I don't think that you understand the historical context of the word. I refer you again to the "Linux is Obsolete" [oreilly.com] debate.
Sheesh, do you read your own links? I quote:
"The alternative is a microkernel-based system, in which most of the OS runs as separate processes, mostly outside the kernel. They communicate by message passing. The kernel's job is to handle the message passing, interrupt handling, low-level process management, and possibly the I/O."
..and..
MINIX is a microkernel-based system. The file system and memory management are separate processes, running outside the kernel. The I/O drivers are also separate processes (in the kernel, but only because the brain-dead nature of the Intel CPUs makes that difficult to do otherwise).
And if Linux is not a single executable, then it is no longer monolithic. It doesn't matter what it originally was.
But that's the point! Linux IS a single executable.
I think you don't understand what linking is all about. Static linking is when you take all a set of modules and resolve subroutine references to produce a single executable, then the executable is run. Dynamic linking is when you take a set of modules, resolve references at run time, and then the executable runs. You still have a "monolithic" running program, it's just put together in a different way. One of the advantages to dynamic linking is that you can dynamically unlink a module and replace it with another module. But that doesn't mean it ceases to be a single running program. In other words, the program itself doesn't know the difference.
This is TOTALLY different for a microkernel architecture. The whole point of a microkernel is to have a "micro" set of services that just pass messages among a set of different processes, and the processes provide the "higher level" services.
Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Monolithic versus micro kernels have nothing to do with how things are linked, static or dynamic. It has everything to do with whether you call subroutines directly (in the case of monolithic) versus message passing to separate processes (in the case of microkernels). Whether things are linked at compile time or run-time is totally irrelevent.
If OS/X changed Mach to be link-based rather than message-based, then it's no longer a microkernel. It doesn't matter what it originally was.
Monolithic != statically linked. Monolithic generally means that everything runs in Kernel space. A microkernel has a very small kernel, with messages passed to services running in user space. That's why microkernals have traditionally have had bad performance, among other problems.
Why then do people feel the need to say "Hey.. don't call it that" very loudly? Why not just refuse to participate and be done with it?
That would be great... if Stallman would just let it alone. But he doesn't. He is unbelievably obnoxious about this. If someone calls it "Linux" in his presence, he won't leave it along. It's not enough for him to call it that, he insists that if you are in his presence you call it that, too.
After a while, people are going to get tired of this act. If Stallman wants people to show him respect, then he needs to start respecting the decisions of others.
Excuse me? How exactly did GNU fail? Look at what they have created.
No doubt they have come up with some useful tools, but their stated mission was to come up with a complete Unix-like operating system. In this they failed. Yes, someday the Herd may be released, but it's too late, and probably technically too little. [ Yes, micro-kernels are kind of cool but the downsides are pretty well understood at this point. Monolithic kernels won, microkernels lost. Gnu picked wrong. Get over it. ]
However, there are people who do not like our saying this. Sometimes those people push us away in response. On occasion they are so rude that one wonders if they are intentionally trying to intimidate us into silence. It doesn't silence us, but it does tend to divide the community, so we hope you can convince them to stop.
If this isn't evidence of Stallman's mental illness, I don't know what is. Oh, the problem isn't with us, it's with everyone else. We insist that people use this ludicrous name that no one can cleanly pronounce, and if anyone disagrees, clearly they are dividing the community.
In other words, "if everyone would just agree with us, then there would be no disagreement". Well, no shit.
Stallman, how about this: you call it whatever you want. And how about respecting other people's decision on what they want to call it, and stop notoriously refusing to talk to anyone who disagrees with you.
Wow, that harpsichord is really impressive looking. However, listening to it, er, it kind of reminds me of a joke:
A man and his dog were sitting in the park in front of a chessboard. A stranger stopped by, wondering what was going on. The man made a move. The stranger was amazed when the dog reached out a paw and made another move!
"Wow! That dog plays chess? That's some amazing dog you have there!
And the man replied, "Ah, he's not so amazing. I'm crappy at chess, and I still beat him 9 out of 10 games."
when there are people literally starving in our streets.
Although I agree with your overall point to some extent, I don't think exaggeration like this is needed. There is NOBODY "literally" starving in our streets. The US has the richest poor people in the world. In fact, it's actually amazing how fat the people are in poor neighborhoods (at least in my neck of the woods).
This is not to say that there aren't children who go hungry on occasion when their parents spend food money on crack, or otherwise need our help, by the way.
Why is it people relate IndyMedia to terrorism? Perhaps some of the journalists related to it have slanted views and it reflects that in their stories but how is this different than mainstream media? [...] Isn't the basis of IndyMedia freedom of speech?
Just because everyone has freedom of speech doesn't mean all speech has the same value.
