While you could say the difference is just Reverse Polish Notation vs. Polish Notation, in effect the LISP intermediate assumes an efficient processing of Lists, and the FORTH intermediate assumes an efficient processing of Stacks.
This isn't not exactly true. A List in LISP is not a fundamental part of the language. Remember, a LISP computer doesn't work on lists, only on pairs. So really, the statement
a = 3 * 4 + c;
in LISP as:
(= a (+ (* 3 4) c))
Is truely:
(= (a ((+ ((* (3 (4 nil))) (c nil))) nil)))
Which is a binary tree. So LISP assumes that the computer is good at processing binary trees which is a lot easier than processing stacks.
Thus, I think that if underlying language for the most of OS components would be something like LISP than the whole concept of programming would be different.
LISP is not a language. LISP is a syntax representation. All languages are broken down to LISP notation by compilers. Common LISP is what you're speaking of.
For instance, take the C expr:
a = 3 * 4 + c;
The compiler will generate (and we often use LISP to debug our parsers):
(= a (+ (* 3 4) c))
s/=/setq/ and you have a valid Common LISP statement.
Whatever real problems she had she should not have had them in the first place.
That's an awful lot of responsibility resting on the shoulders of developers. You are approaching the issue with the mentality that:
"Developers work for end-users of software and therefore if an end-user has any problem with a piece of software, the developer should adjust the software and be greatful that the user gave even the vaguest hint that there was a problem with the software."
On the other hand, the true relationship that should exist between an Open Source developer and end-user is:
"Developers and end-users work together to create a piece of software that is useful for the end-users but is also enjoyable for the developer to spend time on."
If I received a feature request to improve the scheduler in Linux and simply wrote an algorithm that gave random processes CPU time without taking starvation or any other issue into account, I would be:
1) flamed from here to eternity by my fellow developers
2) ripped apart by any user of the software for writing a horrible piece of software
Yet, it is perfectly fine for an end-user to just bitch about how they don't like a piece of software without offering anything constructive? I don't understand the logic there. Why am I held to different standards than the user when, arguably, I am giving a great deal more in the relationship than the end-user is?
I'm not asking to be given a right to shit on any user who isn't an uber-programmer but I am at least asking for constructive critism. How is that too much to ask for?
BTW: I don't understand why you would put so much effort into a post and post as AC...
Being one of the lucky open source developers who gets paid to work on Linux for a living, I love reading constructive feedback about how to improve Linux. I did not like this article because:
1) It was degrading. I'd rather not be condescendingly referred to as a "shreiking geek".
2) She says she has problems that are absolutely absurd. For instance, "Root gets locked out of files". If this is occuring, then Linux has some serious security problems...
I hear so much complaining about how Linux developers aren't helpful to new users and such. Well, I'm sick of new users who aren't helpful to Linux developers and just sit around complaining about how things don't work like they should and then fail to explain how they should work or make general statements like "all my old legacy applications should just work".
End-users of Open Source software have as much, if not more, of an obligation to be helpful to developers as developers have to be helpful to end-users.
(1) A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following:
Establishes that owning, creating, or publishing information on how to create a device that violates any of the following items is a felony. The item in question is:
(a) Obtain or attempt to obtain a telecommunications service with the intent to avoid or aid or abet or cause another person to avoid any lawful charge for the telecommunications service in violation of section 219a.
Yet the bill does not put a limit on what telecommunications services are allowed to charge for. Therefore, if you're local ISP decided to charge for say each HTTP request, they could sue Microsoft for Internet Explorer's ability to download an unlimited number of webpages (since it is avoiding any lawful charge for telecommunications service).
A half-way decent lawyer should have a field day with this bill...
Here in Austin TimeWarner is trying out a PVR with 80GB of disk space and just about all the features of Tivo (a little dumber and doesn't have commerical skip). It's the same deal as the cable box--you only pay $9.95 a month to lease the hardware.
There is no way that Tivo can compete with that. Even though it has a better product the cable company just has it beat here from a price and marketing perspective. It's almost sad...
There are two types of jobs out there: 1) ones that require experience and 2) ones that don't want experience because they want groom you.
