Ive read lots of posts say its been talked about for years but its a waste of time.
Projects are too individual and unique to hand off to a production line.
I agree.
However design and coding are only one aspect of a project. What about testing? Sustaining? Release engineering? All these areas are equally valid to the long term survival of your product.
Once you have the testing infrastrucure in place, if its correctly built, then getting new products into be tested is relatively easy (compared to starting a new test team for each new product).
So by all means have lots of teams making products, but how about a central test and release factory? If all your products go out the same way (RPM, tar balls whatever) then why not centralise it all?
The developers work away and produce a tar ball of source code which they give to the factory. The factory then compiles it and tests it and if its good enough, release it. Then as bugs are found, they are fixed by sustaining engineers in the factory and their code fix goes through the same process of test and release.
Most posts seem to focus on just the design and coding phases of software when there is much more to it when dealing with large scale real-world projects.
PS. The company I work for uses a similar software factory and I work in it.
"...the interest in getting a large chunk of music into the car without carrying around and managing a big stack of CDs has remained."
So to avoid the hastle of managing a stack of CD's, this guy has installed an E450 and a SunRay in his car? And after doing all that (no mean feat I would suspect) the audio is connected to his car via a tape converter?
Funny, but me thinks we are having our legs pulled...
Think about if the problem really needs to be solved. As I see it the only benifit you get from having an electronic voting system, is that it gets counted faster.
The current electoral system (in ireland anyway) is paper base. (But not for long I suspect. Tests with electronic voting were carried out at the last election.) While it takes a while to count there is no doubt about the validity of your vote. You could, if you wanted to, sit and watch the box that your vote went into until it made it to the counting station. Then examine the seal to see if it was tampered and watch as its counted.
An electronic vote disappears into the mystic void and who knows what happens. You may have some hope of finding out with the indian EVM as its in assembly and fairly short. If your in the USA good luck figuring out all that crap (WinCE, MsSQL server...).
Without electronic voting, the Indian election would have taken months to count I assume. 1 billion voters is a lot so perhaps an electronic method is needed. But in most european countries those problems don't exist.
I've been puzzled by transparent/translucent window fluff.
What is the point? Other than chewing up graphics card cycles.
If you have one window and a black background then super. Kinda just like what I have now. But if you are trying to code in vi, and that window is over slashdot, and that window is over irc you can't see anything!
Just because the machine supports *rw media doesn't mean that you'll be able to play copied games. In the same way as the original ps2 can play cdrw audio cd's but you can't play cdrw'd games without a chip afaik.
If it supported mp3 and dvdrw then happy days. Alas it appears not.
The article mentions sunrays. These are great little machines that truely are thin client.
They are small units that have 4 usb ports, a graphics card, sound (in and out), video out and a network card. All they do is relay input back to the server and display the results on the graphics card. They also have a smart card slot where you put in you smart car (obviously...) and it displays your desktop. Then at the end of the day you take out your card and you desktop disappears and reappears when you put the card back in. It doesnt' matter what sunray you put the card in, you desktop will be the same.
Think of a call center. Get VoIP working and this is the business. You can now move people around the office without any problems, and in the middle of a call. Just take out the card and go somewhere else.
Now with a nice desktop environment and sun could be on to something here. They can sell the big iron at the backend.
Down in Antarctica, the only internet access available is by satellite -- and it's so impossibly slow...
This as far as I'm aware is because they cannot see the geosynchronous satellites that we in the normal parts of the world can. So only at certain times of the day or night do the satellites become visable and then they are very low in the sky so reception is not the best.
The key to sun is binary compatibility.
If a big corporation has to recompile/rewrite all their software to take advantage of the new speed of these chips, they simply won't buy it. It the emulated performance is as bad as I've heard there is little reason to upgrade.
With a sparc on the other hand, if you write and compile something 10 years ago on a sparc 5, it'll run just as nicely thank you very much on todays 15k's.
An annonymous coward tells us that if your on the internet a huge auction is on right now at ebay. Get there quick to avoid disappointment. Update: Readers have pointed out that as ebay don't run linux on their web servers this isn't really news. Sorry for wasting your time with non linux/unix news items.