Not everyone who is a member of PETA is an anti-human idiot. But I would still treat anyone associated with the organization with deep, deep suspicion and would never, ever give them money. Like it or not, you will be judged based on who you associate with.
Dude, they get more money back because they start life as twice as expensive! PCs don't hold their value as much because they start at rock-bottom pricing. Sheesh, the reality distortion field is pretty strong around here.
When your hardware gets outdated, pluck and chuck.
That sound you hear is a million Macintosh zealots twitching and convulsing while they try and convince themselves that lack of upgradeability is a GOOD thing because it's "less confusing".:)
So companies have the right to prevent my freedom of speech?
No, they have the right to fire your ass if you exercise your free speech in an a way they don't like, or even take legal action against you (such as disclosure of trade secrets).
Because you consider embryos to be people, I should be bound by your beliefs? Does freedom of conscience extend only as far as the right to agree with you?
So if someone does not consider black people to be people, should they be bound by other's beliefs?
I hear a lot of bitching, whining and complaing about the record companies, yet I don't see a bunch of these incredibly wealthy artists (not this one, probably) start their own freaking record company. If they're ripping people off THAT much, I would think the artists would have banded together long ago.
Although I'm not an expert on the business, I would be willing to be that it HAS been tried. I bet a lot of artists have started their own labels, and found out that it ain't cheap being a record company where 50 acts fail for every one you make money on, and they end up turning into the beast they hated.
First of all, component inputs != display resolution. All HDTV monitors will take 1080 line input, and then scale it to whatever the native resolution.
Second, exactly where are you guaranteed that pixels are square? For example, there are quite a number of plasma monitors with 1024x1024 native resolution, which is in a 16:9 format (just with stretched pixels on the horizontal).
I tried to find on the web your TV's native resolutions, but they just don't tell you, not even on Sony's web site. That should tell you something.
But hey, I could be wrong. I would be interested if you could find an HDTV using any technology that claimed 1920x1080 pixels.
Anybody who says they can't see a difference is either not watching HDTV or a blind luddite!
I'm one of those that couldn't really see a huge difference. Then I figured out why... "HDTV ready" means absolutely nothing. By that, I mean that there are no monitors that can display "true" 1920x1080 HDTV resolution. That means that no matter what the resolution, anyone can call their TV "HDTV ready" even though it can't come close to displaying an HDTV signal.
I used to think that HDTV looked "kind of better", but not enough to get excited about. After I started doing research into it, I realized that most home electronics stores don't really carry the high-end monitors, and that's why I got an early bad taste in my mouth.
If I was confused about this, I'm sure there are a LOT of people confused by it. A lot of people haven't really seen HDTV in high-res. And NOBODY (or very few, at least) has seen HDTV at HDTV resolution.
Personally, I'm waiting for Plasma screens to come down in price to where I can buy one of the higher resolution screens. Speaking of this, I should give a plug to this site, which has some great reviews and price comparisons of all the major plasma brands.
Unfortunately, the one that I want is still about $8K (1365 x 768 resolution).:-(. That's a little more than I want to spend on television.
The group's allegation regarding a sixth violation rapped Microsoft for failing to include in the middleware control an option to disable Microsoft's.Net Framework Common Language Runtime, an alternative to Sun's Java Virtual Machine.
ka-BOOOOM!! There's goes the group's credibility (if they ever had any). First of all,.NET is NOT an alternative to Sun's JVM..NET is an application environment, period. It's a different product. Second, what the hell does.NET have to do with ANY of these issues? Answer: Nothing.
Yes, clearly there should be options to disable the standard Windows GUI APIs as well.
Sun is so f'ing stupid. Everytime they try and pull bullshit like this, they just increase the sympathy for Microsoft. I can't wait until Sun goes under and that smirk is finally wiped off McNealy's face.
Does ANYONE really care what an editor of a newspaper thinks? About ANYTHING? In my experience, reporters are probably some of the least informed, least intelligent, laziest people in any profession. I don't know anyone who looks at the editorial section to see what "The Editor" thinks.
Maybe I'm just unusual, but I just don't imagine that hoards of people are going to think that some NY Times editor is an expert on technology (or anything for that matter, other than editing).
To some extent, but I don't Microsoft is replacing the entire operating system when you install Office. At some point, it's got to call standard stuff.
In any case, I still don't it's that big of a deal. These are solvable problems.
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I don't think that you understand the historical context of the word. I refer you again to the "Linux is Obsolete" [oreilly.com] debate.
Sheesh, do you read your own links? I quote:
..and..
And if Linux is not a single executable, then it is no longer monolithic. It doesn't matter what it originally was.
But that's the point! Linux IS a single executable.