For the first group, there is no way that you could possibly gain enough experience in 6-9 hours a week for four years. That's only about 4-6 months of professional experience (about two full-time internships if you're so lucky).
For the second group, employers are more interested in finding someone who is a good problem solver and has the ability to pick up newer technologies quickly. In a lot of ways, as an employer I'd rather have someone who learned COBOL at school for fear that they'd carry bad habits if they knew C++ or a newer language that I'd expect them to use on the job.
<Open Source Evangelizing> Of course, working on Open Source software can give you the desired experience and prove you have the ability to learn quickly on your own:) </Open Source Evangelizing>
If you're adventurous, you could use Samba as the front end (since it compiles and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux) and write a custom VFS module to read whatever kind of image you want. The easiest thing to do would be to take something like ramfs from Linux and port it to userspace/samba. That would provide a portable way to share front-ends (keeping in mind three copies of Samba isn't exactly tiny)....
And for platforms that don't support CIFS natively (are there any of this now a days?) you can use jCIFS:)
I had a laptop when I was in 7th grade. Actually, I bought a laptop when I was in 7th grade.
For two years I mowed lawns, babysat, and generally whored myself out in order to save up the $1,000k needed to buy a refurbished Pentuim 75mhz laptop.
My the end of my 7th grade year I had Linux on it and had written a very very bad BASIC compiler in C (it was something like 15k LOC).
All of this while being on a hockey and wrestling team.
Don't just assume because you were a dumbass when you were in 7th grade that everyone else was/is.
If you only copy the object to disk once a day, then what's the big advantage over copying the object to a database once a day?
The dumping to disk is simply a hack to work around the little "persistance" bug in their design.
I've seen a number of people ask how this is any different from just storing a regular database in memory. RAM is not just faster than disk but has different properties (namely seeking costs nothing) which allows algorithms to exploit that fact.
The limitations? Sheer database size. A version of Oracle designed to exploit non-existant seek times would most likely blow this thing out of the water.
Interesting: this PR release seems to confirm the planned extensions are in fact, Altivec. I haven't followed it too closely, but I thought this wasn't confirmed yet.
Not really. AltiVec is the Motorola SIMD extensions to PPC. IBM's extensions are called VMX. VMX is compatible with AltiVec and both presumable would be marketed by Apple as Velocity Engine.
Again, Apple has already announced it is a customer but just not what it intends on using the processor for.
Exactly how do PowerPC processors compare to regular x86 processors?
It's really like comparing Apples and Oranges. Some quick facts about the PPC though that give it a real advantage to the x86:
The PPC AltiVec unit (IBM's version is called VMX) has a 64 128-bit registers). Compare this to the the x86 SSE2 which only has 4 128-bit registers. This makes the PPC much more useful for multimedia functions since it can perform a butt-load of floating instructions in a very short time.
The GP instructions of the PPC and x86 are also quite different and many would argue that compilers have an easier time optimizing for the PPC because of its design.
At certain tasks, a 733Mhz G4 will beat a 1.8Ghz PIII.
What's most impressive though, is that the PPC requires _much_ less power than any x86 processor. This is why Apple can have such sexy machines.
A programmer is someone who has (in)formal education in information sciences including common data structures, design patterns, algorithm, and algorithmic analysis.
With the above skills, one should be able to master any language--compiled or interpretted. Often, the term "scripter" is used to describe someone without an understanding of the above who limits themselves to scripting languages.
Obviously, the later is inferior to the former. Most people tend to favor a language but even if that's a scripting language, that doesn't make one a "scripter."
Now as to whether a scripting language could solve problems more effectively, that's simply not relevant. The largest cost in code development is maintaining and expanding existing code bases. Therefore, it is more economical to use languages that are more widely known.
More people know Java or C++ than python or perl (at least, in enough capacity to do something useful). Therefore, in most circumstances, they are preferrable.
The picture is of four Via Mini-ITX boards epoxed together. They have no internal connection other then there ethernet interfaces. It is not a 4-way SMP machine (they are _much_ more expensive than this setup).
Out of curiousity, does any know of a way to chain boards like this together through a fast bus like PCI or something?
