etc. For even more S&G I used MP3PVM to RIP a few CD's real fast. Fun!
Now this is all well and good, but wouldn't it be great if we could have a transparent virtual machine that runs across all the nodes? Something which you could use "/bin/bash" on as your command shell.
Now, I am not sure how this would be accomiplshed-- forinstance how you would effciciently share memory accross machines or decide how to break up tasks (break on thread, would be one way); this is just to open up conversation.
Imagine: Lower your SETI@Home WU time to mear seconds:) (is it far to run a distributed computer under a distributed computer?)
What is wrong with altering the souce of GD to go to a neutral output format (like a simple bit-map), and then having the option of several output filters like: png, jpg, bmp, ppm...
I use this library all the time with PHP! This is a major bummer!
How is Yahoo! (an index) even able to compete anymore? Goes to show you what good a little name-recognition can get you...I would bet they are at less-than 1% coverage now!
I think that a 100% human-entered index is still handy. If only they could somehow quadruple the number of monkeys on typewriters we might really have something: http://dmoz.org/
Slashdot Mirror
Where could one find info on joining the 6bone? Does it require that your ISP be running some IPv6?
-AP
Number of Dimensions = (Number of Eyes + 1)
Human:
Evolved Human:Common Arachnid:
My plan is to use spiders to predict the future of the stock market, and grow rich off of as of yet unknown bio-medical research groups. The spider tells me that any company that engineers "crop-protecting superbugs," is a good bet.
But...perhaps I have said too much...
-AP
What would be really cool is if java had a callback mechanism that allowed for a function to be called when data became ready. This is one of the (few) cool things about NT.
-AP
...where could one find a pick small enough to play it?
-AP
There is a little something I learned about marketing in school:
-AP
This page is obviously a vehicle to deploy some FUD. It is becoming more and more obvious that if a big-name corperation with an internet presence says something, it can be accepted as the, "gospal truth," by the naive public. People who are smart enough (like most of the /. reader-base) will just point and laugh, but for the other people there is an old saying:
This is the exact sort of propaganda Microsoft needs to promote to keep there O/S "ahead" of the game. That is, until the public finds out exactly how full of it they are :)
-AP
Yes, I am acutally asking for hard documentation for the Linux APIs. This is not an absurd request.
Has the PCI spec changed dramatically in the last 3+ years? Sure it has been revised, but not enough to greatly affect driver code! I am not interested in hacking out a driver, I am interested in coding one, professionally, for my company. Yes, my company (as wrong as it is) decided not to author Linux device drivers becuase of a lack of documentation and a high learning curve. This is changing.
I can imagine a 2000 page book. I have seen simular books on algorithms. I have seen simular books about plants, war, or birds. Size does not matter.
-AP
I have a simple question to ask of you:
Would you rather have support for a piece of hardware, broadening the support-base and encouraging the poliferation of an O/S, or not?
Currently, there are a lot of companies that ship binary only drivers for other operating systems. In Linux you have more of a choice than you do under other closed-sourced O/Ss. Understand that you could decide between the vendor's that ship open-source and closed-source drivers. Althought I would prefer an open-sourced driver, I certainly would not deny the extra choices presented by a few closed-source ones.To make another point, there is plenty of code that is used with the Linux kernel that is closed source. Some hardware manufacturers distribute binary-only firmware packages along side their driver. They implement a bare-bones open(), read(), write(), seek(), and a few ioctl() routines that nearly act just as wrappers to some logic down at the board level. Why would manufacturers do this?
Who's side am I on? Well, I would have to say mine. I think that Linux is nice and all: but I pick the O/S that pays the bills. If a customer wans NT, Solaris, SCO, or Linux: I will give them what they want. I think of Linux as I think of a screw-driver: just another tool in my toolbox.
-AP
I own the "Linux Device Drivers" by Alessandro Rubini. It is a good book for learning the (somewhat) confusing driver interface under Linux. However, I think a new revision of this book is needed to address things like:
Tuning your device drivers; specific hints for character drivers, block drivers, and net drivers.
A special section devoted to writing and maintaining a kernel version independant, mostly binary, device driver (for more closed companies). This could yield a wider base of companies that support Linux, as they don't want to, "give away the family jewels."
What we need is the definitive guide. A portable, referrable, assemblance of all Linux device driver knowledge to promote the growth and acceptance of Linux as an O/S in the buisness and even the hobbiest communities. Such a book would also raise the bar for performance within the average driver-- something which would help Linux win those benchmark tests. To support this argument, approach your favorite monolithic hardware manufacturer and ask him what tools they are using to support Linux into the future. If they answer with:
- "I don't know."
- "We have an older book to refer to."
- or, "A collection of websites."
You can see there is a definite need. I would hope that Alan Cox and Donald Becker would be contributing authors.If I could write, and could write good enough driver code, I would do it myself.