I think you don't understand what linking is all about. Static linking is when you take all a set of modules and resolve subroutine references to produce a single executable, then the executable is run. Dynamic linking is when you take a set of modules, resolve references at run time, and then the executable runs. You still have a "monolithic" running program, it's just put together in a different way. One of the advantages to dynamic linking is that you can dynamically unlink a module and replace it with another module. But that doesn't mean it ceases to be a single running program. In other words, the program itself doesn't know the difference.
This is TOTALLY different for a microkernel architecture. The whole point of a microkernel is to have a "micro" set of services that just pass messages among a set of different processes, and the processes provide the "higher level" services.
Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Monolithic versus micro kernels have nothing to do with how things are linked, static or dynamic. It has everything to do with whether you call subroutines directly (in the case of monolithic) versus message passing to separate processes (in the case of microkernels). Whether things are linked at compile time or run-time is totally irrelevent.
If OS/X changed Mach to be link-based rather than message-based, then it's no longer a microkernel. It doesn't matter what it originally was.
If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe Linus himself.
Monolithic != statically linked. Monolithic generally means that everything runs in Kernel space. A microkernel has a very small kernel, with messages passed to services running in user space. That's why microkernals have traditionally have had bad performance, among other problems.
Sheesh, I never mentioned Linus at all. I only stated that GNU failed at their stated mission, which they did.
Uhh, Linus didn't succeed either by that logic.
Linus never stated a definition for his own success. Gnu did.
Why then do people feel the need to say "Hey.. don't call it that" very loudly? Why not just refuse to participate and be done with it?
That would be great... if Stallman would just let it alone. But he doesn't. He is unbelievably obnoxious about this. If someone calls it "Linux" in his presence, he won't leave it along. It's not enough for him to call it that, he insists that if you are in his presence you call it that, too.
After a while, people are going to get tired of this act. If Stallman wants people to show him respect, then he needs to start respecting the decisions of others.
Excuse me? How exactly did GNU fail? Look at what they have created.
No doubt they have come up with some useful tools, but their stated mission was to come up with a complete Unix-like operating system. In this they failed. Yes, someday the Herd may be released, but it's too late, and probably technically too little. [ Yes, micro-kernels are kind of cool but the downsides are pretty well understood at this point. Monolithic kernels won, microkernels lost. Gnu picked wrong. Get over it. ]
However, there are people who do not like our saying this. Sometimes those people push us away in response. On occasion they are so rude that one wonders if they are intentionally trying to intimidate us into silence. It doesn't silence us, but it does tend to divide the community, so we hope you can convince them to stop.
If this isn't evidence of Stallman's mental illness, I don't know what is. Oh, the problem isn't with us, it's with everyone else. We insist that people use this ludicrous name that no one can cleanly pronounce, and if anyone disagrees, clearly they are dividing the community.
In other words, "if everyone would just agree with us, then there would be no disagreement". Well, no shit.
Stallman, how about this: you call it whatever you want. And how about respecting other people's decision on what they want to call it, and stop notoriously refusing to talk to anyone who disagrees with you.
What the hell kind of geek are you!?
A geek likes technology. Therefore, a true geek does NOT prefer a green screen, slide rules or an abacus.
When used properly, Flash is a great tool.
Wow, that harpsichord is really impressive looking. However, listening to it, er, it kind of reminds me of a joke:
A man and his dog were sitting in the park in front of a chessboard. A stranger stopped by, wondering what was going on. The man made a move. The stranger was amazed when the dog reached out a paw and made another move!
"Wow! That dog plays chess? That's some amazing dog you have there!
And the man replied, "Ah, he's not so amazing. I'm crappy at chess, and I still beat him 9 out of 10 games."
when there are people literally starving in our streets.
Although I agree with your overall point to some extent, I don't think exaggeration like this is needed. There is NOBODY "literally" starving in our streets. The US has the richest poor people in the world. In fact, it's actually amazing how fat the people are in poor neighborhoods (at least in my neck of the woods).
This is not to say that there aren't children who go hungry on occasion when their parents spend food money on crack, or otherwise need our help, by the way.
Why is it people relate IndyMedia to terrorism? Perhaps some of the journalists related to it have slanted views and it reflects that in their stories but how is this different than mainstream media? [...] Isn't the basis of IndyMedia freedom of speech?
Just because everyone has freedom of speech doesn't mean all speech has the same value.
Not everyone who is a member of PETA is an anti-human idiot. But I would still treat anyone associated with the organization with deep, deep suspicion and would never, ever give them money. Like it or not, you will be judged based on who you associate with.
Somehow this reminds me of an old Jay Leno bit about humanitarian efforts to give Christmas toys to starving kids in the third-world:
Child: "Kalimba eat potato?"