I know about blade servers and how they work but I'm talking about regular commodity motherboards.
In all fairness I imagine it has to do with co-ordination. I don't think that the/. editors read every article on/. like some of us readers do. In fact, if the editors are like most folks, they probably want to do something completely different from/. on their off-time.
So, with a bunch of editors, it's only natural for things to get lost. Most of the time, the dupes have titles that could easily be mistaken for different stories.
The spaces are too regular. You'd be quite hard pressed to form a coherent sentence with any character occuring every 5n character.
So then perhaps the spaces are irrelevant. Then the next questionable aspect is the last three +++'s. Now, if your code didn't atleast work in groups of three, the mathematic likely hood of three +++ occuring would be small.
So then, what would make most sense is some kind of consistant bit manipulation at least in cycles of three characters. Then you double GGs and unique character (%$) make that unlikely too.
So what makes the most sense? Just random typing.
Look at the first set of characters:
sdjek
Just type it a few times... It's quite natural. You might have well used asdf (I bet your typing style isn't perfect... you probably favor your right hand).
If you examine each other character grouping, you'll see that none of them are very hard to reach.
Also, it gets the KIS approval which in most circumstances, is the winning vote.
While I wouldn't call myself a big fan of XML, you're simply wrong in your example. XML is a data representation language. In most languages, data and expressions are more or less the same. For instance, take your example
f(x) = 2x
Now, you converted to Scheme/LISP and then to XML. That's bad. A more fluid translation to XML could be:
User Mode Linux is a port of Linux that allows the host Linux operating system to run the Linux kernel as a process (this could be seen more or less, as an exokernel). This is done by changing the Linux kernel code to use malloc() to allocate memory instead accessing hardware.
UML uses ptrace to intercept its childrens system calls and then forwards them to user-functions in the kernel.
Plex86 on the other hands makes no modifications to the kernel. Instead, it takes a stock(1) kernel and virtualizes the few instructions that aren't allowed to run in user mode (an exception is thrown when these instructions are attempted to run and Plex86 catches this, performs the virtualization, and returns as if the instruction actually executed).
Plex86 is literally virtual machine whereas UML is really just removing and hardware specific stuff in the kernel and making it a regular C program.
(1) I lied a little here. There is an inherent design flaw in three instructions on x86 such that they do not allow for the above. Kevin submitted a small patch (that I assume got accepted) to make these instructions only be accessed through inlines with additional code such that they behave as they should. By correcting this, it makes implementing a VM more or less trivial.
Note: unless someone finds a _really_ innovative way to allow these instructions to be easily handled for other operating systems, it's not likely you'll see Plex86 run other properitary operating systems.
Note2: Plex86 is more likely to make it to Windows first because UML requires ptrace and Windows has no concept of ptrace(). Not to mention the fact that mmap behaves quite differently on Windows.
Note3: Yes, the above problems have been addressed in the UML Win32 port but they are non-trivial. From what I can gather, a Plex86 port will be pretty trivial to Windows...
The regular Samba project has had NT4 domain controller support for quite sometime...
We are currently working on Active Directory domain controller support. We've got a domain join more or less working for AD but are still working on initial logon.
I'm guessing the marketing droids over at Apple will call the 970 something like a G4-64 (rolls off the tongue, doesn't it) and sometime in 2004-2005 roll out Power5 systems under the G5 moniker.
This is _way_ off. The PowerPC architecture is jointly owned by Motorola, IBM, and Apple. Each company has the right to make processors based on the initial PowerPC architecture. IBM more or less stayed away from the consumer market and focused on PPC server chips (although IBM did produce the G3 series of processors). The Gn naming convention is entirely Apple's marketing spin. The G4 is produced by Motorola.
Now, all the spin about the IBM PowerPC 970 is because the 970 (IBM's name for the processor) is based on the Power4 core which IBM originally produced for it's huge Rigatta processor line. These chips are really awesome because they are just as fast and use a _lot_ less power. Just in power savings alone, mainframe owners save hundreds of thousands of dollars by using Power4 derivatives.
Needless to say, watering down this processor into a consumer chip is really exciting especially for Apple since lower-power == lower-heat == cuter case designs.