-AP
Speaking of Linux and high availability: how does one go about implementing a layer 4 switch with a farm of Linux web-servers to load balence connections?
Sorry if this is slightly offtopic.
-AP
Oh, on the contrary. I thought it was very well-written; albeit biased.
The two are not mutually-exclusive.
-AP
When I submitted this article, I made no claim as to the "scientific" content or accuracy of this article or the magazine it was published in. The article just happend to make me read, and read some more, laugh, feel a little empathy (both for the interviewer and the interviewee), and then I got on with life. Sure I do feel that the author was using the magazine as a platform for his personal dislike of Teller, but that is American media. Accept it, or actively promote to change it.
Besides, on the whole, it was just an entertaining article: worth the read just to be able to quote Teller as saying, "'I am not Dr. Strangelove!'"
I would hope for most people that they don't care if Scientific American is read by, "real scientists," but that they get all the entertainment and content out of it to justify the cover-price or their subscription rate. Why let peer pressure influence your decision? It is your mind: fill it with whatever you want.
-AP
Isn't this fantastic? This really is the first time I have seen the "de-centralized" property of the Internet in action.
Back when ARPA-net was designed, important data was mirrored accross the country in the event of an atomic explosion. I wonder if there is a market for such a "Emergancy Mirroring Service." I am suprised the insurance companies aren't all over this one already!
-AP
I think it is an excuse to get drunk or something (j/k).
Getting people together face-to-face is a great way in this industry to get people out from behind their x-terms and out into the world. Face-to-face communication is great for creativity (no, I have nothing to base that on).
The drinking part acts only as the carrot on the stick.
-AP
I understand the concept of, "Layer 4 switching," or, "server load-balencing," but how does one implement such a solution using current Linux software? Paging Mr. Malda...Mr. Malda to the comment bin please. -AP
I also liked the episode with those neat-o little in-organic cube lifeforms that lived on that planet those people were terraforming. You know, the ones that pulsed light and called all huminoid life, "ugly bags of water." But I digress...
-AP
While looking at the mess of tangled wires in our companies engineering patch-room we have often comment on the near organic appearance of the patch cables interconnecting our company. Now, this is just a very small subsection of the entire Internet. Doesn't it seem possible with hundreds of thousands of patch-rooms, protocols, and processors out there that something could evolve?
It would start with a few anomolous packets zipping back and forth reconfiguring routers to interconnect into a giant super-being. It's first triamph as supreme net-being would be to spam us all in every known language, "could you please stop pinging it gives me indigestion...*burb*!"
-APHemos, that is great butt, I would still like to be able to wipe my own ass. It is such a price to pay Arnold... -AP
I wholeheartedly disagree with you! It would be _great_ to have a free port for Windows so more people could learn to use SQL, prototype applications, and increase the "free-market share" of MySQL as the SQL server of choice.
"If you have the money for WinNT, you also have the money for MSSQL."
There are plenty of copies of WinNT or Win9x with student liscenses. Open-source is an avenue for learning (for some), and in-my-not-so-humble-opionion should be distributed like the wind.
A Win9x or NT Port would be fantastic for little projects like this; they don't need a lot of horse power or reliabilty, but provide rapid development under the-other wide-spread O/S.
-AP
If we were to send you free stuff, what would you like to get most?
-AP
Wouldn't it be great if we could get a *free* win32 port out of this?
-AP
I have set up a few Beowulf machines for S&G. I used PVM, RH Linux 6.0/5.2, a 10/100 switch, and about 6 boxen. It worked quite well, except that it took a few days to get operating how I wanted. I wrote a couple applications to crunch numbers across the cluster, tested throuput, etc. For even more S&G I used MP3PVM to RIP a few CD's real fast. Fun!
Now this is all well and good, but wouldn't it be great if we could have a transparent virtual machine that runs across all the nodes? Something which you could use "/bin/bash" on as your command shell.
Now, I am not sure how this would be accomiplshed-- forinstance how you would effciciently share memory accross machines or decide how to break up tasks (break on thread, would be one way); this is just to open up conversation.
Imagine: Lower your SETI@Home WU time to mear seconds :) (is it far to run a distributed computer under a distributed computer?)
-AP
...of the web or don't play at all.
Funny how people even try and relate this all to a traditional media.
-AP
What is wrong with altering the souce of GD to go to a neutral output format (like a simple bit-map), and then having the option of several output filters like: png, jpg, bmp, ppm...
I use this library all the time with PHP! This is a major bummer!
-AP
How is Yahoo! (an index) even able to compete anymore? Goes to show you what good a little name-recognition can get you...I would bet they are at less-than 1% coverage now!
I think that a 100% human-entered index is still handy. If only they could somehow quadruple the number of monkeys on typewriters we might really have something: http://dmoz.org/
-AP