Humanitarian: "No, Kalimba *play with* potato! See, you can put eyes, ears and mouth on the potato!"
Child: "Kalimba eat potato?"
Humanitarian: "No, no..."
That's about all I remember. It was hilarious, but I can't find the whole routine on the web.
So if my three year old can't argue for his own humanity, then he's not a person?
Dude, they get more money back because they start life as twice as expensive! PCs don't hold their value as much because they start at rock-bottom pricing. Sheesh, the reality distortion field is pretty strong around here.
When your hardware gets outdated, pluck and chuck.
That sound you hear is a million Macintosh zealots twitching and convulsing while they try and convince themselves that lack of upgradeability is a GOOD thing because it's "less confusing". :)
So companies have the right to prevent my freedom of speech?
No, they have the right to fire your ass if you exercise your free speech in an a way they don't like, or even take legal action against you (such as disclosure of trade secrets).
Freedom of speech != freedom from consequences.
Because you consider embryos to be people, I should be bound by your beliefs? Does freedom of conscience extend only as far as the right to agree with you?
So if someone does not consider black people to be people, should they be bound by other's beliefs?
It's worth pointing out that producers of documentaries probably aren't subsidizing 50 documentaries that fail for every one that makes money.
I hear a lot of bitching, whining and complaing about the record companies, yet I don't see a bunch of these incredibly wealthy artists (not this one, probably) start their own freaking record company. If they're ripping people off THAT much, I would think the artists would have banded together long ago.
Although I'm not an expert on the business, I would be willing to be that it HAS been tried. I bet a lot of artists have started their own labels, and found out that it ain't cheap being a record company where 50 acts fail for every one you make money on, and they end up turning into the beast they hated.
First of all, component inputs != display resolution. All HDTV monitors will take 1080 line input, and then scale it to whatever the native resolution.
Second, exactly where are you guaranteed that pixels are square? For example, there are quite a number of plasma monitors with 1024x1024 native resolution, which is in a 16:9 format (just with stretched pixels on the horizontal).
I tried to find on the web your TV's native resolutions, but they just don't tell you, not even on Sony's web site. That should tell you something.
But hey, I could be wrong. I would be interested if you could find an HDTV using any technology that claimed 1920x1080 pixels.
Anybody who says they can't see a difference is either not watching HDTV or a blind luddite!
I'm one of those that couldn't really see a huge difference. Then I figured out why... "HDTV ready" means absolutely nothing. By that, I mean that there are no monitors that can display "true" 1920x1080 HDTV resolution. That means that no matter what the resolution, anyone can call their TV "HDTV ready" even though it can't come close to displaying an HDTV signal.
I used to think that HDTV looked "kind of better", but not enough to get excited about. After I started doing research into it, I realized that most home electronics stores don't really carry the high-end monitors, and that's why I got an early bad taste in my mouth.
If I was confused about this, I'm sure there are a LOT of people confused by it. A lot of people haven't really seen HDTV in high-res. And NOBODY (or very few, at least) has seen HDTV at HDTV resolution.
Personally, I'm waiting for Plasma screens to come down in price to where I can buy one of the higher resolution screens. Speaking of this, I should give a plug to this site, which has some great reviews and price comparisons of all the major plasma brands.
Unfortunately, the one that I want is still about $8K (1365 x 768 resolution). :-(. That's a little more than I want to spend on television.
The group's allegation regarding a sixth violation rapped Microsoft for failing to include in the middleware control an option to disable Microsoft's .Net Framework Common Language Runtime, an alternative to Sun's Java Virtual Machine.
ka-BOOOOM!! There's goes the group's credibility (if they ever had any). First of all, .NET is NOT an alternative to Sun's JVM. .NET is an application environment, period. It's a different product. Second, what the hell does .NET have to do with ANY of these issues? Answer: Nothing.
Yes, clearly there should be options to disable the standard Windows GUI APIs as well.
Sun is so f'ing stupid. Everytime they try and pull bullshit like this, they just increase the sympathy for Microsoft. I can't wait until Sun goes under and that smirk is finally wiped off McNealy's face.
Does ANYONE really care what an editor of a newspaper thinks? About ANYTHING? In my experience, reporters are probably some of the least informed, least intelligent, laziest people in any profession. I don't know anyone who looks at the editorial section to see what "The Editor" thinks.
Maybe I'm just unusual, but I just don't imagine that hoards of people are going to think that some NY Times editor is an expert on technology (or anything for that matter, other than editing).
To some extent, but I don't Microsoft is replacing the entire operating system when you install Office. At some point, it's got to call standard stuff.
In any case, I still don't it's that big of a deal. These are solvable problems.