Now, Apple has announced that they are a "customer" of the 970 but that does not guarentee that it will end up in the next round of iMacs nor that it will become part of the G-brand.
All in all, if I was looking to buy an Apple computer, I'd wait a few months and see what happens with 970...
Grades have become yet another tick on a record that is supposed to distinguish you from every other humble little human being on the planet..
For the most part, any job that only requires a B.A. is likely to have a pool of resources to draw from with little or no practical skills to begin with. For the most part, these types of positions are looking for individuals to train and "grow" into productive members of the organization.
The GPA plays an interesting role in this kind of senario: it allows a corporation to determine how well one follows direction. When you are looking for individuals to train, this is precisely the kind of litmus test one would use.
Le gasp! Someday we are going to have to depend on personal presentation and actual skill to distinguish ourselves and no piece of paper with numbers to qualify us over any other candidate!
GPAs are more or less irrelevant when dealing with individuals with graduate degrees (especially PhDs). In fact, if you have a graduate degree, a company won't actually interview you (or really look at a resume beyond who your professor was and what you published).
Instead, you are asked to give a presentation on your graduate research topic and then asked to defend it in front of a committee;-)
Slashdot Mirror
While you could say the difference is just Reverse Polish Notation vs. Polish Notation, in effect the LISP intermediate assumes an efficient processing of Lists, and the FORTH intermediate assumes an efficient processing of Stacks.
This isn't not exactly true. A List in LISP is not a fundamental part of the language. Remember, a LISP computer doesn't work on lists, only on pairs. So really, the statement
a = 3 * 4 + c;
in LISP as:
(= a (+ (* 3 4) c))
Is truely:
(= (a ((+ ((* (3 (4 nil))) (c nil))) nil)))
Which is a binary tree. So LISP assumes that the computer is good at processing binary trees which is a lot easier than processing stacks.
Thus, I think that if underlying language for the most of OS components would be something like LISP than the whole concept of programming would be different.
LISP is not a language. LISP is a syntax representation. All languages are broken down to LISP notation by compilers. Common LISP is what you're speaking of.
For instance, take the C expr:
a = 3 * 4 + c;
The compiler will generate (and we often use LISP to debug our parsers):
(= a (+ (* 3 4) c))
s/=/setq/ and you have a valid Common LISP statement.
The changes from 2.2.8 to 2.2.8a were strictly fixing the patch. It wouldn't have caused those problems.
You should head to #samba on irc.freenode.net and post your problem including the old version you were using...
Whatever real problems she had she should not have had them in the first place.
That's an awful lot of responsibility resting on the shoulders of developers. You are approaching the issue with the mentality that:
"Developers work for end-users of software and therefore if an end-user has any problem with a piece of software, the developer should adjust the software and be greatful that the user gave even the vaguest hint that there was a problem with the software."
On the other hand, the true relationship that should exist between an Open Source developer and end-user is:
"Developers and end-users work together to create a piece of software that is useful for the end-users but is also enjoyable for the developer to spend time on."
If I received a feature request to improve the scheduler in Linux and simply wrote an algorithm that gave random processes CPU time without taking starvation or any other issue into account, I would be:
1) flamed from here to eternity by my fellow developers
2) ripped apart by any user of the software for writing a horrible piece of software
Yet, it is perfectly fine for an end-user to just bitch about how they don't like a piece of software without offering anything constructive? I don't understand the logic there. Why am I held to different standards than the user when, arguably, I am giving a great deal more in the relationship than the end-user is?
I'm not asking to be given a right to shit on any user who isn't an uber-programmer but I am at least asking for constructive critism. How is that too much to ask for?
BTW: I don't understand why you would put so much effort into a post and post as AC...
Being one of the lucky open source developers who gets paid to work on Linux for a living, I love reading constructive feedback about how to improve Linux. I did not like this article because:
1) It was degrading. I'd rather not be condescendingly referred to as a "shreiking geek".
2) She says she has problems that are absolutely absurd. For instance, "Root gets locked out of files". If this is occuring, then Linux has some serious security problems...