Sun have this in some of their high end servers. The E10k can have lots of domains that act as independent systems. Hardware resorces can also be dynamically added or removed from systems on the fly. Its way cool. A little expensive though. Not quite free....
Having read that people are shocked by someone selling all your hard earned data to someone else, I have to say I'm disappointed.
While they initially might seem big and evil, the source to their product is freely available.
Is it a crime to make money? They haven't hid anything. They clearly spell out what they plan to do with the data that they collect and how they plan to make money.
How many open source projects, while being really good projects and open and free (in all senses) have lasted? Eazel being the most recent example. If they use open source and make money this can only be a good thing.
If you don't like it, download the source and do it yourself.
I have tried a few linux's on my ultra 10 and so far debian appears to the best.
At first I had Redhat but after they stopped supporting it and it corrupted my Hard disk I moved to suse.
Twas ok but I didn't really give it a run. I had been meaning to try debian somewhere so when I saw they had a sparc port, I had to try it.
After the horrible install, its great. apt-get is great. It needed some work to get X going. Also getting it too boot at all proved a challenge. It deceided to nuke all my disk settings in the prom. But once going it is best.
JM
Sadly the best that we have over here is ISDN. Currently it is not possible to get any kind of unmetered access. *DSL or cable is in the distant future (6-12 months).
Its depressing to read of horror stories where ppl were forced to change providers and go down to 512KB cause a provider went bust.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the Guardian another clever Maths dude has proposed a solution to another of the 7 "million dollar" problems.
This particular problem has big implications for online cryptography as it deals with the distribution of prime numbers. Apparantly.
(I'm no mathematics person BTW.)
I suspect its a border line troll.
It appears he links to his own site rather than to an offical ChangeLog. Perhaps its simply an effort to get hits.
Maybe someone could post a link to the changes on gnome.org or somewhere.
But if you're lucky, you can get software that fits the same specification written by one 'artist'...
Programming is science not art.
As a science there are a well defined logical set of rules that you must follow in order to come out with a working program.
An monkey can shit on a piece of canvas. That is art.
Ive read lots of posts say its been talked about for years but its a waste of time.
Projects are too individual and unique to hand off to a production line.
I agree.
However design and coding are only one aspect of a project. What about testing? Sustaining? Release engineering? All these areas are equally valid to the long term survival of your product.
Once you have the testing infrastrucure in place, if its correctly built, then getting new products into be tested is relatively easy (compared to starting a new test team for each new product).
So by all means have lots of teams making products, but how about a central test and release factory? If all your products go out the same way (RPM, tar balls whatever) then why not centralise it all?
The developers work away and produce a tar ball of source code which they give to the factory. The factory then compiles it and tests it and if its good enough, release it. Then as bugs are found, they are fixed by sustaining engineers in the factory and their code fix goes through the same process of test and release.
Most posts seem to focus on just the design and coding phases of software when there is much more to it when dealing with large scale real-world projects.
PS. The company I work for uses a similar software factory and I work in it.
Cool!
"...the interest in getting a large chunk of music into the car without carrying around and managing a big stack of CDs has remained."
So to avoid the hastle of managing a stack of CD's, this guy has installed an E450 and a SunRay in his car? And after doing all that (no mean feat I would suspect) the audio is connected to his car via a tape converter?
Funny, but me thinks we are having our legs pulled...
Its for schools. They havn't been trained at all yet.
Get em while they're young :)
Think about if the problem really needs to be solved. As I see it the only benifit you get from having an electronic voting system, is that it gets counted faster.
The current electoral system (in ireland anyway) is paper base. (But not for long I suspect. Tests with electronic voting were carried out at the last election.) While it takes a while to count there is no doubt about the validity of your vote. You could, if you wanted to, sit and watch the box that your vote went into until it made it to the counting station. Then examine the seal to see if it was tampered and watch as its counted.
An electronic vote disappears into the mystic void and who knows what happens. You may have some hope of finding out with the indian EVM as its in assembly and fairly short. If your in the USA good luck figuring out all that crap (WinCE, MsSQL server...).
Without electronic voting, the Indian election would have taken months to count I assume. 1 billion voters is a lot so perhaps an electronic method is needed. But in most european countries those problems don't exist.
There is no problem so don't try and fix it.
He said it sucked. Kinda spoils it I recon.
And its still an article?
Slow news day I guess...
Didn't think seals had the required aerodynamic properties to go into space.
...
:)
Well, I suppose if you pay fish you get
(No offence intended
I've been puzzled by transparent/translucent window fluff.
What is the point? Other than chewing up graphics card cycles.
If you have one window and a black background then super. Kinda just like what I have now. But if you are trying to code in vi, and that window is over slashdot, and that window is over irc you can't see anything!
Please tell me what I'm missing.
How about an iPAQ. Cheaper and with linux can have all the same functionality.
If you want to spend that money buy 2 or 3.
Just because the machine supports *rw media doesn't mean that you'll be able to play copied games. In the same way as the original ps2 can play cdrw audio cd's but you can't play cdrw'd games without a chip afaik.
If it supported mp3 and dvdrw then happy days. Alas it appears not.
Karma
Feature request I suppose.
Allow for an IMAP/POP3 proxy to allow access to webmail accounts from inside a firewall without using ssh tunneling stuff.
The article mentions sunrays. These are great little machines that truely are thin client.
They are small units that have 4 usb ports, a graphics card, sound (in and out), video out and a network card. All they do is relay input back to the server and display the results on the graphics card. They also have a smart card slot where you put in you smart car (obviously...) and it displays your desktop. Then at the end of the day you take out your card and you desktop disappears and reappears when you put the card back in. It doesnt' matter what sunray you put the card in, you desktop will be the same.
Think of a call center. Get VoIP working and this is the business. You can now move people around the office without any problems, and in the middle of a call. Just take out the card and go somewhere else.
Now with a nice desktop environment and sun could be on to something here. They can sell the big iron at the backend.
Sorted.
This as far as I'm aware is because they cannot see the geosynchronous satellites that we in the normal parts of the world can. So only at certain times of the day or night do the satellites become visable and then they are very low in the sky so reception is not the best.
As far as I know anyway...
www.ibm.com...
The link at the bottom goes to ibm.com(/FUD)
I wonder if they would per chance be biased against solaris in anyway?
Maybe that explains why they think people will use 6800's to run a web farm. Their hardware comparison is dell pcs and 6800's and 4800's.
Really...
If a big corporation has to recompile/rewrite all their software to take advantage of the new speed of these chips, they simply won't buy it. It the emulated performance is as bad as I've heard there is little reason to upgrade.
With a sparc on the other hand, if you write and compile something 10 years ago on a sparc 5, it'll run just as nicely thank you very much on todays 15k's.
Thats suns advantage.
An annonymous coward tells us that if your on the internet a huge auction is on right now at ebay. Get there quick to avoid disappointment. Update: Readers have pointed out that as ebay don't run linux on their web servers this isn't really news. Sorry for wasting your time with non linux/unix news items.
Sun have this in some of their high end servers. The E10k can have lots of domains that act as independent systems. Hardware resorces can also be dynamically added or removed from systems on the fly. Its way cool. A little expensive though. Not quite free....
JM
While they initially might seem big and evil, the source to their product is freely available.
Is it a crime to make money? They haven't hid anything. They clearly spell out what they plan to do with the data that they collect and how they plan to make money.
How many open source projects, while being really good projects and open and free (in all senses) have lasted? Eazel being the most recent example. If they use open source and make money this can only be a good thing.
If you don't like it, download the source and do it yourself.
JM
At first I had Redhat but after they stopped supporting it and it corrupted my Hard disk I moved to suse.
Twas ok but I didn't really give it a run. I had been meaning to try debian somewhere so when I saw they had a sparc port, I had to try it.
After the horrible install, its great. apt-get is great. It needed some work to get X going. Also getting it too boot at all proved a challenge. It deceided to nuke all my disk settings in the prom. But once going it is best. JM
Its depressing to read of horror stories where ppl were forced to change providers and go down to 512KB cause a provider went bust.
At least you have adsl...
grumble....
Because...
As of now, USA control the Internet.
The whole point of this is to find a standard that can be used everywhere.
If its illegal in the US the what's the point?