I hear so much complaining about how Linux developers aren't helpful to new users and such. Well, I'm sick of new users who aren't helpful to Linux developers and just sit around complaining about how things don't work like they should and then fail to explain how they should work or make general statements like "all my old legacy applications should just work".
End-users of Open Source software have as much, if not more, of an obligation to be helpful to developers as developers have to be helpful to end-users.
Specifically:
(1) A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following:
Establishes that owning, creating, or publishing information on how to create a device that violates any of the following items is a felony. The item in question is:
(a) Obtain or attempt to obtain a telecommunications service with the intent to avoid or aid or abet or cause another person to avoid any lawful charge for the telecommunications service in violation of section 219a.
Yet the bill does not put a limit on what telecommunications services are allowed to charge for. Therefore, if you're local ISP decided to charge for say each HTTP request, they could sue Microsoft for Internet Explorer's ability to download an unlimited number of webpages (since it is avoiding any lawful charge for telecommunications service).
A half-way decent lawyer should have a field day with this bill...
Here in Austin TimeWarner is trying out a PVR with 80GB of disk space and just about all the features of Tivo (a little dumber and doesn't have commerical skip). It's the same deal as the cable box--you only pay $9.95 a month to lease the hardware.
There is no way that Tivo can compete with that. Even though it has a better product the cable company just has it beat here from a price and marketing perspective. It's almost sad...
There are two types of jobs out there: 1) ones that require experience and 2) ones that don't want experience because they want groom you.
:)
For the first group, there is no way that you could possibly gain enough experience in 6-9 hours a week for four years. That's only about 4-6 months of professional experience (about two full-time internships if you're so lucky).
For the second group, employers are more interested in finding someone who is a good problem solver and has the ability to pick up newer technologies quickly. In a lot of ways, as an employer I'd rather have someone who learned COBOL at school for fear that they'd carry bad habits if they knew C++ or a newer language that I'd expect them to use on the job.
<Open Source Evangelizing>
Of course, working on Open Source software can give you the desired experience and prove you have the ability to learn quickly on your own
</Open Source Evangelizing>
IBM not only has filed more patents than anyone else for the past 10 years, but they also have one of the largest number of IP lawyers.
Yeah, SCO isn't going to last very long... That's like threatening a carrier fleet with a rowboat and bebe gun.
If you're adventurous, you could use Samba as the front end (since it compiles and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux) and write a custom VFS module to read whatever kind of image you want. The easiest thing to do would be to take something like ramfs from Linux and port it to userspace/samba. That would provide a portable way to share front-ends (keeping in mind three copies of Samba isn't exactly tiny)....
:)
And for platforms that don't support CIFS natively (are there any of this now a days?) you can use jCIFS
I had a laptop when I was in 7th grade. Actually, I bought a laptop when I was in 7th grade.
For two years I mowed lawns, babysat, and generally whored myself out in order to save up the $1,000k needed to buy a refurbished Pentuim 75mhz laptop.
My the end of my 7th grade year I had Linux on it and had written a very very bad BASIC compiler in C (it was something like 15k LOC).
All of this while being on a hockey and wrestling team.
Don't just assume because you were a dumbass when you were in 7th grade that everyone else was/is.
If you only copy the object to disk once a day, then what's the big advantage over copying the object to a database once a day?
The dumping to disk is simply a hack to work around the little "persistance" bug in their design.
I've seen a number of people ask how this is any different from just storing a regular database in memory. RAM is not just faster than disk but has different properties (namely seeking costs nothing) which allows algorithms to exploit that fact.
The limitations? Sheer database size. A version of Oracle designed to exploit non-existant seek times would most likely blow this thing out of the water.
Interesting: this PR release seems to confirm the planned extensions are in fact, Altivec. I haven't followed it too closely, but I thought this wasn't confirmed yet.
Not really. AltiVec is the Motorola SIMD extensions to PPC. IBM's extensions are called VMX. VMX is compatible with AltiVec and both presumable would be marketed by Apple as Velocity Engine.
Again, Apple has already announced it is a customer but just not what it intends on using the processor for.
Exactly how do PowerPC processors compare to regular x86 processors?
It's really like comparing Apples and Oranges. Some quick facts about the PPC though that give it a real advantage to the x86:
The PPC AltiVec unit (IBM's version is called VMX) has a 64 128-bit registers). Compare this to the the x86 SSE2 which only has 4 128-bit registers. This makes the PPC much more useful for multimedia functions since it can perform a butt-load of floating instructions in a very short time.
The GP instructions of the PPC and x86 are also quite different and many would argue that compilers have an easier time optimizing for the PPC because of its design.
At certain tasks, a 733Mhz G4 will beat a 1.8Ghz PIII.
What's most impressive though, is that the PPC requires _much_ less power than any x86 processor. This is why Apple can have such sexy machines.
A programmer is someone who has (in)formal education in information sciences including common data structures, design patterns, algorithm, and algorithmic analysis.
With the above skills, one should be able to master any language--compiled or interpretted. Often, the term "scripter" is used to describe someone without an understanding of the above who limits themselves to scripting languages.
Obviously, the later is inferior to the former. Most people tend to favor a language but even if that's a scripting language, that doesn't make one a "scripter."
Now as to whether a scripting language could solve problems more effectively, that's simply not relevant. The largest cost in code development is maintaining and expanding existing code bases. Therefore, it is more economical to use languages that are more widely known.
More people know Java or C++ than python or perl (at least, in enough capacity to do something useful). Therefore, in most circumstances, they are preferrable.
The picture is of four Via Mini-ITX boards epoxed together. They have no internal connection other then there ethernet interfaces. It is not a 4-way SMP machine (they are _much_ more expensive than this setup).
Out of curiousity, does any know of a way to chain boards like this together through a fast bus like PCI or something?
I know about blade servers and how they work but I'm talking about regular commodity motherboards.
In all fairness I imagine it has to do with co-ordination. I don't think that the /. editors read every article on /. like some of us readers do. In fact, if the editors are like most folks, they probably want to do something completely different from /. on their off-time.
So, with a bunch of editors, it's only natural for things to get lost. Most of the time, the dupes have titles that could easily be mistaken for different stories.
--- Hanji 2003-02-21 13:40:53.000000000 -0600
+++ lkaos 2003-02-21 13:40:26.000000000 -0600
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
+printf("Content-Type: text/plain\n\n");
printf("I disagree.\n");
printf("CGI is great - ");
printf("I don't see why anyone doesn't like");
sdjek dYqkP 1Nt$% GGl9) MHrYD +++
Two things give it away:
The spaces are too regular. You'd be quite hard pressed to form a coherent sentence with any character occuring every 5n character.
So then perhaps the spaces are irrelevant. Then the next questionable aspect is the last three +++'s. Now, if your code didn't atleast work in groups of three, the mathematic likely hood of three +++ occuring would be small.
So then, what would make most sense is some kind of consistant bit manipulation at least in cycles of three characters. Then you double GGs and unique character (%$) make that unlikely too.
So what makes the most sense? Just random typing.
Look at the first set of characters:
sdjek
Just type it a few times... It's quite natural. You might have well used asdf (I bet your typing style isn't perfect... you probably favor your right hand).
If you examine each other character grouping, you'll see that none of them are very hard to reach.
Also, it gets the KIS approval which in most circumstances, is the winning vote.
While I wouldn't call myself a big fan of XML, you're simply wrong in your example. XML is a data representation language. In most languages, data and expressions are more or less the same. For instance, take your example
f(x) = 2x
Now, you converted to Scheme/LISP and then to XML. That's bad. A more fluid translation to XML could be:
<function name="f">
<arguments>
<symbol name="x"/>
</arguments>
<body>
<operator name="*">
<constant value="2"/>
<symbol name="x"/>
</operator
</body>
</function>
Compared to C:
int f(int x)
{
return 2 * x;
}
Scheme/LISP:
(defun f (x) (* 2 x))
C++:
struct
{
typedef int results;
typedef int argument_type;
int operator()(int x)
{
return 2 * x;
}
} f;
The XML isn't really that bad.
Feel free to flame and correct:
User Mode Linux is a port of Linux that allows the host Linux operating system to run the Linux kernel as a process (this could be seen more or less, as an exokernel). This is done by changing the Linux kernel code to use malloc() to allocate memory instead accessing hardware.
UML uses ptrace to intercept its childrens system calls and then forwards them to user-functions in the kernel.
Plex86 on the other hands makes no modifications to the kernel. Instead, it takes a stock(1) kernel and virtualizes the few instructions that aren't allowed to run in user mode (an exception is thrown when these instructions are attempted to run and Plex86 catches this, performs the virtualization, and returns as if the instruction actually executed).
Plex86 is literally virtual machine whereas UML is really just removing and hardware specific stuff in the kernel and making it a regular C program.
(1) I lied a little here. There is an inherent design flaw in three instructions on x86 such that they do not allow for the above. Kevin submitted a small patch (that I assume got accepted) to make these instructions only be accessed through inlines with additional code such that they behave as they should. By correcting this, it makes implementing a VM more or less trivial.
Note: unless someone finds a _really_ innovative way to allow these instructions to be easily handled for other operating systems, it's not likely you'll see Plex86 run other properitary operating systems.
Note2: Plex86 is more likely to make it to Windows first because UML requires ptrace and Windows has no concept of ptrace(). Not to mention the fact that mmap behaves quite differently on Windows.
Note3: Yes, the above problems have been addressed in the UML Win32 port but they are non-trivial. From what I can gather, a Plex86 port will be pretty trivial to Windows...
The regular Samba project has had NT4 domain controller support for quite sometime...
We are currently working on Active Directory domain controller support. We've got a domain join more or less working for AD but are still working on initial logon.
Read here for more info.
OS/2, Windows, and Unix with Samba has had this abiltiy for quite a while.
On Windows, this is accessable via Network Neighborhood.
As far as IP configuration, with DynDNS and DHCP, it's zero-configuration and you get a sensible name.
I really don't see how this "rendezvous" is useful at all considering the prior art.
I'm guessing the marketing droids over at Apple will call the 970 something like a G4-64 (rolls off the tongue, doesn't it) and sometime in 2004-2005 roll out Power5 systems under the G5 moniker.
This is _way_ off. The PowerPC architecture is jointly owned by Motorola, IBM, and Apple. Each company has the right to make processors based on the initial PowerPC architecture. IBM more or less stayed away from the consumer market and focused on PPC server chips (although IBM did produce the G3 series of processors). The Gn naming convention is entirely Apple's marketing spin. The G4 is produced by Motorola.
Now, all the spin about the IBM PowerPC 970 is because the 970 (IBM's name for the processor) is based on the Power4 core which IBM originally produced for it's huge Rigatta processor line. These chips are really awesome because they are just as fast and use a _lot_ less power. Just in power savings alone, mainframe owners save hundreds of thousands of dollars by using Power4 derivatives.
Needless to say, watering down this processor into a consumer chip is really exciting especially for Apple since lower-power == lower-heat == cuter case designs.
Now, Apple has announced that they are a "customer" of the 970 but that does not guarentee that it will end up in the next round of iMacs nor that it will become part of the G-brand.
All in all, if I was looking to buy an Apple computer, I'd wait a few months and see what happens with 970...
Grades have become yet another tick on a record that is supposed to distinguish you from every other humble little human being on the planet..
;-)
For the most part, any job that only requires a B.A. is likely to have a pool of resources to draw from with little or no practical skills to begin with. For the most part, these types of positions are looking for individuals to train and "grow" into productive members of the organization.
The GPA plays an interesting role in this kind of senario: it allows a corporation to determine how well one follows direction. When you are looking for individuals to train, this is precisely the kind of litmus test one would use.
Le gasp! Someday we are going to have to depend on personal presentation and actual skill to distinguish ourselves and no piece of paper with numbers to qualify us over any other candidate!
GPAs are more or less irrelevant when dealing with individuals with graduate degrees (especially PhDs). In fact, if you have a graduate degree, a company won't actually interview you (or really look at a resume beyond who your professor was and what you published).
Instead, you are asked to give a presentation on your graduate research topic and then asked to defend it in front of a committee